Our Story
The Satterberg Foundation strengthens our communities by promoting a just society and a sustainable environment.
We are a family foundation imagined by my grandmother, Virginia (Ginny) Satterberg Pigott Helsell, and brought to life by the children and grandchildren of the blended family, supported by the work of a gifted staff. The Satterberg Foundation grows out of a powerful commitment to community and family. Since its founding in 1990, the foundation has set out on a path of learning and relationship that we call “the Satterberg way.”
In its early years, family members built the Foundation through hard work and a commitment to learning and collaboration. With the passing of a family elder in 2012, our assets grew from $4 million to $400 million. The Foundation hired the first paid Executive Director and philanthropic advisors, who helped establish a culture of responding to the community and taking bold risks. At the core of our work is trust: trusting our staff, and trusting our grantee partners to know what’s best for their communities. That means giving grantee partners unrestricted funds and freeing them from burdensome paperwork and reporting. We are proud to be in the vanguard of trust-based philanthropy.
Where we have felt and seen urgent need, we have taken action. In response to the racial reckoning of 2020, we launched the Reparative Action Fund, a $50 million, ten-year commitment to resource Black-led and Indigenous-led racial justice work across the country. In 2025, when environmental organizations were struggling with backsliding on the climate issue, we launched the $20 million, five-year Climate Action Fund to fund their vital efforts.
We’ve also focused on a very intentional impact investing strategy over the past ten years, and today a majority of our assets are 100% mission-aligned. We’ve put money behind our two mission pillars, a just society and a sustainable environment: investing in climate solutions (accelerating the net-zero transition) and inclusive innovation, which promotes equity and an equality-based society.
We have also invested in our local community. In June 2019, we purchased the historic Metropole building in downtown Seattle, to renovate and revitalize it. We listened to the needs of local nonprofits, and sought a way to provide affordable office and community space — with a focus on organizations led by and serving communities of color. With input from local community advocates, organizations and local residents, the Metropole opened in 2025 as a vibrant home for the non-profit community that showcases sustainability.
All these years, Satterberg has pushed funds out faster than most foundations: at least 10 percent payout a year. This has maximized resources for our communities and also meant that we have entered spend down mode, allocating fewer grants and adjusting our strategy. Satterberg will still give multi-year general operating support, some of it directly, and some through an intermediary to help ensure that grantees get the attention they need. In terms of our own operations, we’ll share an update on our timing in 2030 – but be reassured that closing our doors is not imminent.
We will continue to be in close relationship with our grantee partners – because that is the Satterberg way.
Sean Boyd
Board Chair
Mission
The Satterberg Foundation strengthens our communities by promoting a just society and a sustainable environment. Doing this work deepens the interconnection of our family.
Vision
Elements of a Sustainable Environment
- Address climate change mitigation and adaptation
- Restore biodiversity by protecting, preserving and repairing key lands and waters
- To accelerate and sustain these goals, we also support advocacy, public awareness, and policy/systems change
Our work will prioritize environmental justice and support community-based solutions. Our environmental work is urgent and timely.
Satterberg’s Environmental Justice Definition: The fair treatment, protection, and involvement of all people regardless of race, color, gender, national origin, Tribal affiliation, disability, or income with respect to environmental laws, regulations, policies, and programs. It recognizes that frontline communities are disproportionately affected by pollution, climate change, industrial development, and the cumulative impacts of environmental, racist, and other institutional and structural harms. These communities should have leadership roles in the decision-making processes behind environmental policies, and resources for solutions should be equitably distributed.
Elements of a Just Society Mission Elements
- Promoting equity in structures, systems and practices to create a future where everyone can thrive;
- Ending systemic and historic discrimination by targeting root causes, through trusting partnerships with the nonprofit sector;
- Honoring and uplifting the wisdom, power and resilience of the community; and
- Advocacy/policy to safeguard, uphold and advance rights for all.
Our mission bridges two connected goals, a just society and a sustainable environment, and we support intersectional change to move us forward. Our goal is to create the conditions for the future to manifest.
Values
In order to be transparent, trustworthy stewards of the Satterberg Foundation’s resources, we state and affirm the following values:
- Integrity in action is alignment of principles and deeds.
- Community in action is collaboration and mutual support.
- Joy in action is including humor and a lighthearted spirit in one’s work.
- Compassion in action is treating oneself and others with caring, acceptance, and fairness.
- Respect in action is trusting each person and community to discover and use their own tools and inner wisdom.
- Responsibility in action is doing one’s best at all times, thereby supporting the common good.
- Lifelong Learning in action is investing in one’s personal growth by choosing to learn every day, creating opportunities of personal or professional development, and consistently renewing one’s mindset and attitude.
- Moral Courage is the courage to take action for moral reasons despite the risk of adverse consequences. Courage is required to take action when one has doubts or fears about the consequences. Moral courage therefore involves deliberation or careful thought.
Commitment to Equity
Satterberg is committed to equitable, Trust-Based Philanthropy. When we center and trust communities most impacted by environmental destruction and systems of racism, gender-based violence, occupation, and poverty, we create a sustainable environment where humanity and the natural world are in balance.
