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Billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Chris Hohn’s charitable foundation has stopped giving grants to US-based non-governmental organisations, in a fresh blow to groups that back causes including climate change and HIV/Aids around the world.
The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF), which has $6.1bn in assets and is powered by the wealth Hohn amassed as one of the world’s most successful investors, said it no longer understands the “US policy environment” governing donations.
As a result, the London-based foundation said it was pausing donations until authorities clarified the “applicable laws and rules” related to the foreign funding of US NGOs.
The move comes as liberal non-profits across America have come under intense pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration. Cuts to the US Agency for International Development and growing concerns about a potential loss of non-profits’ tax-exempt status have left many fearing for the future of their programmes.
The CIFF has focused its donations on child health and development, climate change, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
In a statement posted on its website this week, the CIFF said until the rules were clarified, it would “redirect its funding to, and restructure its contracts to be with, non-US NGOs”.
On Friday its website showed $929mn committed in grants to Sub-Saharan Africa and $0 to North America.
The US administration’s assault on the non-governmental sector, which President Donald Trump claimed last year was full of “thugs and sleazebags”, has prompted many non-profits to downplay or remove references to work they are doing on issues such as climate and diversity.
Smaller charities are dealing with a funding shortfall, having had their federal money cut for causes such as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), climate change and foreign aid. The cuts to USAID have also hit many non-profits that operate internationally, forcing some to lay off staff.
Last month, Americans for Public Trust, a conservative non-profit organisation, accused the CIFF of putting “more than half a billion dollars into US activist organisations as part of a broader effort to push radical climate and DEI policy on US soil”.
The CIFF told the Financial Times this claim was incorrect because its work with US NGOs was intended to support work outside America.
In some cases, however, its funding has inadvertently affected US companies, such as its backing of satellites to track methane emissions, which later unearthed a large leak in the Permian Basin in Texas.
Hohn has been a longtime advocate for the need for climate action. As well as launching campaigns to force companies to give shareholders a vote on corporate transition plans, he donated to green protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion.
Last year, climate accounted for the largest category of grants the CIFF made, at $260mn of the foundation’s total disbursements of $631mn. Its grants have gone up by 83 per cent since 2020.
Last month, Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated against the world”.
DEI schemes have become a particular target for the Trump administration, which called them “illegal and immoral discrimination programmes” in an executive order attempting to end their use.
The CIFF’s website says it has “embarked on a mission to comprehensively embed diversity, equity and inclusion, including gender and racial equity, in our work and operations”.
The CIFF declined to comment on how much it had previously given to US NGOs, or provide details of which “applicable laws and rules” it was referring to.
Hohn is one of the world’s best-known hedge fund managers, with a net worth of $11.1bn, according to Bloomberg.
