Sergey Brin Family Foundation

The foundation supports left-leaning organizations and causes and annually gives over $50 million in grants to various organizations. Grant recipients include many California-based schools, libraries, and educational programs, in addition to left-leaning advocacy organizations such as the Tides Foundation, the Proteus Fund, and Color of Change. ²

In 2024, the foundation made $699 million in grants, with Alzheimer’s research and climate change as the largest areas of focus. ³ In 2025, between the foundation and his nonprofit Catalyst4, Brin donated over $1 billion to philanthropic causes. ⁴ The foundation does not maintain a website or provide any public information about its philanthropic goals or methods. ⁵

Background

As of January 2026, Sergey Brin was the third-richest man in the world, with a net worth of over $250 billion. ⁶ Brin co-founded Google with Stanford classmate Larry Page in 1998 as a search engine using a new algorithm for ranking pages by importance. Brin led Google and parent company Alphabet as president of the companies from Google’s founding in 1998 until December 2019, when both Brin and Page announced they would be stepping away from daily operations while staying active with the companies as board members and controlling shareholders. ¹

Brin is active in philanthropic giving to left-of-center causes. Brin has also made donations directly to Democratic political efforts, including gifts to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and former President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. Brin also supports left-of-center causes through donations from the Google Foundation and the Sergey Brin Family Foundation. ⁷

Activities

In 2014, Brin was caught in a public scandal over an affair he had with Amanda Rosenberg, at the time a the marketing manager for Google’s Google Glass product. The affair led Brin to separate and ultimately divorce from his then-wife, Anne Wojcicki. Prior to their divorce, Brin and Wojcicki, who is the CEO of DNA analysis company 23&Me, ranked in the top 10 most charitable couples in the world, not far behind Bill and Melinda Gates (who would also later divorce), though giving from the couple’s family foundation, the Brin Wojcicki Foundation. ⁸

Despite the couple’s divorce, the Foundation gave nearly $50 million in 2018, mostly to San Francisco Bay Area community organizations and education nonprofits such as College Track and K to College. Other grant recipients from the foundation include the Human Rights Foundation, the Tony Blair Foundation, and the Wikimedia Foundation. ⁹

In 2014, following his separation from Wojcicki, Brin founded the Sergey Brin Family Foundation. Many of the recipients of grants from the foundation include notable left-leaning political groups such as the Tides Foundation, the Proteus Fund, ProgressNow Colorado, the NAACP Foundation, People’s Action, and Color of Change. ¹⁰

The Foundation has also made donations to other left-of-center organizations including the Center for Story-based Strategy, Color of Change Education Fund, Faith in Texas, Girls Who Code, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Tides Center. The Foundation also provided funding for the People’s Action Institute, one of the most aggressive left-wing advocacy organizations in the country. ¹⁰

According to its 2021 tax returns, the Foundation donated a grant of roughly $4,503,533 to the Arabella Advisors-managed nonprofit Windward Fund for the purpose of, “General Operating Support For Rewiring America.” ¹¹ Rewiring America is a project of Windward Fund and is a left-of-center advocacy group that urges the U.S government to undertake a society-wide mobilization to triple American energy production, similar to the industrial mobilization during World War II, in order to reduce carbon emissions. ¹²

Funding

According to 2024 tax returns, the Sergey Brin Family Foundation reported $699 million in grants being made out that year, which was reportedly an increase of 86 percent from grants being reported in 2023. In addition, the Foundation’s 501(c)(4) sister group Catalyst4 reportedly made an additional $44 million in grants, while a spokesperson claimed that the Foundation had donated $1.1 billion in grants in 2025. According to Bloomberg News, in May 2025, the Foundation donated $700 million in shares of Google parent company Alphabet to Catalyst4 followed by another $1.1 billion in November (while the Foundation itself received $190 million that year). ¹³

The foundation does not have a website or publicly disclose its funding methods. However, according to Inside Philanthropy,  the foundation prioritizes “mid-sized and larger organizations or re-grantors” that have “scale” and “a deep presence” in the chosen fields. The foundation does not accept unsolicited requests for funding. ⁵

Inside Philanthropy categorizes the foundation’s grants in the domains of public health, scientific research, climate change and environmentalism, Jewish causes, education and community development, arts and culture, humanitarian aid, disaster relief, economic development, and criminal justice reform. The foundation’s grants vary widely in size, from $25,000 to $150 million. ⁵

As of February 2026, the foundation’s tax records for 2025 have not been released. However, according to a Brin spokesman, the Family Foundation and Catalyst4, a 501(c)(4) scientific research nonprofit founded by Brin, donated $1.1 billion combined in 2025, making Brin one of the largest philanthropic donors in the world. ¹⁴

In November 2025, Sergey Brin announced that he was donating $1.1 billion worth of Alphabet stock to Alzheimer’s research. Of the funds, $1 billion would go to Catalyst4. Another $90 million would be transferred to the Family Foundation and $45 million would be given to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Disease Research. Brin became interested in Alzheimer’s research after discovering that he is at high personal risk for the disease due to genetic factors. ⁴

In 2024, Alzheimer’s research accounted for about 50 percent of all grants, while about one third of grants went to climate change. ¹⁵

In 2024, several organizations and institutions that received donations from the Family Foundation include the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research ($253 million), BD2 LLC ($20 million), and the Broad Institute ($17.5 million). The Foundation also made grants to several environmentalist organizations including the Climate Imperative Foundation ($49 million), the United States Energy Foundation ($32.5 million), the ClimateWorks Foundation ($14 million), Tara Climate ($10 million), the European Climate Foundation ($6 million), Rewiring America ($12 million), the Aspen Global Change Institute ($10 million), the Ocean Energy Pathway ($6 million), Earthjustice ($3 million), the Environmental Defense Fund ($1.5 million), the League of Conservation Voters ($1.5 million), the Interstate Renewable Energy Council ($1.2 million), and the Green Hydrogen Coalition ($500,000). ¹³

Also in 2024, the foundation donated to numerous research universities, including the California Institute of Technology ($2,426,293); Stanford University ($32 million); Humboldt State University ($352,000); University of California, Berkeley ($147,000); University of California, San Francisco ($68,146,457); University of Maryland ($2 million); and Emory University. ³

In addition to donating to Alzheimer’s research, in 2024, the foundation contributed to research on autism, bipolar disorder, and central nervous system disorders. ¹⁴

Dark Money Accusation

In January 2019, a complaint was filed to the Colorado Secretary of State regarding the Sergey Brin Family Foundation’s 2018 donation of $170,000 to ProgressNow Colorado, which then transferred the funds to Colorado Rising, a nonprofit set up to support the passage of Proposition 112, an eventually defeated proposal to mandate that new oil and gas projects be located at least 2,500 feet from “occupied buildings and other areas designated as vulnerable.” The complaint alleged that the donation was improperly categorized, thereby allowing the foundation to bypass campaign finance regulations. The complaint called the donation “an example of secret, hidden election money at its worst” and called on the Secretary of State to launch an investigation. ^{16 17 18}

Leadership

Sergey Brin is the founder of the Sergey Brin Family Foundation, and as of 2024 was its director and president. ³

On its 2024 tax return, Tara Farnsworth was listed as the foundation’s treasurer. As of February 2026, Farnsworth’s LinkedIn states that she has worked as the CFO of a “private family office” since 2012, and that she worked as the CFO of Focus Ventures from 2006 to 2012. ^{3 19}

On its 2024 tax return, Robert Brown was listed as the foundation’s secretary. ³