Fossil Fuel Philanthropy
How taxpayer-subsidized charities promote climate change disinformation and stall urgent action.
Chuck Collins | Helen Flannery | Bella DeVaan
INTRODUCTION
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. tax laws to make taxpayers subsidize this damaging misinformation.
As we show in this report, wealthy donors are pouring billions into charities that spread disinformation about climate change. Many of these donors have a vested interest in ensuring the world’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuels. They funnel money into these charities directly or through private foundations and identity-masking donor-advised funds. And they receive enormous, publicly subsidized tax benefits for doing so.
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.
For example, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI, 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.
The Heritage Foundation 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 full findings — with sources, methodology, and more detail —are available in the PDF full version of our report. Below is a summary.
KEY FINDINGS
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.
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.
Top Climate Disinformation Recipient 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.
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.
RECOMMENDATIONS
A lack of adequate regulation, insufficient oversight, and active campaigning by powerful funders to defeat charitable reform proposals has allowed the fossil fuel industry to harness our charitable system for their disinformation campaigns largely in secret.
Specific policy reforms that would fix this include the following:
Disallow private foundations from using grants to donor-advised funds to meet their payout requirements.
Private foundations currently must disclose their major donors and their grantees, but funneling grants through DAFs allows foundations to circumvent both of these transparency requirements.
Require private foundations to identify their grantees by Employer Identification Number, or EIN.
Private foundations only have to identify their grantees by manually-entered names, which are often abbreviated and misspelled. Requiring foundations to provide grantee EINs would allow regulators and the public to accurately and easily determine specific charitable grant recipients.
Grants from donor-advised funds should be reported on the individual DAF account level
Currently, DAF grants are only required to be reported by the sponsoring organization in aggregate. Reporting them by individual account would allow regulators to tell if recipient nonprofit organizations meet the IRS’s public support test, which is meant to ensure that charitable organizations are broadly supported. This reporting could be done by account ID number, rather than donor name, to protect anonymous givers.
DAF sponsors should be required to disclose to the IRS the names of all individual donors who have contributed $10,000 or more to each DAF account.
This is equivalent to disclosure requirements for private foundations.
501(c)(4) organizations should be required to disclose to the IRS the names of all individual donors who have contributed $10,000 or more to that organization.
This is equivalent to disclosure requirements for private foundations.