Enemies of Energy: Skyline Foundation Opinion - Conservative

Donor type: direct grant maker With an estimated net worth of $4.6 billion, as of April 2026, Yahoo co-founder David Filo notched spot number 334 on the 2025 Forbes 400 ranking of richest Americans. In 2000, Filo and his wife Angela founded the Yellow Chair Foundation, a grant maker they have since renamed the Skyline Foundation. In its most recent IRS filing, covering activities in 2024, Skyline reported net assets of nearly $1.2 billion. [i] [ii] Skyline has become one of the largest known donors to both the large anti-energy NGOs profiled in this report and the pass-through foundations that fund them. Skyline's 2024 IRS filing shows combined grants of $14.5 million for these recipients. [iii] Nearly $10.8 million was granted in 2024 to six of the fifteen anti-energy NGOs: [iv] An additional $3.7 million was sent to these three major pass-through donors to the major anti-energy NGOs: [v] Skyline also provides an online grants database that permits a look at more recent grants that will appear in future IRS reports. These entries also note the commitment Skyline has made for future donations. The 2025 grants listed in that database include: [vi] While hardly a household name, Skyline has been a big donor to the large anti-energy NGOs for more than a decade. In July 2015, while still known as the Yellow Chair Foundation, the Filo couple's giving vehicle was profiled by Inside Philanthropy. The report claimed that while the 'Yellow Chair Foundation prefers to fly beneath the radar' it had 'quietly' become a major contributor to the Sierra Club's 'Beyond Coal' campaign. [vii] 'The Filos gave out around $9 million in 2013, and they have been giving to environmental causes for a while,' reported Inside Philanthropy. 'In that year, the Yellow Chair Foundation made big grants to the Energy Foundation, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Sierra Club. In other recent years, EDF was the main environmental grantee.' [viii] PDF hyperlink to full report Endnotes