The Agroecology Fund dramatically increased its fundraising in 2024. One year on, it is time to revisit this activist group to see how it has been distributing this new cash windfall. What I discovered was more than a list of organizations; it was something more disturbing.
The Windfall
Established in 2012 by four foundations pooling funds together, the Agroecology Fund originally aimed to support, train and promote agroecology solutions. It was a small operation, raising and granting $2 million to $3 million a year, until it changed its fiscal sponsor several years ago to the Global Greengrants Fund. These consultants advised another fundraising tactic: identifying agroecology, counter-intuitively, as a climate mitigation strategy for agriculture. The new fiscal sponsor then tapped into its network of tech billionaires, ticking all of their boxes (climate, poverty, African development, …), to pull in over $100 million in foundation donations in 2024.
How did they spend it?
The Cash Objectives
As the Agroecology Fund is a regranting non-profit, it is expected to give this windfall away in the form of grants, assumedly to help peasant farmers in developing countries dig wells and obtain better seeds. But much of this $100 million is tied to lobbying against conventional agriculture and research including $10 million from the Waverley Street Foundation (Laurene Powell Jobs) and $9 million from the Ballmer Group (Steve Ballmer). These funds are earmarked for advocacy campaigns in countries where agricultural technology issues are heating up the policy debates (including Washington, Brussels and Rome, where the FAO is located). UN organizations are becoming more reliant on foundation funding so it should come as no surprise to see the UNEP and FAO agroecology campaigns becoming more vocal.
As agroecology imposes arbitrary political restrictions on agriculture (no industry involvement, global trade, innovative technologies or synthetic inputs), a principle ambition of the Agroecology Fund is to raise doubts on the achievements and sustainability of conventional farming. Agroecology could easily be ignored as a cult dogma until the movement came into such significant foundation funding.
The Granting Numbers
In 2024, the Agroecology Fund website claimed to have granted over $20 million dollars from 2012 to 2023. This year, the site has been updated to take into account the 2024 $100 million windfall, claiming regranting of $33 million since 2012. We can assume then that only 13% of last year’s total funding intake has been regranted to agroecology projects.
I use the term “we can assume” because the Agroecology Fund is not at all transparent. It does not file an IRS 990 report because the organization, technically, does not exist. It is not a registered non-profit, and it does not have 501(c)(3) status, so it does not have to publish reports on its revenues or expenses. The Agroecology Fund is run and managed by its fiscal sponsor, the Global Greengrants Fund, which subsumes all of its accounts within the larger Greengrants IRS declaration (including the salary it pays the Agroecology Fund’s director, Daniel Moss).
Some other peculiarities with this charade:
- With no office and no registered identity, the Agroecology Fund staff have to officially operate in the name of their fiscal sponsor, a small detail most partners and media overlook.
- Little is known about which organizations receive funding from this shadow body. There are no lists.
- The website says it does not accept solicitations and only grants to projects or groups upon advice from its partners (“trust-based grantmaking”). Who are these partners? Once again … smoke and mirrors.
The Fiscal Sponsor Revolution
Fiscal sponsors are consultancies that bridge the gap between the philanthropic community and civil society. They are usually well-connected consultants with a network of foundation administrators and fund managers that take a commission on what they raise and spend.
As the number of foundations have mushroomed following a series of technology revolutions, fiscal sponsors have enabled such groups to be more efficient in their giving, often grouping donations from multiple foundations into single projects. As many NGOs have their own objectives and character, fiscal sponsors have started creating their own activist campaign organizations that they manage in-house while still promoting them, fraudulently, as separate non-profit organizations.
Some advantages to this tactic:
- While the Global Greengrants Fund considers itself as an “Interconnected Network of Grassroots Advisors” (i.e. consultants), it is established as a non-profit. Any monies they receive are tax deductible.
- With commissions on average of 10% (plus administrative fees), fiscal sponsors like the Global Greengrants Fund do well when “projects” like the Agroecology Fund strike it rich.
- Managing non-existent entities (projects) within fiscal sponsorship umbrellas leaves no separate transparency requirements, no means of scrutiny and more “flexible” capital opportunities.
- With close relationships with fiscal sponsors, foundation boards and fund managers, often infiltrated by activist campaigners, have more control over how their donations are being spent.
- A “project” like the Agroecology Fund does not need to be accountable and cannot be held liable for any damages coming from its false claims.
The hypocrisy is quite rich. These activists often criticize industry for corruption, non-transparency and high lobbying budgets. It reminds me of Willy Sutton who once stated the reason he robbed banks was because “that’s where the money is”.
David Zaruk is a professor based in Brussels writing on environmental-health risk policy within the EU Bubble. He writes a blog under the name: The Risk-Monger.
