{"id":1644305,"date":"2026-04-30T12:37:04","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T16:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1644305"},"modified":"2026-04-30T14:15:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T18:15:42","slug":"greg-curtis-patagonia-holdfast-collective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2026\/04\/greg-curtis-patagonia-holdfast-collective\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Man Who Turns Patagonia Profits Into a Global Climate Action Engine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Greg Curtis is shaping how Patagonia\u2019s profits fund conservation and climate resilience at scale. Kyle Sparks\/Courtesy Holdfast Collective<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As an avid runner growing up in Columbia, Md., <\/strong>Greg Curtis fell in love with the brand Patagonia. He’d flip through the apparel company’s catalogs, admiring its products, articles and photographs. A couple of decades later, Curtis has not only secured a job at the famed outdoor brand, but is also in charge of an effort to funnel the bulk of its profits back into the environment<\/a>, carrying out the vision of Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard.<\/p>\n

Chouinard, the rock climber who founded Patagonia in 1973, shocked the world in 2022 when he unveiled plans to transfer ownership of the apparel company to a group of 501 c(4) organizations known as the Holdfast Collective<\/a>. “Earth is now our only shareholder,” said Chouinard in his announcement, which laid out his plans to transfer 100 percent of Patagonia’s non-voting stock to the Holdfast Collective and pay it annual dividends.<\/p>\n

“The idea is to convert Patagonia into a perpetual mission,” Curtis, who serves as executive director of the Holdfast Collective, told Observer. The outdoor company is the same “dedicated, committed organization that it’s always been\u2014but with that excess financial value that’s generated to be deployed around the world for environmental causes and protection.”<\/p>\n

Roughly 98 percent of Patagonia’s stock is non-voting stock, now in the hands of the Holdfast Collective, with its remaining voting shares funneled to an entity known as the Patagonia Purpose Trust. “We really decoupled power and economic benefit,” said Curtis, 49, who noted that the Holdfast Collective, which receives all of Patagonia’s annual profits that aren’t reinvested into the company, has no decision-making power over the size of its dividends; while the Patagonia Purpose Trust is in charge of business decisions but doesn’t receive financial benefits.<\/p>\n

The Holdfast Collective comprises five nonprofit groups: the Holdfast Trust, Chalten Trust, Wilder Trust, Tailwind Trust and Sojourner Trust. The Holdfast Trust is the largest of the entities, receiving roughly 77 percent of Patagonia’s dividend funds and focusing on large-scale projects such as conservation acquisitions, dam removals and multi-year programmatic work, while the smaller trusts fund grassroots-level grants.<\/p>\n

To date, the collective groups have received $210 million in dividends from Patagonia and deployed roughly $175 million of that capital.\u00a0The bulk of its resources\u2014between 60 and 70 percent\u2014go towards land conservation ventures, said Curtis, who noted that the Holdfast Collective uses its funds gradually, making decisions every six to eight weeks, in order to ensure that it doesn’t use up all its capital at once and can respond to urgent needs.<\/p>\n

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