Figma IPO’s surprise winner is a charity with 13 million shares—and a famous backstory that sparked a bitter feud over an oil fortune decades ago
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The Marin Community Foundation netted $440 million as the IPO's largest selling shareholder. The philanthropic organization is itself the product of a previous generation of big business—and a famous ...
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August 2, 2025
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Fortune
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·IPOsFigma IPO’s surprise winner is a charity with 13 million s—and a famous backstory that sparked a bitter feud over an oil fortune decades agoBy Allie GarfinkleBy Allie GarfinkleSenior Finance Reporter and author of Term SheetAllie GarfinkleSenior Finance Reporter and author of Term SheetAllie Garfinkle is a senior finance reporter for Fortune, covering venture capital and startups
She Term Sheet, Fortune’s weekday dealmaking .SEE FULL BIO Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesAs Figma went public this week to much fanfare—and an almost instantaneous 250% stock pop—quite a few folks from Silicon Valley made money
But the biggest winner in terms of immediate IPO ceeds is not any of the marquee Silicon Valley venture capital firms such as Index Ventures, Greylock, and Kleiner Perkins, who sold only small srs of their stakes in the offering
Nor is it any of the Figma management team, including CEO Dylan Field, who have most of their equity locked in the company
Instead, a Novato, Calif.-based charity took the biggest payout
The Marin Community Foundation, located an hour north of San Francisco and focused on grantmaking around issues education, health, economic opportunity, and environmental concerns, sold more than 13.4 million s in the offering, making it the largest selling holder (Figma itself only sold 12.5 million s)
As Figma initially priced its s at $33 a pop, the Marin Community Foundation sold off its stake to the tune of more than $440 million. (If it had waited, of course, that stake would now be worth well over $1 billion.) The charity received its s in Figma over the summer from Evan Wallace, the company’s elusive cofounder, a source familiar with the matter told Fortune
This isn’t necessarily a common practice right before a company goes public, another source told Fortune, but is one that does crop up from time to time—a founder with a connection to a charity giving s with upside
There are adjacent examples from the past, including Mark Zuckerberg in 2013 donating $1 billion in Facebook s to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (though Zuck’s gift happened after Facebook’s 2012 IPO.) A spokesperson for MCF described the foundation as “one of the largest community foundations in the U.S.,” adding “that a community foundation is a public charity that manages the philanthropy of individuals, families and institutions.” The spokesperson declined to on anything specific the Figma gift, citing its privacy policy regarding individual donors or nonfits
Why Wallace made the gift to the foundation, and whether he has any personal connection to it, is not
Figma declined to vide a on behalf of Wallace, and Fortune was unable to reach him directly
Wallace and Figma CEO Dylan Field cofounded the company in 2012 after meeting as students at Brown University
Wallace stepped away from Figma in 2021 and has t to stay out of the public eye
The part of the charity that Wallace gave the s to—the MCF Gift Fund—suggests that the Figma cofounder’s grant may involve a so-called donor advised fund, a tax efficient structure whereby a wealthy individual puts money into a non-fit and is then able to direct the funds to various causes
The Marin Community Foundation’s spokesperson said that the MCF Gift Fund “facilitates the acceptance of complex gifts that can be turned into philanthropic capital to enable donors to fulfill their philanthropic ambitions.” But the Figma founder’s philanthropical move has a historical wrinkle that makes it even more interesting… Before AI money there was oil money Interestingly, the Marin County Foundation, which had $2.8 billion in total assets at the end of 2024, is itself the duct of a previous generation of big —and of a bitter, years-long legal fight for control of the money
The foundation’s history traces back to Beryl and Leonard Buck, whose wealth was linked to an investment in Belridge Oil
When Beryl Buck died in 1975 she gave the money to the San Francisco Foundation, with the wish that it be used for causes in Marin County, where she had d in the tony town of Ross
But when oil giant Shell purchased the rights to Belridge Oil four years later for more than $3.6 billion, the value of the $7.6 million Buck Trust was suddenly worth $240 million ($1 billion in today’s dollars), and the SF Foundation became the 11th largest foundation in the U.S., according to a history on its website
The blem, as the SF Foundation explains it, was that “we found ourselves in the uncomfortable position of granting tens of millions of dollars each year (far more than we granted to all other counties combined) to the wealthiest county in the Bay Area.”Or as a story in the LA Times noted back then, one of the country’s most well-resourced charities was stuck looking for ways to spend all the money in the ‘hot-tub capital of America.’ Marin County, California is among the wealthiest in the U.S.Doug Pensinger/Getty Images When the Foundation went to court to seek permission to spend some of the money in other, needier parts of the Bay Area, a public firestorm ensued
The move was “characterized as a threat to the sanctity of wills and the health of philanthropy, and as an offense against capitalism, the American way of life, and God,” Yale Law School fessor John G
Simon wrote of the affair. “Foundation personnel were said to be corrupt and dishonest and, in the language of a Marin County supervisor, ‘grave-robbing bastards.’” In the end, the San Francisco Foundation lost its court battle, and a new organization—The Marin Community Foundation—was created in 1986 to administer the Buck Trust
Now, 39 years later, the Marin County Foundation is getting another massive windfall
Whether Wallace is aware of the contentious and famous story behind the foundation he picked is a mystery
But, wittingly or not, the reclusive Figma cofounder has managed to put the foundation back in the headlines at the cusp of another historical moment in history and wealth creation.Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in America
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