There’s no sign on the door, but there’s a three-story midcentury modern building on San Francisco’s Cathedral Hill that is technically the home of one of the nation’s largest private foundations.
Wedged between a Gold Rush-era church and a yellow Victorian, the sleek structure is listed in IRS filings as the address of the Sergey Brin Family Foundation. In reality, the building is headquarters to one of the foundation’s contractors, which handles certain business functions for the grantmaker.
With nearly $5 billion in assets as of 2021, the Google (now Alphabet) co-founder’s foundation is among the country’s 25 wealthiest philanthropic institutions. It’s not uncommon for a foundation to list a bookkeeper or some such as its address, but it does speak to the fact that this institution seems to exist largely in the ether, which is unusual for an institution of its size. There’s not even much in the cloud, though Brin is a pioneer in finding things on the internet. The foundation does not have so much as a LinkedIn page or an entry in Google Maps, let alone a website.
A low profile is far from the only thing notable about this billionaire’s philanthropy. The 49-year-old has been a major — and often publicly recognized — supporter of research into Parkinson’s disease, mostly through gifts to the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Forbes recently calculated that his giving over the past decade-plus on that front tops $1 billion. He is also a significant supporter of scientific research and antipoverty work, including nearly doubling its giving when COVID hit. Brin’s also not opposed to a tech-dude moonshot, such as a recent $1 million grant for a “brain-on-a-chip” project.
Another reason to pay attention: The foundation has kicked its grantmaking into higher gear in recent years, joining a growing group of mega donors who are quietly outpacing some of the largest legacy foundations in the country. Between 2018 and 2021, its annual payout grew roughly five-fold, reaching $230 million in the final year of that span. It then more than doubled in 2022, reaching $506 million, according to a foundation representative.
A half-billion dollars a year in grants puts the grantmaker in the same altitude as storied institutions like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation or the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. At the same time, its assets and giving are still tiny relative to Brin’s fortune, which Forbes says has doubled over the past couple years to reach $81 billion. In other words, we could see huge amounts heading out the door in coming years.
Brin is certainly not alone among his contemporaries in keeping most of his grantmaking close to the chest. Most famously, MacKenzie Scott made billions in grants publicized only through Medium posts, but recently launched a website and grants database. And unlike some peers, such as Laurene Powell Jobs, Brin is doing his grantmaking through a foundation, not an LLC, so the public eventually gains access to some giving details through its tax filings.
The big sums have not gone entirely without notice. This August, for instance, Brin made headlines after he donated $127 million in Alphabet stock to his foundation and Fox’s. The hundreds of millions he’s pumped into his foundation has frequently landed him on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of top givers.
Nor does his foundation account for all his giving. In 2021 alone, he gave a $130 million gift to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, $70 million to antipoverty collaborative Blue Meridian, and a $40 million commitment to the think tank and regrantor Climate Imperative. He sent another $79 million to Fox in 2022, a representative said.
More attention to Brin’s burgeoning giving is warranted. With one of the 10 largest fortunes in America, these could be just the first steps of a future philanthropic goliath, and one that has so far drawn a lot less attention than some of his peers. While the foundation declined a request for an interview, a representative did answer some questions via email. Based on responses and public filings, here are six things to know about Brin’s grantmaking — and four remaining questions we have.
Six things to know about Sergey Brin’s philanthropy
1. Surprisingly, grants stay close to home
Alphabet — Google’s parent company — may reach around the globe, but Brin’s grantmaking stays very local, particularly for someone of his means. While some million-dollar awards go to disease research centers around the country, the foundation also sends similarly sized checks to community groups, such as the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula and the Second Harvest of Silicon Valley food bank. This actually runs counter to a trend in Silicon Valley giving, in which big tech donors tend to neglect causes in their own backyard.
Overall, roughly two-thirds of all the foundation’s grants are made in California, according to 990s number-crunching service Instrumentl. Some of these recipients work nationally or internationally, but so far, the foundation seems to favor organizations based in the Golden State. Brin was born in Moscow and his foundation shows an interest in some of the most global of challenges — pandemics and climate change. For instance, he’s sent money to the Neglected Climate Opportunities Fund managed by the Boston-based Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust and to the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in San Diego, California. But scarcely any money goes to organizations abroad. There are exceptions, such as a community foundation in Singapore or the European Climate Foundation, but otherwise, the foundation grants almost exclusively to U.S.-based groups.
2. One disease dominates the portfolio — for now
If last year is any guide, Brin’s passion for Parkinson’s funding is still growing. The disease already accounted for a quarter of the foundation’s giving a few years ago, but that rose to nearly half of all the foundation’s grants in 2021, or $112 million, even as the operation’s total budget surged. It climbed again in 2022 to $144 million, a representative said. It’s a cause with a strong personal connection. Both Brin’s mother and his aunt have been diagnosed with the disease, and Brin has revealed he’s genetically susceptible.
Most of that funding has gone to the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the charity of the actor who lives with the disease, including $101 million in 2021 and another big award this year. The foundation has also sent multiple multimillion-dollar awards to the University of California at San Francisco, and it has supported the Milken Institute to coordinate scientific research regarding Parkinson’s. As my colleague Paul Karon has reported, the foundation’s signature initiative, Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s (with the catchy acronym ASAP), has sought to promote collaboration across the field.
Yet the foundation is also looking beyond Parkinson’s. The model it has developed — funding work to bring together scientific efforts — is one that it believes can be scaled to address other medical and scientific challenges, according to a representative.
3. There’s a mix of science and progressive causes
Aside from its commitment to Parkinson’s, it’s difficult to sum up a grantmaker as large as Brin’s foundation. But there’s a clear passion for high-tech science and top-flight education. The foundation has sent regular million-dollar grants to Stanford University, Brin’s alma mater, and several other elite universities, and equally large checks to scientific research institutes for topics like nanoparticles, SARS or “AI for prostate cancer.” The Buck Institute for Research on Aging, which has the goal to “end the threat of age-related disease,” has been a long-time favorite.
Another segment shows a progressive giving streak. Dating back to at least 2017, the foundation has channeled money through the Tides Foundation to causes like Black Lives Matter and public safety reform. But in 2019, perhaps pushed by the year’s racial justice protests, it started making direct grants to Bay Area racial justice institutions like the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the food business incubator La Cocina, as well as groups like the Vera Institute of Justice and Anti-Recidivism Coalition. It remains to be seen whether that funding interest has cooled. None of those organizations had received follow-up awards as of 2021, and it’s a smaller segment of the overall portfolio, yet the foundation continued last year to funnel money to such causes through intermediaries like Tides and Tipping Point Community.
These segments of the portfolio may vary, but there is a common thread to its giving, according to a foundation representative. In any area, the foundation prefers to find trusted experts, put money into their hands and get out of the way.
4. He also backs antipoverty work
It’s no secret that Brin is among the billionaires backing Blue Meridian, the antipoverty collaborative with a long roster of mega donor backers. It’s one of a number of antipoverty groups the foundation backs, and a big one. His foundation is listed as a general partner, which indicates at least a five-year, $50 million commitment.
Why rely on the collaborative? There is “no way we could build the same capability for our share of the annual expenses. [Being part of Blue Meridian] gives us best-in-class capabilities and flexibility,’” George Pavlov, who directs philanthropic giving for the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, told the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in a 2021 report.
5. A fondness for endowed chairs and academic centers
Brin knows better than most the power of academic support. It was thanks to a National Science Foundation fellowship that Brin came to Stanford, where he met Larry Page and fatefully started a search engine called BackRub (later renamed, fortunately, Google). Whether that’s an influence or not, endowing chairs and centers seems to be a favorite philanthropic move.
Google once endowed a chair at Stanford in honor of a former professor of Brin’s and, in 2010, Brin and then-wife Anne Wojcicki reportedly endowed a chair at the university in honor of her father. Most recently, the foundation joined with Brin’s father and mother, Michael and Eugenia, to establish a performing dance center under the family name at the University of Maryland, where Michael teaches mathematics and Sergey got his bachelor’s degree, and where the family had earlier established the Brin Mathematics Center. On top of all that, he’s been a regular supporter of the Breakthrough Prize, which awards annual prizes as large as $3 million each.
Perhaps Sergey will eventually take a page from Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr — a Google investor and Alphabet board member — and make a mega gift to Stanford for a whole new school. Brin earned his master’s degree from the Palo Alto university.
6. A massive foundation, but a much larger family office
Technically speaking, the Brin foundation does not employ a single staff member, according to its tax filings. Instead, reports suggest that Brin’s massive family office, Bayshore Global Management, also handles his charitable giving. A rare peek into the Palo Alto, California-based operation came in an August profile by Puck’s Theodore Schleifer. Based on his reporting, it’s a $100 billion operation with up to 100 staff whose portfolio ranges from scientific research to superyachts. One sign of its reach: It recently opened an office in Singapore.
In terms of the foundation, Brin serves as president, with the only other officers listed being his father, who serves as secretary, and Bayshore’s chief financial officer, who is the operation’s treasurer. The three have held those roles for years.
Four remaining questions about Sergey Brin’s philanthropy
1. Who’s guiding grantmaking decisions?
There’s no public information on whom Brin relies to choose and vet grantees. Its tax filings show it has worked repeatedly with teams from Pacific Foundation Services and Freedman Consulting, and more recently with Deloitte Consulting. But aside from what we know about the governing board, it’s hard to say who, exactly, is making the day-to-day grantmaking decisions.
2. Will a recent divorce affect the foundation’s priorities?
I’ll skip the tabloid-esque details of the alleged cause of Brin’s September 2021 divorce from Nicole Shanahan, but separations always hold the possibility of shifting where checks go. In any operation, it’s hard to tell what role spouses play. To be clear, Shanahan was never on the board of the Brin foundation, plus she has her own philanthropy. That would point to no major changes. Yet the influence of romantic partners is obviously not limited to formal roles, so only time will tell for sure.
3. How large will this already-big foundation get?
Unlike a lot of tech sector peers, Brin has not signed the Giving Pledge. It’s impossible to say whether that is a meaningful omission or reflective of a more publicity-shy approach. But the recent evidence points to growth. Brin’s operation ramped up during the pandemic, including $100 million for COVID-19 relief, and kept going from there. There’s no telling when it will hit its ceiling.
4. Is greater transparency part of the long-term plan?
One curious detail in the tax filings is that the foundation’s single-biggest contractor in recent years is the D.C.-based communications giant GMMB, which has received millions of dollars annually in recent years. The foundation, meanwhile, does little in the way of public-facing communications. Instead, those contracts support foundation initiatives, such as ASAP, according to the firm. “We are proud to support efforts on Parkinson’s disease, COVID-19 and other issues the foundation advances,” said a spokesperson in a statement.
With Brin’s foundation climbing fast toward the pinnacle of American philanthropy, hopefully, some such investment also goes into creating a more public operation. While the tech billionaire deserves some credit for operating through a foundation rather than a more opaque LLC or DAF, we’ve always believed that philanthropy at this level should be held to a higher standard of transparency, for a few reasons.
For one, such an outfit’s outsized influence and substantial tax subsidies bring with them greater responsibility to the public. It’s understandable, even admirable, to focus on the work rather than publicizing the giving. But there’s a lot of room between self-aggrandizement and healthy disclosure, particularly for an operation this massive. Lack of transparency also limits potential partners and grantees from engaging with the foundation. And in the case of Brin, in particular, it also just seems to run counter to his remarkable professional legacy of making information more accessible. We hope he sees the light.
Connie Matthiessen contributed reporting from San Francisco.