The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, an $840 million endowment run by John D. Rockefeller's descendants, said it would reduce exposure to fossil fuels as much as possible, including ending investments in coal and tar sands - two of the dirtiest forms of energy - by the end of the year.
Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, the archbishop who fought South Africa's apartheid regime, took part in the announcement by video and urged a halt to new fossil fuel exploration.
"We can no longer continue feeding our addiction to fossil fuels as if there is no tomorrow, for there will be no tomorrow," Tutu said.
While the divestment is small compared with the vast size of the fossil fuel industry, campaigners hailed the announcement, which came a day before world leaders including US President Barack Obama hold a summit on climate change at the United Nations.
"Climate change is the defining issue of our time. Now is the time for action," said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who called the summit and said that Sunday's march was his first rally since he protested South Korea's former military dictatorship.
The summit aims to pave the way for a global agreement on fighting climate change - a successor to the Kyoto Protocol - during a conference in late 2015 in Paris.
Despite leaders' statements, a new study found that greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change rose 2.3 pc in 2013 to a new record and that time was quickly running out to check climate change at the key threshold of two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
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