As an avid runner growing up in Columbia, Md., Greg Curtis fell in love with the Patagonia brand. He was looking at a clothing company’s catalog, recommending its products, texts and pictures. A few decades later, Curtis not only got a job at a famous outdoor company, but also manages an effort to return a large part of its profits to the environment, carrying out the vision of the founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard.
Chouinard, the rock climber who founded Patagonia in 1973, shocked the world in 2022 when he revealed plans to transfer ownership of the clothing company to a group of 501 c(4) organizations known as the Holdfast Collective. “The world is now our sole shareholder,” Chouinard said in his announcement, outlining his plans to transfer 100 percent of Patagonia’s non-voting stock to Holdfast Collective and pay annual dividends.
“The idea is to turn Patagonia into a permanent project,” Curtis, who serves as executive director of the Holdfast Collective, told the Observer. The foreign company is “a dedicated organization, dedicated as it is—but with that excess amount of money that is generated to be distributed around the world for environmental and conservation reasons.”
About 98 percent of Patagonia’s non-voting stock is now held by the Holdfast Collective, whose remaining voting shares have been transferred to an entity known as the Patagonia Purpose Trust. “We’ve really separated the power and the economic benefit,” said Curtis, 49, who noted that the Holdfast Collective, which receives all of Patagonia’s annual profits that have not been reinvested in the company, has no decision-making power over the size of its stake; while the Patagonia Purpose Trust manages business decisions but receives no financial benefits.
The Holdfast Collective is made up of five non-profit groups: the Holdfast Trust, the Chalten Trust, the Wilder Trust, the Tailwind Trust and the Sojourner Trust. The Holdfast Trust is the largest of the companies, receiving about 77 percent of Patagonia’s equity capital and focusing on large-scale projects such as environmental procurement, dam removal and multi-year project work, while smaller trusts fund lower-level grants.
To date, the combined parties have received $210 million in dividends from Patagonia and are using approximately $175 million of that capital. A large portion of its resources—between 60 and 70 percent—goes to land conservation businesses, said Curtis, who noted that the Holdfast Collective uses its funds gradually, making decisions every six to eight weeks, to ensure it doesn’t spend all of its money at once and can respond to urgent needs.
In 2025, for example, it funded the acquisition of 8,000 acres of land in Georgia containing the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge that was threatened by the development of a titanium and zirconium mine. “That’s something we’ve been able to quietly engage in, responding to a direct threat to the manufacturing and development industry,” Curtis said. “We like to be able to react to those kinds of things.”
Disbursing all available funds by the end of the year, however, remains one of the Holdfast Collective’s three guiding principles, as well as principles to avoid building a large hierarchy—Curtis is the only Holdfast Collective employee—and to avoid duplicating the already low-level environmental offerings offered by Patagonia.
Curtis, who earned a law degree from the University of Connecticut, began his career at law firms in Rhode Island and Palo Alto before becoming in-house counsel at United Technologies. In 2014, he assumed the role of assistant general counsel at Patagonia, and in 2021, he was promoted to deputy general counsel. “They were at the forefront of some really interesting corporate governance issues,” said Curtis of the outfit, citing their entry into crowdfunding, B Corp certifications and annual grants with 1% of the Planet.
During Curtis’ time at Patagonia, he was also given the “opportunity of a lifetime” to help navigate the company through a change in ownership. Working closely with Chouinard, the founding family and Patagonia’s board, Curtis helped engineer its unique philanthropic structure and built trust with the company’s top leaders. When it came time to choose someone to lead the Holdfast Collective, he was contacted.
Aside from navigating the unusual structure of Patagonia and the Holdfast Collective, Curtis’ legal background is still active. “A lot of the projects we’re involved in, there’s an inherent legal element to it,” said Curtis, who cited the structuring of grant agreements and international transfers of funds as examples.
The latter, in particular, is the key to Holdfast Collective, which moves a large part of its capital around the world. It is very interested in giving back to countries where Patagonia has consumed resources or local economic benefits, such as Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan, and in the areas of North America and Europe. “We’re looking to reinvest and support jobs in areas where business is really delivering,” Curtis said.
One of Curtis’ favorite projects to date took place last year, when the Holdfast Collective helped finance the preservation of a 325,000-hectare wilderness in Chile’s Cochamó Valley. The region, located in Chilean Patagonia and home to 1,000-meter granite walls, thickets of warning trees and endangered species, was officially handed over to a Chilean non-profit in December after a long campaign over its ownership. “It won’t always be like that, but maybe once or twice a year—maybe every other year—we’ll get that really powerful conversation,” Curtis said.
In 2026, the executive director hopes to continue to support land conservation programs and dam removal projects, in addition to fighting for control of financing to protect against federal excesses in drilling projects and supporting politicians who can act as climate leaders. “We certainly need allies in Congress who can help protect the environmental regulatory framework and public lands,” Curtis said.
Amid the pullback on government support for climate partners, demand for support from players like the Holdfast Collective has grown rapidly, according to Curtis. “There is a sense of crisis,” said the official, who added that there has been a recent increase in so-called “green hushing” among organizations and companies that have decided to abandon their previous climate commitments.
