Donors Trust Becomes Primary Climate Denial Dark Money Conduit

By 2010, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund had emerged as the primary “dark money ATM” for climate denial funding, fundamentally transforming how fossil fuel interests concealed their opposition to climate regulation. From 2002 to 2011, these two donor-advised fund organizations provided $146 million to climate denial groups, serving as what Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called “the biggest identity-laundering shops” in the climate denial network.

The dark money mechanism worked through strategic laundering: wealthy donors including the Koch brothers channeled funds through Donors Trust, which then redistributed money to climate denial organizations while obscuring the original sources. Koch’s Knowledge and Progress Fund contributed $1.25 million in 2007, $1.25 million in 2008, and $2 million in 2010 to Donors Trust. By 2010, at least a dozen major climate denial groups—including Americans for Prosperity—received between 30 percent and 70 percent of their funding from Donors Trust.

Analysis of funding patterns reveals the strategic shift to dark money: as traceable Koch foundation funding declined from a high of 9 percent in 2008 to just 1 percent in 2010, there was a dramatic simultaneous rise in cash flowing to denial organizations from Donors Trust, which by 2010 accounted for 25 percent of all traceable foundation funding to climate denial groups. Between 1999 and 2015, Donors Trust redistributed approximately $750 million from pooled contributions to conservative causes, with climate denial representing a major focus.

This dark money infrastructure exemplifies regulatory capture through opacity: by concealing funding sources, fossil fuel interests could support climate denial campaigns while avoiding public accountability and regulatory scrutiny. The mechanism allowed corporations and wealthy individuals with direct financial stakes in preventing climate regulation to fund opposition campaigns while maintaining plausible deniability. The system proved highly effective—140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010, helping block meaningful U.S. climate legislation throughout the decade.