Agnes Gund’s donation of $100 million to work on criminal justice in partnership with the Ford Foundation marks the most notable example yet of a rare but growing phenomenon; wealthy donors working with powerhouse grant makers on high-profile issues.
Ms. Gund, president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, sold her Roy Lichtenstein pop-art classic “Masterpiece” for $165 million, including fees, according to The New York Times. Of that, she has set aside $100 million to create the Art for Justice Fund.
The fund, which will start making grants later this year, will be managed by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. The Ford Foundation will pick up the tab for the fund’s operating costs, and its program officers will weigh in heavily with advice on individual grants and an overall strategy.
“There’s a growing community of donors who seek to invest in proven strategies and want the advice and perspective of foundations like Ford that have been funding in these areas, sometimes for decades,” said Darren Walker, the Ford Foundation’s president.
Growth Strategy
Over the next five years, Ms. Gund hopes other collectors will sell their work during an extremely frothy market for fine art and direct the proceeds — her goal is an additional $100 million — to the fund. To contribute, Mr. Walker said, donors must give a minimum of $100,000. In the past two weeks, several donors have pledged to sell pieces from their collections.
The creation of the fund was a confluence of several factors, according to Mr. Walker. First, he said, he and Ms. Gund have known each other for several decades, and she has sought his advice on social-justice issues over the years. In addition to that personal relationship, he said, the issue of mass incarceration has taken on heightened urgency in the past few years.
While he calls the partnership with Ms. Gund an unusual configuration for a private grant maker, Mr. Walker predicted that foundations, which face regulatory restrictions on raising outside money, will increasingly look to establish separate funds with wealthy people.
“It does portend a new way of thinking that I wish to encourage,” he said. “Legacy foundations like Ford can be great partners to new donors and donors who have an interest in specific issues.”
Ford will “explore the possibilities” of working with private donors in other areas, Mr. Walker said, such as reproductive rights and international women’s issues.
Anthony Coles, and his wife, Robyn, are among those who decided to donate.
“I can’t imagine a foundation or organization with a better breadth of knowledge on how those dollars can be spent productively,” said Dr. Coles, the former chief executive of Onyx Pharmaceuticals.
The Coleses are active collectors of works from artists of the African diaspora. The fact that about half of the 27 individuals who have responded to Ms. Gund’s challenge are African-American, Dr. Coles said, was an indication of the commitment of black philanthropists to improving the criminal-justice system.
He said the couple has responded to Ms. Gund with a cash donation (he wouldn’t say how much) and that they are considering the sale of art from their collection to follow up.
“We don’t have a Lichtenstein hanging above the mantel,” he said. “Very few people do.”
Filling Gaps
Others, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the nation’s largest private grant maker, have been working more closely with individual donors.
In September, Gates created Gates Philanthropy Partners, a separate nonprofit that will accept donations from people interested in supporting the foundation’s favorite causes, such as global health. Gifts to Gates Philanthropy Partners will be distributed among current Gates grantees after consultation with the foundation’s staff.
An even more concerted effort may follow: In September, Robert Rosen, who leads the effort for Gates, said he was in the early stages of talks with donor-advised funds to combine efforts to encourage individual giving. Mr. Rosen declined to comment for this article.
The William Penn Foundation is also actively courting individual donors to help improve Philadelphia’s schools. By showcasing areas where the grant maker’s work needs additional assistance, Penn may go a long way in filling the gap left by two anchor institutions: Over the past decade, one stalwart, the Annenberg Foundation, moved to Los Angeles and another, the Pew Charitable Trusts, transformed itself into a public charity and adopted a more national focus.
Plenty of wealthy donors in the region are interested in stepping in, said Shawn McCaney, Penn’s executive director, but they don’t always create new foundations.
He pointed to a $6 million grant Penn made to Philadelphia public schools as an example of how the partnerships can work. Most of the money went to a teacher-training program. Meanwhile, the foundation sought individual donors to contribute $3.5 million more for a system of in-classroom libraries.
“We look to create funding partnerships where we fund the stuff institutional funders are comfortable with — sometimes it’s the less glamorous infrastructure stuff,” he said. “We leave open opportunities for individual donors to do the stuff they like.”
As donors look to established grant makers for guidance, both the donor and the institution can benefit, according to Ford’s Mr. Walker.
His relationship with Ms. Gund, he said, will benefit the broader field of criminal-justice philanthropy, an area Mr. Walker said has been overlooked. In return, he said, Ms. Gund also gains from the partnership.
Said Walker: “Without any cost to her, she’s been able to basically buy some of the best talent in philanthropy.”
