Yavanna Foundation

Yavanna Foundation is not a public, RFP-driven grantmaker — it is a single-trustee vehicle. Philip H. Jensen founded it in 2008 with $10.17 million in Google stock and has remained its sole president, director, and secretary ever since, drawing no compensation. Foundation Source, a Wilmington-based back-office administrator that serves hundreds of small family foundations, handles compliance and disbursement, but program decisions rest entirely with Jensen. The foundation's own database record confirms this posture: no application form URL, no published deadline, application instructions marked "none," and grants flagged as pre-selected only — the hallmarks of a closed, relationship-driven funder rather than a competitive one.

The grantee list bears this out. Of the roughly 55 organizations funded since inception, most are large, established 501(c)(3)s with national profiles — Post Carbon Institute, the Foundation for National Progress (publisher of Mother Jones), the Brennan Center for Justice, Wikimedia Foundation, Media Matters for America — not small grassroots groups discovering the foundation cold. Many recipients (Post Carbon Institute, Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, Transition US, Caminante Society) show 2-3 grants apiece in the sampled data, indicating renewal is the norm once a relationship is established, not one-off giving.

For a first-time applicant, the realistic path is not a cold LOI. It is (1) confirming genuine alignment with Jensen's stated "left-of-center" environmentalist and civic-engagement priorities, (2) finding a warm introduction through a current or past grantee — Post Carbon Institute, Transition US, and the Foundation for National Progress form a recognizable degrowth/climate-media cluster that likely shares informal referral relationships — and (3) treating any outreach to Foundation Source as a long shot rather than a program-office contact. Given the foundation's small size (~$8M in assets, under $400K in annual disbursements) and single decision-maker, personal fit with Jensen's worldview matters more than proposal polish.

Yavanna Foundation's giving is small, steady, and slowly shrinking. Lifetime giving since 2008 totals roughly $4.67 million across about 186 grants to 55 organizations (per InfluenceWatch), with a lifetime median grant of $10,000 and a range of $1,000 to $220,000. In the most recent tranche captured in this platform's data (39 grants, $1,072,000 total), the average grant is $27,487, while the foundation's own reported typical-grant-size figures for recent years show a median of just $5,000 and an average of $20,421 across 19 grants, ranging from $2,000 to $100,000 — indicating the foundation mixes a handful of large, six-figure anchor grants with many small four-figure ones.

Asset and giving trends have both declined over time: total assets fell from $10.22 million (2011) to $9.66 million (2015) to roughly $7.9-8.1 million in 2019-2023, while total giving fell from $565,516 (2011) to $405,267 (2023), and further to an estimated $377,681 in FY2025. Grants paid (distinct from total giving, which includes excise tax and admin costs) have held in a narrower $341,000-$457,000 band across the years sampled.

Geographically, California dominates: 18 of 39 sampled grants (46%) went to CA-based organizations, followed by DC (7), Ohio, Minnesota, and New York (3 each), Massachusetts and Oregon (2-3 each) — consistent with the foundation's stated geographic focus on CA, DC, and MA. By program area, the two largest single recipients — Post Carbon Institute ($365,000 across 3 grants) and Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future ($141,000 across 3 grants) — are both energy/degrowth-focused climate organizations, together accounting for roughly 47% of the $1.07 million sampled. The remainder splits across progressive civic/voting-rights groups (Voter Participation Center, Working America Education Fund, American Promise Education Fund — $15,000-$50,000 each), media/journalism (Foundation for National Progress, Media Matters — $50,000-$55,000), and a long tail of smaller five-figure and four-figure grants to secular, free-culture, and community organizations (Wikimedia, Internet Archive, Secular Student Alliance).

Yavanna sits among a cluster of similarly-sized private foundations with assets clustered tightly around $8.08 million — all classified under the generic "Philanthropy & Grantmaking" NTEE code common to Foundation-Source-administered, single-family vehicles. None of the five closest peers in this dataset show a public website, reinforcing that this asset tier of family foundation typically operates without a public-facing grant program.

What distinguishes Yavanna within this peer set is transparency of intent, not process: its grantee history and founder statements make its ideological focus (environmental degrowth, progressive civic organizations, secular/free-culture causes) far easier to research than the peers, none of which disclose a discoverable mission or grantee pattern in public sources. Applicants should not expect Yavanna's peer foundations to be more accessible simply because they lack documented focus areas — the absence of a website across this entire size tier is itself the signal that pre-selected, invitation-only giving is standard practice for $8M single-trustee foundations, not an anomaly specific to Yavanna.

The most recent filing available (fiscal year 2025, filed June 12, 2026) shows total revenue of $574,720 and charitable disbursements of $377,681, up modestly from FY2024's $357,962 in disbursements on $365,507 of revenue. Both years' revenue derived almost entirely from investment income (dividends and asset sales) rather than new contributions — consistent with a decade-plus pattern of zero external fundraising.

The most notable recent grant activity, per InfluenceWatch's review of the FY2024 return, was a pair of $100,000 gifts: one to Post Carbon Institute, the foundation's largest and most consistent grantee since inception, and one to Ground Game Fund, a voter-mobilization organization that does not appear among the foundation's historical top recipients in this platform's data — suggesting a possible new relationship rather than a renewal.

There has been no leadership change: Philip H. Jensen remains the sole officer and trustee, as he has since founding the foundation in 2008, and draws no compensation. No press coverage, social media presence, or program announcements were found for the foundation itself in 2025-2026 — its only public footprint is IRS Form 990-PF data mirrored by nonprofit-data aggregators (ProPublica, Candid, GuideStar, Instrumentl, CauseIQ). Notably, the yavanna.org domain referenced in IRS records has since been repurposed by an unrelated agricultural-technology startup, meaning grant seekers searching for the foundation online will land on a page with no connection to grantmaking — a detail worth flagging to any user relying on that URL.

There is no formal application process to optimize for — the foundation's own data confirms application_instructions is unset and grants are pre-selected, and no LOI form, portal, or published deadline exists anywhere in the public record. The realistic strategy is relationship-based, not proposal-based:

• Do not attempt to apply via yavanna.org. That domain now belongs to an unrelated AI livestock-vaccination company and has no path to the foundation's trustee.
• Study the actual grantee pattern before any outreach: Post Carbon Institute and the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future (both associated with peak-oil/degrowth energy analysis) are the foundation's anchor relationships, each renewed 2-3 times in the sampled data at $27,000-$125,000 per grant. If your organization's work does not sit near this climate-degrowth, progressive-civic-engagement, or secular/free-culture cluster (Media Matters, Foundation for National Progress, Voter Participation Center, Wikimedia, Secular Student Alliance, MAPS), the ideological fit is likely too far off for Jensen's personal giving.
• Look for a warm introduction through an existing grantee rather than a cold approach — small single-trustee foundations at this asset level ($8M) overwhelmingly fund within networks the trustee already trusts; a referral from Post Carbon Institute, Transition US, or a similar current grantee is far more likely to get a response than an unsolicited letter to Foundation Source.
• If you do reach out, keep it to a brief, personal note rather than a full proposal packet — there is no program officer to review a formal application, and Jensen is the sole reader.
• Time expectations conservatively: total disbursements have declined roughly a third since 2011 ($565,516 to $377,681 in FY2025), and the median individual grant in recent years is just $5,000 — this is a small, supplementary funder, not a lead funder capable of underwriting a major program.
• Track the annual Form 990-PF (typically filed mid-year — the FY2025 return was filed June 12, 2026) via ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer for the most current recipient list, since it is more current than any grants database and is the only reliable way to see whether new organizations (like 2024's Ground Game Fund) are entering the mix.