Waverley Street Foundation

Waverley Street Foundation operates as a spend-down funder with a singular, time-bound mandate: deploy approximately $3.5 billion to organizations advancing community-led climate solutions by 2035. Founded by Laurene Powell Jobs and chaired by former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, the foundation is led by President Jared Blumenfeld — California's former Secretary for Environmental Protection — who brings deep regulatory and environmental justice credentials to the grantmaking philosophy. The institution is engineered for urgency, not perpetuity.

WSF's giving philosophy is unambiguously community-first. Program officers do not accept proposals and then vet them; instead, they embed with community leaders to co-design funding strategies from the ground up. This inverted model means organizations must demonstrate genuine community roots, not just programmatic sophistication. The foundation's stated preference is for frontline communities, Indigenous peoples, communities of color, and grassroots leaders directly affected by food insecurity and energy poverty. Top-down technocratic solutions are a poor fit regardless of impact metrics.

Two programmatic pillars define all grantmaking: Food Systems (regenerative agriculture, soil health, Indigenous food sovereignty, agroecology, sustainable farmer support networks) and Renewable Energy (community solar, building decarbonization, clean energy justice, tribal energy independence, fossil fuel phase-out advocacy). Grants frequently land at the intersection — particularly for Indigenous organizations working the food-energy-water nexus.

WSF funds three distinct organizational archetypes: (1) frontline community-based organizations doing direct programming on the ground; (2) large re-grantors and fiscal sponsors — Windward Fund, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Amalgamated Charitable Foundation — which WSF uses to move capital at scale into community networks it cannot reach directly; and (3) policy and advocacy infrastructure organizations working on systemic upstream change, including Climate Imperative, the Equation Campaign, and the European Climate Foundation.

First-time applicants must internalize one fact: there is no application process. All grantmaking is invitation-only. The entry pathway runs through attending convenings where WSF program officers are present, building trust with intermediary fiscal sponsors already in the WSF portfolio, and — over time — demonstrating community embeddedness that earns a program officer's direct attention. California-based organizations have a structural advantage, though the foundation's international portfolio is growing.

Waverley Street Foundation's grantmaking data reveals a rapidly scaling institution with highly concentrated giving at the top and a long tail of community investments. Among 228 documented grants totaling over $570 million, the average grant is approximately $2.5 million and the median falls in the same range — but the distribution is extreme, spanning from a floor near $75,000 to a ceiling of $36 million in a single transaction. The largest single grantee relationship, Climate Imperative Foundation, has received more than $108 million across multiple grants, representing roughly 19% of all documented giving.

Annual grantmaking has grown dramatically: - FY2020: $84.5M paid - FY2021: $124.5M paid - FY2022: $164.1M paid - FY2023: $225.5M paid - FY2024: $282.1M paid

This 3.3x increase over four years is consistent with a spend-down foundation accelerating capital deployment. Total assets remain $2.738 billion (FY2024), with net investment income of $270 million annually — meaning WSF is now deploying the bulk of its investment returns plus drawing down principal on schedule toward the 2035 target.

By geography: California-based grantees dominate with 56 grants, followed by Washington, DC (39 — primarily policy infrastructure and intermediaries), New York (33), Massachusetts (12), and Colorado (8). An expanding international portfolio includes Netherlands, India, Germany, Costa Rica, and Brazil.

By program area: Clean energy and climate policy absorb the largest dollar volume. The top ten grantees — Climate Imperative, Windward Fund, Thousand Currents, Conservation International, GRID Alternatives, California Volunteers Fund, and European Climate Foundation — are primarily climate policy vehicles, re-grantors, or large-scale energy programs. Food systems grants tend to be mid-sized: Root Capital ($10M), Conservation International Broadleaf Initiative ($8.5M), SELCO Foundation ($8M), First Nations Development Institute ($4M), Intertribal Agriculture Council ($3.2M).

Re-grantor strategy: WSF regularly writes large checks to fiscal sponsors — Tides Foundation ($11.5M), Windward Fund ($32M across grants), Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors ($18.5M), Amalgamated Charitable Foundation ($13M) — which then sub-grant to community organizations. This model allows WSF to move capital quickly into organizations too small to manage seven- or eight-figure direct grants.

The five peer foundations identified by asset size are all in the $2.67B–$2.84B range, making Waverley Street Foundation roughly mid-tier within this cohort. However, WSF's grantmaking volume and topical concentration set it apart dramatically.

Three distinctions define WSF relative to its asset peers. First, grantmaking volume is exceptional: WSF's $282M in FY2024 more than doubles what peers like McKnight or Casey deploy annually from comparable endowments — a direct consequence of the spend-down mandate. Second, topical concentration is unusually tight: where McKnight and Casey fund across broad human services, arts, and community development portfolios, WSF operates a strict two-pillar mandate (food systems and renewable energy) with a community-justice lens. This makes organizational fit more binary — but a well-aligned organization faces less competition than in a broad-mandate portfolio. Third, WSF's re-grantor architecture is distinctive: few foundations of this asset size route as large a share of total grantmaking through fiscal sponsors and intermediaries, which creates indirect funding pathways not available through most peer foundations.

March 2025 brought WSF's most visible public grant announcement of the year: $8 million to the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School, designated for building frontline community capacity to develop climate and energy policy. This represented a significant escalation of WSF's investment in policy-facing academic institutions and signals growing interest in university-based community engagement hubs.

In September 2025, the USC Equity Research Institute announced a $5 million WSF grant to expand its work at the intersection of economic and climate justice — another academic institution grant in a year defined by WSF's deepening investment in research-to-community pipelines.

The 2024 Annual Review (published early 2025 by President Jared Blumenfeld) disclosed that WSF approved over $330 million in grants to nearly 100 organizations, convened 225 leaders from 22 countries in Mexico City, and reported catalyzing $1.7 billion in follow-on public and private funding — including a $5M grant to Community Builders of Color Coalition that unlocked $1.5B in EPA Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund resources, and a $4M Bullard Center solar grant that catalyzed $156M in federal solar funding for Texas.

On the staff front, Jenny Mack joined as Chief Communications and Marketing Officer in 2025, and the foundation launched a new Learning Hub (waverleystreet.org/learning) featuring reflections on durable climate impact. WSF has also publicly committed to preparing for COP30 in Belém, Brazil as a 2025-2026 strategic priority, with an Artivism convening already held in Salvador, Brazil.

Waverley Street Foundation funds by invitation only. There is no application portal, no published RFP cycle, and no LOI submission process. Submitting an unsolicited proposal will produce no result. Every dollar WSF grants flows through relationships built over months or years — this is not a foundation you can cold-apply to, but one you must strategically position yourself to be invited by.

Build relationships through intermediaries first. WSF has deep, multi-year financial relationships with Windward Fund ($32M+ across grants), Tides Foundation ($11.5M), Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors ($18.5M), Amalgamated Charitable Foundation ($13M), and Global Greengrants Fund ($16M). If your organization qualifies for fiscal sponsorship or collaborative funding through any of these re-grantors, that is a concrete pathway to WSF-adjacent capital and to direct conversations with WSF program staff.

Attend WSF-adjacent convenings. The foundation's 2024 Mexico City gathering (225 leaders from 22 countries) and Artivism convening in Brazil are not peripheral activities — they are the primary relationship-building channels for WSF program officers. Organizations that appear credibly at Indigenous climate summits, food sovereignty convenings, BIPOC environmental justice forums, and renewable energy conferences are those most likely to enter the WSF pipeline organically.

Align your language with WSF's confirmed framing. The foundation has invested in communications research and found that 'protective' messaging — framing work around protecting what communities love — outperforms crisis or disaster narratives. Use language around "community-led solutions," "energy independence for communities," "regenerative systems," "cultivating health, justice and joy," and "protecting what we love." Avoid framing that leads with climate catastrophe without centering community agency.

Demonstrate leverage capacity explicitly. WSF's most celebrated grants are catalytic — a $5M investment that unlocked $1.5B in EPA funding is their model of success. In any introductory conversation, quantify how WSF investment would catalyze additional federal, state, or philanthropic capital. Matching ratios, federal grant readiness, and coalition leverage are compelling.

Target the right program officers by pillar. Staff listed on the WSF website include Carole Excell, Carmelita Mitchell, Navitri Putri Guillaume, Neena Dolwani, and Peter Kelly, organized around the food and energy pillars. Research who covers your geographic and thematic area before reaching out, and always seek a mutual introduction from an existing WSF grantee. Cold outreach to info@waverleystreet.org is a last resort — warm introductions through the grantee network are the norm.