Bloomberg Family Foundation (Bloomberg Philanthropies)

Background

As of May 2023, Michael Bloomberg had donated over $14 billion to numerous causes with much of this giving coming through the Bloomberg Family Foundation. ^4 5 The foundation has spent over $100 million on Bloomberg’s environmentalist agenda including a $50 million gift to the Sierra Club to fight against the coal industry;⁶ has created a $50 million anti-gun organization, Everytown for Gun Safety;⁷ has partnered with Planned Parenthood to provide $50 million to family planning⁸ and abortion-providing organizations in developing countries; ⁹ has partnered with left-wing billionaire George Soros to respectively provide $60 million for a variety of social programs focusing on African-American communities ¹⁰ that served as a model for a national plan put forth by President Barack Obama; ¹¹ and has provided hundreds of millions of dollars ¹² to support restrictive policies on individuals’ personal consumption choices. ¹³

The Bloomberg Family Foundation has been a source of controversy. During Bloomberg’s mayoralty, he allegedly commingled his interests as a businessman with his public role; ¹⁴ allegedly improperly used city funds to conduct foundation operations; ¹⁵ and used its ample resources to buy political support by rewarding friends and punishing enemies.² In 2010, it was reported that the foundation had invested almost $300 million in offshore investment holdings, including the tax-shelter Cayman Islands. ¹⁶

In 2025, Michael Bloomberg topped the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s ranking of the 50 biggest donors of 2025, having made gifts of $4.3 billion to support arts, education, the environment, public health, and programs to improve city governments. Much of this giving was conducted through Bloomberg Philanthropies. ¹⁷

Formation

For nearly a decade, the Carnegie Corporation of New York funded almost 600 of the city’s arts and social-services groups on behalf of an anonymous donor, widely assumed to be then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, though his aides declined to confirm his involvement. ¹⁸ In December 2006,Bloomberg created the Bloomberg Family Foundation. As of 2015 the foundation’s net assets had grown to $7.15 billion. ¹⁹

Bloomberg, like his cohorts billionaires Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, has suggested that he believes in “giving while living” and that he plans to accelerate donations while he is alive, with the remainder of his money spent during his daughters’ lifetimes. ²⁰ As of May 2023, Forbes estimated Bloomberg’s net worth at $95 billion. ²¹

Funding

The Bloomberg Family Foundation is a large part of the Bloomberg Philanthropies, which in addition to the Foundation also includes Michael Bloomberg’s personal giving to other charities, and support from the corporation Bloomberg LP. ³

In 2017, “60 Minutes” reported that Bloomberg Philanthropies had given away $5 billion to causes that often dovetail with his political interests, like gun control and environmentalism. ²²

Leading up to the 2020 general election, Bloomberg funded a $4.5 million advertising campaign in support of Democratic candidates Yvonne Lewis Holley, Kirk deViere, Anna Tovar, and Bill Mundell for state-level offices in North Carolina and Arizona. The funds greatly exceeded what their Republican opponents had in these smaller elections, giving them a strong advantage. Bloomberg funded these campaigns as part of his $500 million Beyond Carbon initiative, which supports candidates who seek to reduce carbon emissions. ²³

In May 2023, Bloomberg announced his plan to transfer his $12 billion company, Bloomberg LP, to Bloomberg Philanthropies to support his charitable giving. Georgetown University law professor Brian Galle noted that “what is clear is that the donation signals that the tradition of wealthy philanthropists creating family foundations to handle their giving is a model that is becoming less and less satisfying to America’s super-rich. Instead, he added, more wealthy donors are turning to new charitable structures that allow them to avoid estate taxes.” ¹

Priorities

Bloomberg’s foundation spending is divided among six areas: government innovation, public health, education, arts, founder’s projects, and environmentalism. ²⁴

Environment

The Bloomberg Family Foundation has spent more than $100 million on climate initiatives ²⁵ that seek “strong, measurable, and local action on climate change.” ²⁶

In this vein, in 2015, Bloomberg and his allies committed $110 million to the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, which according to Politico cemented his role as the loudest and wealthiest foe of the coal industry.²⁷ Bloomberg’s donations accelerated and amplified the Sierra Club’s goal of closing half the nation’s coal-fired power plants by 2017 and replacing them with energy sources like wind and solar. ⁹

In 2017, after President Donald Trump announced the United States would pull out of the Paris Climate Accords, Bloomberg Philanthropies funded and partnered with then-California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) to keep the United States on track to abide by the international agreement. ²⁵

The Foundation has also supported the environmentalist effort of other left-of-center philanthropies. In 2012, the Foundation gave $2.5 million to the Pew Charitable Trusts to create protected marine areas. ²⁸

In March 2024, the Foundation announced it planned to donate roughly $200 million towards 25 U.S cities to assist with emission reductions. Titled “Bloomberg American Sustainable Cities,” the program would provide funding for the mayors of selected cities to spend on items such as building affordable, energy-efficient housing, increasing the availability of electric vehicles and charging stations. The selected cities included Akron, Ohio; Birmingham, Alabama; Charlotte, North Carolina; Montgomery, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; and Hampton, Virginia. ²⁹

In January 2025, Bloomberg announced that Bloomberg Philanthropies would fund the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) after the second Trump administration announced that it was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords and ending all climate-related funding. “Bloomberg Philanthropies and other U.S. climate funders will ensure the United States meets its global climate obligations,” the group said in a statement. Bloomberg and the group also promised to work with state and local governments on meeting their Paris Climate Accords goals. “From 2017 to 2020, during a period of federal inaction, cities, states, businesses, and the public rose to the challenge to uphold our nation’s commitments—and now, we are ready to do it again,” Bloomberg said in the statement. The U.S. was responsible for 21 percent of the agency’s budget and paid $7.4 million in 2024. Bloomberg Philanthropies already contributed $4.5 million to the UNFCCC in 2025, according to UN public documents reviewed by Reuters. ³⁰

Abortion

In 2014, Bloomberg Philanthropies pledged $50 million to support family planning services across four developing countries in partnership with the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the United Nations. ⁸

In accepting Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Global Citizen Award, Bloomberg said that the Planned Parenthood grants would be used to train local activists in four nations to “push for less restrictive abortion laws and more government funding for [abortion] services.” ⁹

According to Townhall, under this Planned Parenthood partnership Bloomberg Philanthropies split $2 million of its grants between two abortion providers: EngenderHealth and Marie Stopes International in Tanzania, and that Marie Stopes had previously admitted it performs “illegal abortions all over the world.” ³¹

Gun Control

Michael Bloomberg is one of the nation’s leading advocates of restrictions on firearms rights. Bloomberg has expressed support for a ban on modern sporting rifles (known to gun controllers as “assault weapons”), an end to private sales of firearms at gun shows, and an expansion of background checks. ³² In 2006, Bloomberg’s foundation ³³ along with then-Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (D), started Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which signed up more than 700 mayors to lobby for anti-gun-rights legislation. ³²

In 2014, Bloomberg, through his foundation, pledged $50 million for an ostensibly “grassroots” network against firearms rights known as Everytown for Gun Safety, which seeks to pass anti-gun legislation by focusing on state and local lawmakers, corporate boards, and state and federal elections. ³⁴

Bloomberg began serving as chair of this new gun control network, which also includes his pre-existing groups Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense. ³⁵

In a New York Times interview announcing this new network, Bloomberg said that due to his work on guns: “I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close,” he told the newspaper. ⁷

Ethnic Interests

While Bloomberg was still serving as Mayor of New York, the Bloomberg Family Foundation and liberal billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Institute (now the Open Society Foundations) both pledged $30 million each to support to create the Young Men’s Initiative in partnership with New York City, which would also provide $67.5 million funding for the program.¹⁰ The program was intended to reduce ethnic disparities in education, health outcomes, employment, and incarceration. ³⁶

Critics of the Young Men’s Initiative were vast. Michael Myer, the executive director, New York Civil Rights Coalition said it was racist ³⁷ while Gabriel Sayegh of the pro-drug legalization Drug Policy Alliance said the initiative was merely “a maneuver at the end of his term to try to bolster his legacy.” ³⁸

The Young Men’s Initiative served as a model for President Barack Obama’s creation of the national “My Brother’s Keeper” Initiative.¹¹ As part of the announcement for Obama’s new nation-wide initiative, Bloomberg Family Foundation joined with a number of other liberal foundations such as the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the California Endowment, the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundations, the Knight Foundation, and the Kapor Center for Social Impact, in a five-year $200 million pledge to support the effort. ³⁹

Personal Choice

Michael Bloomberg has restrictive views on so-called “public health” issues, including individuals’ rights to smoke, eat, and drink as they please. He has committed $600 million over ten years to anti-tobacco efforts globally. ¹²

Since 2003, he has widened his efforts, funding successful campaigns through the Bloomberg Family Foundation for a sugar tax in Mexico ¹³ and spending $1.6 million to successfully promote a 1.5 cents-per-ounce soda tax in Philadelphia. ⁴⁰

According to The Guardian, the Bloomberg Family Foundation “must be seen as the main global financial backer [in a] war on sugar and tobacco,” and according to Bloomberg, his foundation is winning that war. ¹³

Similarly, as Mayor, Bloomberg successfully sought a ban on partially hydrogenated cooking oils in New York that the Obama administration’s Food and Drug Administration later implemented nationwide. ⁴¹ In support of this decree in 2017, the Bloomberg Family Foundation pledged $100 million along with similar pledges from the Gates and Zuckerberg Foundations to help implement this nation-wide ban. ⁴²

In 2017, Bloomberg Philanthropies offered $5 million in assistance to about 40 cities internationally to help impose lifestyle-related policy mandates, including curbing soda consumption or air pollution, promoting exercise, or banning smoking. ¹³

National Control of Education

In 2010, the Bloomberg Family Foundation committed $4 million to assist several states that were applying for the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education initiative. And when Colorado failed to qualify for federal funds, Bloomberg personally spent $400,000 in local elections to make sure that Democratic state senators who had backed the Race to the Top application were re-elected. ¹²

Then in 2016, Bloomberg Family Foundation partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, among others, to provide millions of dollars of free support services to help teachers comply with the controversial national curriculum initiative Common Core. ⁴³

Conflicts of Interest

Multiple reports indicated that Michael Bloomberg had direct contact with his foundation staffers during his term as mayor. Most notably, in 2007 as Mayor, Bloomberg requested and received clearance from the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board allowing at least three of his City Hall staffers to use government resources, like office space, phones and Internet service, for foundation work. ¹⁶ The report also noted that long-time Bloomberg loyalist Patti Harris was for a period the sole officer listed on the foundation’s tax return ¹⁶ and “volunteers” as the head of the Bloomberg Family Foundation. ¹⁴ As one Daily Beast source put it, Harris is “really deputy mayor for Mike. She would look after everything that touched on him, his life and his philanthropy.” ¹⁴

In 2010, two labor-union-aligned government transparency groups, Common Cause and NY Public Interest Research Group, filed complaints against the Bloomberg Family Foundation with a city ethics panel claiming that it violated the City Charter for Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris to have a government job while chairing the Bloomberg Family Foundation. ¹⁵

Controversies

In 2013, the Financial Times wrote that Michael Bloomberg’s political involvement has significantly influenced his giving. According to the article, Bloomberg was unlike many other philanthropists who steer clear of campaigning because he had “long channelled (sic) money to political causes, including his own three election campaigns.” ²

Buying Political Power

Critics of Bloomberg argue that he has long used his personal wealth to buy political support. For instance, the Financial Times wrote that Bloomberg’s political contributions had freed him to pursue his chosen reforms in the city using it as a laboratory for testing ideas inspired by or subsequently influencing his philanthropy. Items included in this list were tough antismoking rules and a ban on trans-fats in food. ²

According to Joel Berg, head of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which has not benefited from Bloomberg’s largesse, the Bloomberg Foundation demonstrated “a consistent pattern of rewarding friends and punishing enemies.” ²

Similarly, the Daily Beast wrote that Bloomberg has a long history of commingling his interests as a businessman with his public role and ambitions, and that the year before he first ran for mayor, his charity doubled its giving and began redirecting it to New York institutions. ¹⁴

During his tenure as New York City mayor, Bloomberg gifted funds to numerous local “arts and social-service groups” through the Carnegie Corporation of New York. While most of the gifts were philanthropic, in 2008 Bloomberg asked several recipients of Carnegie grants to lobby in support a proposed change in New York City’s term limits law allowing him to seek a third term in office. ⁴⁴

Bloomberg has also been accused of providing part of a $110,000 “favor” donation to Al Sharpton shortly before running for his third term as New York City mayor. In 2013, Bloomberg’s aides acknowledged Bloomberg was an anonymous donor to Education Equality Project, which gave the $110,000 grant to Sharpton’s National Action Network. ⁴⁵

Offshore Money

In 2010, The Observer reported that through the end of 2008, the Bloomberg Family Foundation had transferred almost $300 million into various offshore destinations, including tax avoidance destinations such as the Cayman Islands, Cyprus, and Bermuda. ⁴⁶ The report noted that some of the foundation’s money was housed at in hedge funds located at a P.O. box at Ugland House in the Caymans a building that President Obama had labeled “the biggest tax scam in the world.” ¹⁶ The report also detailed how holding these funds in overseas tax shelters would allow the foundation to potentially avoid more than 40 percent in federal and local taxes on business income unrelated to the foundation’s core mission. ¹⁶

The Observer’s report also noted that in 2007 then-Mayor Bloomberg requested special permission for his foundation’s funds to be managed by Steve Rattner’s subsequently scandal-ridden investment firm. ⁴⁷

ExxonMobil Climate Change Allegations

In 2017, Bloomberg Philanthropies began funding a new program created by State Energy and Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC), an organization run by New York University Law School. SEEIC financially supports the salaries and benefits of legal fellows in the New York Attorney General’s office that pledge to advance “progressive clean energy, climate change, and environmental legal positions.” The SEEIC claims it does not influence the work of the fellows, but controversy arose after Matthew Eisenson, a fellow in the Attorney General’s office, signed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil alleging that the company falsely exaggerated the negative effect that climate change regulations would have on its business. ⁴⁸

In turn, Exxon alleged that “New York’s investigation of, and enforcement against, ExxonMobil are driven by improper motives,” claiming that the Attorney General office’s act of hiring fellows from SEIC “generates a conflict of interest.” Christopher Horner, a fellow at the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, requested the Attorney General’s office release the quarterly reports they send to the SEEIC that detail their fellows’ progress on environmental initiatives. The Attorney General’s office only released emails that mentioned the reports but did not release the reports themselves. ⁴⁸

As of 2018, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia, Oregon, Maryland, Washington state, and New Mexico were also participating in the Bloomberg-funded program. ⁴⁹

In June 2019, the Government Accountability and Oversight law firm sued then-Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, demanding that she divulge her two fellows’ documents pertaining to SEEIC. ⁴⁸ In March 2019, the state of Virginia had to block further speculation of Bloomberg influence by formally mandating that the state Attorney General’s office only compensate their employees with public funds. ^{48 50}

Criticism of the Green New Deal

In June 2019, Michael Bloomberg announced that he planned to donate $500,000,000 to launch a “Beyond Carbon” campaign meant to advocate for a stronger government response to climate change. ⁵¹

Bloomberg’s decision was reportedly a “direct response to the Green New Deal,” a left-wing environmental policy proposed in March 2019 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), which Bloomberg criticized as a “pie in the sky” idea. ⁵¹

New York University Law School

Republican attorneys general, such as former Indiana AG Curtis Hill, have criticized Bloomberg Philanthropies’ support for New York University Law School’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC) as a means of implanting left-wing special assistants into Democratic state offices to help promote Bloomberg’s “climate agenda.” ⁵² This would include, according to Republicans like Hill and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, attacking energy companies such as Exxonmobil and pushing back against the Trump administration’s environmental policies. This is in part a follow-up to court memos obtained by the Daily Caller in 2018 that indicated an attorney for Bloomberg Philanthropies, Gavin McCabe was part of a New York state lawsuit against ExxonMobil and Chevron due to their “contribution to climate change,” though the lawsuit was dropped later that year. ⁵²

In July 2025, U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chair Rep. James Comer (R-KY) announced an investigation into the New York University Law School’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center (SEEIC) and specifically its ties to Bloomberg Philanthropies. Comer sent two essentially identical letters to the CEO of Bloomberg Philanthropies and the executive director of NYU’s State Impact Center, requesting documents related to the program and its funding. Those letters alleged that “the Bloomberg-NYU program effectively offers states partisan money from a billionaire to carry out official functions of their offices,” and argued that such an arrangement “undermines faith in the American legal system” while raising “ethical concerns and questions about the independence of state governments.” ⁵³

Belt and Road Initiative

In February 2025, the Washington Free Beacon reported on a senior official of Bloomberg Philanthropies as an advisor to the co-chairs of the Belt and Road International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC). Antha Williams, the head of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ environmental programs, advised the co-chairs who include a Chinese Communist Party official responsible for the country’s Ministry of Ecology and the Environment. “The main goal of BRIGC is to promote international consensus understanding, cooperation and concerted actions to achieve green development of BRI, to integrate sustainable development into the BRI,” the organization’s website stated. ⁵⁴

Chinese President Xi Jinping established the BRIGC in April 2019 at China’s second Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Under the organization’s founding charter, China’s State Ministry of Ecology and Environment and Ministry of Civil Affairs provide “business guidance” that the coalition must accept. The group’s purpose is to generate support for the BRI from international environmentalist groups. The Bloomberg Family Foundation and the Bloomberg network had wired more than $100 million in grants to other BRIGC partner organizations, such as CDP Worldwide, ClientEarth, Environmental Defense Fund, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund, in the years since BRIGC was founded, according to tax returns analyzed by the Free Beacon. Those grants were largely earmarked for the purpose of combating global emissions. ⁵⁴

In different reports, the Washington Free Beacon noted that Michael Bloomberg had long defended Xi Jinping and the Chinese government against accusations of authoritarianism. “Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents, or he’s not going to survive,” he said on one occasion. ^{55 56}

Leadership

As of 2026, Patti Harris was serving as the CEO and CAO of Bloomberg Family Foundation. A longtime aide to Michael Bloomberg, Harris had been working closely with Bloomberg since 1994. She worked at Bloomberg’s media conglomerate, Bloomberg L.P., before joining Bloomberg’s mayoral administration, ¹⁶ and played a central role in developing his philanthropy. ⁵⁷

The board of directors for Bloomberg Family Foundation has included a number of high-profile names. The initial Board, announced in 2010, included such noteworthy individuals as then-Newark Mayor (and later U.S. Senator) Cory Booker (D-NJ) and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (R). ⁵⁸ As of April 2026, Bush continued to sit on the board. ⁵⁹

In 2015, Elaine Chao, the former U.S. Secretary of Labor in the George W. Bush administration who would later serve as Transportation Secretary in the Trump administration, resigned from the board over the foundation’s decision to invest tens of millions of dollars in the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. ⁶⁰

As of 2026, the board included former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia), former Mayor of Miami Manny Diaz (D), Disney president (and Democratic Party donor) Bob Iger, and Walter Isaacson, a former president and CEO of the left-of-center Aspen Institute. Hank Paulson, former Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush, also sat on the board. Mark Carney, who was appointed Prime Minister of Canada in 2025, sat on the board as of 2024 and remained on the board until he took office in March 2025. ⁶¹