How we partner

Panta Rhea cultivates long-term relationships with community partners and their networks. We also leverage relationships with other funders and donors for collective impact and sustainability.

We aim to redistribute power and resources while moving at the speed of trust, resourcing existing community-based advisory and participatory structures, and piloting new ones when appropriate.

Aligning our giving with our values

We continuously update the way we make grants, invest, and operate to best support our partners and reflect our values.

Since its founding in 2001, Panta Rhea has directly made and advised about $50 million in charitable grants, ranging in size from $1,500 to $400,000.

We currently distribute about $6 million in grants annually, mostly for multi-year general operating support. Panta Rhea prioritizes solicited applications for funding to reduce the administrative burden for our grantee partners and small staff team.

Currently most Panta Rhea grants are processed through a donor advised fund at Marin Community Foundation, and NGO Source facilitates international due diligence.

Investments, funding sources & operations

Panta Rhea was established in 2001 with financial support from the endowed family foundation assets of entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist Hans Schoepflin.

Successful historical investments include:

  • Seed investor in Price Club (now better known as Costco)
  • Seed investor in Qualcomm (wireless technology)
  • Early (1998) investor in Actelion, a Swiss pharmaceutical, which was bought by Johnson & Johnson in 2017

Today, the assets supporting Panta Rhea are managed by Torreyana Capital, a strategically-aligned investment manager for the Schoepflin Foundation portfolio including Publix and Spore Initiative, and as strategic advisor to Panta Rhea.

To manage the portfolio in a way that is mission-aligned, Torreyana Capital partners with established and emerging investment management firms and corporate management teams who share a commitment to realizing a more just and sustainable world through ethical capital stewardship.

Torreyana Capital also supports a number of Panta Rhea’s back-end office operations for the foundation’s global team.