You might have run across or heard about this New York Times story on the Sierra Club. Others have called it a “hit piece.” My media watching friends always suggest asking the questions “why them?” “why now?”. As a reader of the Times, it seems that the Sierra Club is often an ally of its editorial and reporting staff, so the story seems a bit out of character. Since my (FS) work has been the target of hit pieces, I’m sympathetic to the Sierra Club here.
My summary: the Sierra Club board and employees decided to expand their list of interests to other topics, because they claim that they are all related. They became a bit of a policy fuzzball. (Some? Many?) volunteers and funders disagreed. I’ll excerpt a few paragraphs that stuck out to me.
Here’s the issue as articulated by the Times reporters.
The Sierra Club calls itself the “largest and most influential grass roots environmental organization in the country.” But it is in the middle of an implosion — left weakened, distracted and divided just as environmental protections are under assault by the Trump administration.
The group has lost 60 percent of the four million members and supporters it counted in 2019. It has held three rounds of employee layoffs since 2022, trying to climb out of a $40 million projected budget deficit.
Its political giving has also dropped. Federal campaign-finance records show $3.6 million in donations from the Sierra Club during the push to defeat Donald J. Trump in 2020, but none as Mr. Trump stormed back to the presidency in 2024.
Sigh. “Stormed back”.. how about “was re-elected?”
As Mr. Trump sought to roll back a broad range of progressive victories, the club’s leaders decided their old strategy was too small for the moment.
“We can’t defend the environment by shutting ourselves up in a big, green box labeled ‘environmental issues,’” the group’s executive director, Michael Brune, wrote to members in 2017. By broadening the mission, they also hoped to recruit more young people, who they thought cared as much about social justice as coal plants.
Hmm. Ignore the customers you have in the hopes of reaching new ones. A delicate balance. But maybe not so delicate here.. I didn’t really understand from the story who was deciding, the Board, the President, the employees? Apparently not this former board president.
Mr. Mair, who had been the group’s first Black board president, wrote a rebuttal defending the founder. The Sierra Club refused to publish it, and censured him when he published it elsewhere.
“Do we want to still be the Sierra Club anymore?” Mr. Mair said he thought at the time.
In late 2020, the club surveyed its dues-paying members, its most hard-core supporters. The members said they supported racial justice, but when asked to choose among priorities they ranked climate change first, and racism tied for last.
More than half of members also said they were worried that the club’s shift toward social justice “will detract from its core mission of protecting the environment” and alienate conservatives, according to a copy of the survey obtained by The New York Times.
I think the “alienating conservatives” ship may have already sailed. Apparently the Board was not aligned with the members. Perhaps the Board is not elected?
The club said that was meant to address the “problematic lack of diversity and inclusion in the environmental movement and to make the Sierra Club a welcoming and supportive place to work for all employees.”
“I said, ‘We have two F.T.E.s devoted to Trump’s war on the Arctic refuge, and we have 108 going to D.E.I., and I don’t think we have our priorities straight,’” Mr. Dougherty said, using the acronyms for “full-time employees” and “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Mr. Dougherty said no other board members agreed, and the budget passed.
If the environment is everything..
“Palestine is an environmental issue from our standpoint,” Erica Dodt, the president of the Progressive Workers’ Union, which includes Sierra Club employees, said in an interview. “People are a huge part of our environment.”
Probably not the way to treat volunteers:
After accusations of past sexual misconduct involving current volunteers emerged in 2020, the club re-examined its systems and expanded a mechanism to discipline volunteers. While in some cases this new system empowered staffers to sever volunteer relationships that could not be fixed, it also resulted in a system where some volunteers said they were investigated, without being told why.
Delia Malone, an ecologist and volunteer for the club’s Colorado chapter, said she heard from attorneys hired by the Sierra Club, seeking to interview her as part of an investigation against her.
“I said, ‘What’s the claim, and who made the claim?’ And they said, ‘We can’t tell you that,’” Ms. Malone said.
The story went on to say:
The Sierra Club said it now tells people why they are being investigated.
And ended with
Since he left, the Sierra Club has shown no signs of reverting to its focus on strictly environmental issues.
In recent weeks, supporters who clicked on the group’s website for “current campaigns” were presented with 131 petitions, some out of date, like calls to support clean-energy funding that Mr. Trump has already gutted, or to support a voting-rights bill that died in 2023.
Patrick Murphy, the club’s current board president, who has helped lead the group since 2020, said in an interview that he could not name any decision he regretted.
“I have a hard time pinpointing how I believe we should have made different choices,” Mr. Murphy said. “And I’m happy with where we are today.”
It’s worth reading, and I don’t think it’s paywalled.
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Jonathan Zasloff teaches law at UCLA and posts in Legal Planet and wrote a piece with a tagline
“Its recent implosion over left-wing politics shows a trend that threatens environmental advocacy.” He identified some patterns.. which he says “some of which are old, but many of which are new and figure to get more extreme.”
Liberal founders, Left staff. This trend has occurred elsewhere: donors want to do something good for the world, and found an organization based upon their liberal principles. All very well and good.
But who often works for many organizations? People who are younger, and somewhat more to the Left than the founders. They are very committed to more radical principles – those who are not probably have a harder time putting up with the lower salaries (although that is not the case with high-level staffers; the Times reports that former Sierra Club Ben Jealous awarded his senior staff salaries in excess of $300,000). They push the organization in that direction
The comments on his post were also interesting…
Further, some decisions about endorsements were puzzling to me as a voter. F.e., we support this particular councilperson because they support getting off oil. Well … doesn’t the other candidate also support that? I’m guessing “yes.” I mean, this is California, and they don’t live under a rock, so … ?
Now for the positive – I think that maybe the SC is really a collection of people who are mostly just interested in *their* thing – whether it’s water, CC, or expanding national parks. Or critters. Or what-have-you.
There is a lot of expertise and a lot of dedication – going in a bunch of different directions. (I’m just talking about my impression of members. I never met the big cheeses – and only one staffer.)
And given that, I speculate that maybe people didn’t have the stomach to put a lot of energy and time into fighting off bad central decision-making that may have seemed merely symbolic. Especially if it’s going to get you called names. And remember, there was covid and all of that mess happening.
Focus. It’s a thing. But it seems to me that there is a general tendency in large institutions to go after “broader” issues. I sat in on a webinar on “What Hospice Chaplains Need to Do About Climate’ including a person with a Ph.D. in “climate theology.” Or doctors, or church leaders. As a patient/church member I’d like them to focus on what they are supposed to be doing, and are educated and licensed in, and get better at that. I suppose some Sierra Club volunteers feel the same way.
I posted some questions about this story on my bluesky account here: https://bsky.app/profile/forrestf.bsky.social/post/3m52g74nkw225
I know nothing about the internal politics of the Sierra Club but the data presented in the newspaper story does not support the narrative, so its a confusing story. Supposedly Sierra Club revenue has declined, however the graph in the story basically shows a trend of no change in the revenue over time, or perhaps a slow long-term increase with fluctuations, which is kind of what I’d expect over the last decade. Expenses increased in 2022 and 2023, which is not surprising because there was alot of inflation in those years… My expenses rose those years too! The puzzle to me is why their “champions” declined, why their revenue did not? Maybe champions aren’t the same as donors?
Also, the article says its puzzling why revenue hasn’t rebounded with the re-election of Trump (which, again, the graph doesn’t seem to show), but it also says, “had reduced its efforts to recruit these more casual supporters in 2023,” so maybe whats puzzling is what the story is here, what exactly declined and how does this actually affect the organization? Because this reporting is pretty confusing and inconsistent.
Forrest, I agree. The story and its timing and placement is puzzling. I suppose you could write the reporters about the “champions” vs. “donors” question. Thanks for the link! I miss you on X.
After 30 years, I quit my Sierra Club membership. First they strongly advocated for transfer of the Moeise Bison Range from USFWS to the Salish Kootenai tribes, even though taxpayers compensated the tribes -TWICE – for the land. I’m not a supporter of treating tribes as unfortunate victims of settler colonialism, so this advocacy by SC was against my vision for an environmental group.
But the social justice swing pushed me over the top. I’m all for people living the way they choose, but an environment group has no business getting involved in victim culture, or dictating to me what pronouns to use. And they shouldn’t be overly focused on having an “inclusionary” staff at the expense of having a QUALIFIED staff.
I’m surprised that it took NYT so long to report on this, because this all started several years ago when the SC decided than John Muir was a racist villain, who needed to be cancelled. Big overstep in my opinion, as almost everyone has a skeleton in his closet, and we should not be judging past actions by today’s standards.
Similarly, I’m losing my enthusiasm for almost large environmental groups, and putting my support mostly behind small, volunteer groups.
F course incompetent leadership plays a role.
As does falling hook-line-and-sinker for Al Gore’s climate scam. Thankfully that is now falling apart as Trump is cutting off the cheese that feeds the rats.
This shows the quality of their work:
President of the Sierra Club, the leader in the battle against coal, the leader in the battle against fracking and the leader of the biggest organization saving the climate, explains the evidence behind climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl9-tY1oZNw
https://gregwalcher.com/2025/11/19/unsolicited-advice-to-the-sierra-club/
The Sierra Club has allowed pro-development, anti-environmental lobbyists and policy proponents to take over its local groups and state chapters, including and especially the astro-turf YIMBY operatives (and in some cases, mountain bikers) who weaponize and exploit racial representation and equity issues, push for ever more development, and fight their own local groups on local issues. Look no further than the corrupt Colorado Chapter Steering Committee. Chris Applegate and Mark Van Akkeren are jackals and should be removed form their roles, and never allowed to manipulate Club elections and issues again.
Here’s just one of many problems with Colorado. Unfortunately, no one trusts the Sierra Club anymore. Members and donors should beware.
https://preservefortcollins.org/news/yimby-fort-collins-complicit-in-dissolution-of-local-sierra-club-poudre-canyon-group
And More:
https://48hills.org/2015/10/pro-development-group-seeks-to-take-over-local-sierra-club/
https://48hills.org/2016/11/developer-allies-try-take-sierra-club/
https://48hills.org/2016/12/second-attempt-take-local-sierra-club-fails/
https://48hills.org/2024/02/opinion-the-local-sierra-club-is-no-longer-an-environmental-leader/
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/environment/2025/10/02/battle-for-influence-splits-local-sierra-club-chapter/
https://richmondside.org/2024/12/03/sierra-club-contra-costa-mountain-bike-access/
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/environment/2025/10/02/battle-for-influence-splits-local-sierra-club-chapter/
Adam, this is very interesting and I hadn’t heard of this before. Would you be willing to write a summary post about this? If so please contact me at sharon at forestpolicypub.com. Thanks for your contribution!