A Neurobiologist Finds More Satisfaction in Disruptive Giving

Trained as a scientist, Rebecca Balter, who has a Ph.D. in neurobiology, was the last person to admit she had become a full-time philanthropist.

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Eight years ago, she took a step back from her post-doctorate position and threw herself into the world of organizing and grant making. It was supposed to be temporary. Balter had realized that research wasn’t for her and hoped to find more people-centric work in her field.

What she found instead was a calling toward activism and using her wealth — and research skills — to support organizing in the South while disrupting entrenched philanthropic practices.

“As an activist, I’m just as likely to be at a gala as I am to be in a space where people have tattoos that say, ‘Eat the rich,’” says Balter, 36, who spent years grappling with the complexities of holding wealth as an activist and progressive grant maker.

Growing up, Balter’s parents weren’t “flashy” with their wealth, she says, but they were generous. When her parents hired a home health aide to care for Balter’s ailing father, her mother offered to pay the college tuition for the caregiver’s child.

Still, Balter’s awareness of her financial resources didn’t develop fully until she began inheriting money directly in her late teens and early 20s. Balter’s inheritance comes from a successful German-Jewish banking family, whose assets were seized by the Nazis after they came to power. Much of her inherited wealth comes from restitution payments made by the German government to compensate victims of the Holocaust and Nazi plundering. That fact isn’t lost on Balter in her approach to grant making.

“There were institutional structures that had a particular stance around the concept of restitution and reparations,” says Balter, who lives in North Carolina. “That doesn’t exist around race in the United States.”

Seeing the Scaffolding

Unlike many of her peers, Balter received her inheritance as a young person with no strings attached, rather than through complicated trusts. Around the same time as she began inheriting wealth, Balter realized she was queer — an identity that would come to shape her giving. It helped her to connect the dots of what she describes as an invisible framework of power that upholds systems of oppression.

“My queerness gave me the glasses that allowed me to see the scaffolding,” she says.

She became involved in the queer alliance at Columbia University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology, and soon gained exposure to other social-justice groups on campus.

“Being queer gave me permission to think outside of the box,” Balter says. “Once one piece of you isn’t playing by the rules, you realize that rules can be broken.”

Her circles at Columbia frequently posed questions about power, privilege, race, gender, and sexual orientation, but often lacked an openness about wealth and class privilege, Balter says.

So she sought guidance from Resource Generation, which helps wealthy young people investing their time and energy in progressive causes. She credits the group with helping her understand the institution of philanthropy through connections and mentorship.

Through Resource Generation, Balter became a founding member of the Funding Queerly Giving Circle, a group of young philanthropists mobilizing their wealth for LGBTQI organizations, the majority of which are BIPOC-led.

The giving circle was also the first time she was exposed to a more structured grant process. Now Balter uses those skills in her own grant making. In 2019, she created a donor-advised fund with the Triangle Community Foundation that supports community organizing throughout the South. She named it the Cast Iron Skillet Fund, a nod to the cookware which is often passed between generations and has long nourished families and communities.

She also serves as a member of the board of the Triangle Community Foundation, where she’s become a powerful and informed voice for moving philanthropy forward, says Lori O’Keefe, president and CEO of the foundation.

“She keeps herself super educated,” O’Keefe says. “It’s really a vocation for her, which is unusual for most of our fund holders.”

Balter is emblematic of a younger generation of philanthropists attempting to be “thoughtful stewards” of their family resources by making sure that their philanthropic investments align with their values, O’Keefe says.

“She does a really good job of recognizing where we want to push and where we might not be ready yet as a community foundation,” O’Keefe says. “She’s able to bring that balance.”

Why Micromanage?

Balter’s Cast Iron Skillet Fund donates about $100,000 a year in unrestricted grants for grassroots organizing in the South. Balter manages another fund with her mother that donates roughly $750,000 a year to support environmental justice. She also has connections to two larger foundations run by other family members.

Courtesy of Rebecca Balter

In all of her work, Balter emphasizes the importance of “sharing power” with grantees, not just money. To that end, her grants support organizations’ general operating costs and typically provide multiyear support.

“If you trust that you are building power with an organization, why would you micromanage how they use the grant?” she says. “That’s a waste of your time.”

Most of the organizations she supports aim to tackle the root causes of social injustice through movement-building and political organizing. She hopes their work will one day create a world where philanthropy won’t be needed to ensure people’s basic needs are met and instead play a role in funding more experimental research and programs.

Until then, her focus is on building power, no matter how long it takes.

“As a philanthropist, I have no excuse not to be patient,” she says. “Creating that power is a really long game, but it’s how we get true change.”