The gusher of philanthropic money is the product of an unconventional corporate restructuring in 2022, when Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, and his family relinquished ownership of the company and declared that all its future profits would be used to protect the environment and combat climate change.

Patagonia and the Chouinards set up a series of trusts, limited liability corporations and charitable groups designed to protect the independence of the clothing company while distributing all of its profits through an entity known as the Holdfast Collective.

Her group flagged public filings by the nonprofit organizations funded by Holdfast, which listed a range of causes, including combating disinformation and advocating for reproductive health care and prison reform.

The network received a $1.6 billion infusion from Barre Seid, a reclusive businessman who donated all the shares of his Chicago device manufacturing company in a transaction that shook the political world, and drew comparisons to the Chouinards’ transfer of Patagonia to Holdfast.

Chris Lehman, an organizer for the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California, which is working on the effort, said his group received $500,000 from Holdfast this month, allowing it to compete against deep pocketed corporations on the other side of the fight.

The Holdfast Collective’s bare bones structure reflects a growing trend in philanthropy — embodied by MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — to give away vast sums of money with little to no overhead.

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