Georgia Power Foundation

Georgia Power Foundation

The Georgia Power Foundation launched in 1986 as the philanthropic arm of Georgia Power, itself the largest electric subsidiary of Southern Company. Audrey King serves as President and CEO, while Brad J. Gates — also Southern Company Services' Director of Private Markets — acts as Assistant Treasurer, linking the foundation's endowment management to the parent company's Trust Finance team. Georgia Power shareholders fund the corpus, making the foundation a pass-through vehicle for corporate profits allocated to charitable purpose. The foundation concentrates its grantmaking on four pillars: education, environmental stewardship, community development, and economic mobility, all within Georgia. Its $185 million endowment (Altss estimate) supports a balanced portfolio that includes direct co-investments alongside entities like Oglethorpe Power and the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia (MEAG) in Plant Vogtle Units 3 & 4, the first new nuclear reactors built in the U.S. in decades. Beyond energy assets, the foundation holds commercial real estate — including the Georgia Power Corporate Headquarters at 241 Ralph McGill Blvd and the Georgia Experience Center in Midtown Atlanta — as well as an industrial warehouse in Jackson, a residential portfolio in Augusta's Harrisburg-Laney Walker neighborhood, and an art collection. Total deployment data is not publicly disclosed, but the foundation's holdings span real estate, private equity, and special-situations credit across early-stage, growth, and buyout strategies. Kim Greene, Georgia Power's Chairman and CEO, serves as Foundation Chair for the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and received the Edison Electric Institute's Farrell Safety Leadership Award, signaling executive-level continuity between corporate leadership and foundation governance. The foundation maintains affiliations with the Southeastern Council of Foundations and the Atlanta Rotary Club. The foundation's structure ties its grantmaking capacity directly to the financial performance of a regulated electric utility — a model that anchors long-term philanthropic continuity to monopoly-ratepayer dynamics and Southern Company's generation-asset strategy. This alignment is distinct among large Georgia foundations, where most peers are either independent private foundations or community foundations with diversified funding bases.