Inside the World of Fossil Fuel Philanthropy
Oil refineries in Ashland, Kentucky. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.
For years, the fossil fuel industry has laundered false claims and junk science through allied think tanks and the media in an effort to slow public action on climate change. That scandal has attracted more and more attention over the years. But less well documented is how the funders of these efforts have used U.S. laws to make taxpayers subsidize this damaging misinformation: Through our philanthropy system.
Our new report with the Climate Accountability Research Project outlines how wealthy donors are funneling billions into climate disinformation organizations, both into charities directly or through private foundations and identity-masking donor-advised funds. They receive enormous, publicly subsidized tax benefits for doing so.
Many of these donors have a vested interest in ensuring the world’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuels. They benefit from how funds directed to fossil fuel industry-friendly think tanks and policy groups help turn disinformation into accepted truth and sow doubt about science. Then, these ideas get turned into action — or, more often, inaction — by the policy brass of lawmakers and presidential administrations.
The Stand Together Network, a Koch-led cluster of organizations that brought in more than $873 million in donations over the last three years, celebrated “progress on many regulatory priorities” they’d “championed for years” after the first year of the Trump administration, the Intercept reported.
Or take the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI, which received $21 million in charitable contributions from 2020 to 2022. It bills itself as “instrumental” both in blocking ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and in pressuring former President Trump to withdraw from the 2016 Paris Agreement.
Then there’s the notorious Heritage Foundation, which received $236 million in contributions over the same three years. This money allowed Heritage to write Project 2025, a policy blueprint overseen by several former Trump administration appointees, which proposes changes to the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency that would be disastrous for our climate.
Donors were able to deduct much of the $257 million in donations that went to CEI and Heritage from 2020 to 2022 from their tax bills — and these deductions were subsidized by everyday taxpayers. It is high time for the American public to understand just how much charitable money is funding climate change disinformation and to recognize the key individuals behind this effort.
The charities behind climate science denial are well-funded, interconnected, and have influence at the highest levels of government. Many of them are tracked by activist websites, science-based nonprofits, and journals such as DeSmog, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Climate Investigations Center.
We analyzed these sources along with the tax returns of the 501(c)(3) charities most directly involved in climate disinformation and denial, as well as those of the private foundations and donor-advised funds that furnish these organizations with the most donations.
Our complete findings — with sources, methodology, and more detail — are available in full version of our report.
The Charitable Funding of Climate Disinformation
137 separate climate disinformation organizations received charitable donations from 2020 to 2022.
Six of these are largely or entirely focused on climate issues — organizations where all or nearly all the funding is likely being used to promote climate disinformation. These organizations alone received $219 million in contributions from 2020 to 2022.
Together, all 137 climate disinformation organizations received $5.8 billion in contributions over the three years we analyzed. Most are multi-issue research organizations. This means the total amount spent on climate disinformation could range anywhere from a conservative $219 million into the billions of dollars.
From 2020 to 2022, 16 percent of the funding for climate disinformation organizations came from donor-advised funds, while 9 percent came from private foundations.
In this analysis, we look in detail only at donations coming from donor-advised funds and private foundations, because those are the only sources where public information is available. The largest single source of donations — $4.2 billion — is individual and corporate donors for which charitable donations are private.
It is fair to say, therefore, that the funds we are able to track through private foundations and donor-advised funds are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the charitable funding of climate disinformation.
Top Climate Disinformation Recipient Charities
From 2020 to 2022, the three climate disinformation charities that took in the most total contributions were the Seminar Network, the Stand Together Foundation, and Leonard Leo’s 85 Fund.
The Seminar Network and the Stand Together Foundation are both components of fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch’s Stand Together network. Together, these two organizations brought in more than $873 million in donations over these three years.
In 2022, the three climate disinformation charities holding the most in assets were the Charles Koch Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Seminar Network.
The first and third of these organizations are both part of Charles Koch’s Stand Together network. Together, the two organizations hold more than $783 million in assets.
Top Climate Disinformation Funders
From 2020 to 2022, the top three donor-advised fund (DAF) sponsors funding these climate disinformation organizations were the National Philanthropic Trust, the Schwab Charitable Fund (recently rebranded as DAFGiving360), and DonorsTrust. Because DAFs have a near-complete lack of donor and grantee reporting requirements, they allow for a high level of secrecy in donating funds.
DonorsTrust received $303 million in incoming contributions from 2020 to 2022, including an estimated $116 million in grants from private foundations, which get to count those disbursements toward their annual payout.
From 2020 to 2022, the top three private foundation funders of these climate disinformation organizations were the combined Scaife Foundations, the Searle Freedom Trust, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.
The Scaife Foundations consist of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Allegheny Foundation, and the Scaife Family Foundation. All three foundations were founded by members of the Scaife family, heirs to the Mellon family oil and banking fortune.
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