Investing Patagonia’s Proceeds In Conservation

February 2, 2024February 1, 2024 / Organikos / Leave a comment

Greg Curtis, the former deputy general counsel of Patagonia, is responsible for giving away huge sums of money to causes that are aligned with Patagonia’s history of environmental activism. Adam Amengual for The New York Times

When news broke about the company’s future, we were in awe; since then we heard little so this is a welcome update:

Patagonia’s Profits Are Funding Conservation — and Politics

$71 million of the clothing company’s earnings have been used since September 2022 to fund wildlife restoration, dam removal and Democratic groups.

A little more than $3 million to block a proposed mine in Alaska. Another $3 million to conserve land in Chile and Argentina. And $1 million to help elect Democrats around the country, including $200,000 to a super PAC this month.

The site of the Kalivac Dam on the Vjosa River in Albania, where Holdfast has funded a major conservation project. Andrew Burr/Patagonia

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel brand, is funneling its profits to an array of groups working on everything from dam removal to voter registration.

In total, a network of nonprofit organizations linked to the company has distributed more than $71 million since September 2022, according to publicly available tax filings and internal documents reviewed by The Times. Continue reading →

Celebrating Real Accomplishment

January 6, 2017January 6, 2017 / Organikos / Leave a comment

If you attended Cornell University 1980s or 1990s and earlier you may have heard his name if you were part of the Hotel School community, which he occasionally visited. Even then you would have heard simply that he was “a good friend” of his alma mater. It was only in the last decade or so that his visionary generosity was made public, most notably on CBS news in the USA. He had worked hard to keep his name out of the stories related to his foundation’s philanthropic giving.

It eventually became easier to find information about where all of that money went. Journalists did their work, and after he was revealed to be a genius of anonymous giving on a grand scale he reluctantly agreed to proper documentation of it all. He even agreed to a book-length documentation, which we first learned about here. Today the New York Times is reporting that he has finally achieved his goal of giving it all away. Bravo, Mr. Feeney, and thank you for reminding us what real accomplishment looks like:

…Nearly five years ago, Charles F. Feeney sat in a cushy armchair in an apartment on the east side of Manhattan, grandchildren’s artwork taped to the walls, and said that by the end of 2016, he was going to hand out the last of a great fortune that he had made. Continue reading →

Generosity’s Change Agents

October 28, 2016April 11, 2019 / Organikos / Leave a comment

The rise of a new, fast-growing class of charities known as donor-advised funds represents a momentous shakeup in charitable giving in the U.S. ILLUSTRATION BY MARCUS BUTT / GETTY

Thanks to the contributors to the New Yorker’s website, we get frequent updates on topics we are interested in that might not make it into the long form reportage of the print magazine; case in point:

THE WEALTH GAP IN PHILANTHROPY

By Vauhini Vara

Each year, Stacy Palmer, the editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, compiles a list of the U.S. charities that have raised the most money from private sources. In the twenty-six years that the Philanthropy 400 ranking has been published, one thing has stayed constant: United Way Worldwide is at the top. (The one exception was in 1996, when the Salvation Army briefly displaced it.) But when the results started coming in for this year’s list, which was published on Thursday morning, it became clear that a new No. 1 had emerged—an organization affiliated with Fidelity Investments, called Fidelity Charitable, which has grown to become one of the most influential charities in the world. “I was stunned,” Palmer recalled. The details were especially striking. Fidelity Charitable collected 4.6 billion dollars, a twenty-per-cent increase from the previous year. United Way ranked a distant second, with donations dropping by four per cent, to 3.7 billion dollars. “Not only were they”—Fidelity—“going to be No. 1, but they were going to be No. 1 by a lot,” Palmer remembered realizing. Continue reading →

A Conversation with Bill Gates

October 7, 2014October 21, 2022 / Seth Inman / Leave a comment

Last week, Bill Gates visited Cornell University for a question and answer session after attending the dedication of Bill & Melinda Gates Hall, the new Computing and Information Science building that was supported by a $25 million gift from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. You can read a summary of Mr. Gates’s discussion here.