A new book details how Joan Kroc commandeered her husband’s fortune and became one of America’s most controversial donors. She gave away well over $2 billion, some of which went to liberal causes that probably wouldn’t have squared with her deceased husband’s conservative views.
Ms. Kroc’s biggest gift was a $1.5 billion bequest to the Salvation Army, but she is perhaps best remembered for her $225 million gift to National Public Radio, which sparked controversy over whether the group would still get federal funding, whether donors would continue to give, and whether the gift would alter NPR’s relationship with its dues-paying affiliates.
Ms. Kroc died in 2003.
Ray & Joan, by Lisa Napoli, a former New York Times reporter, tells how the third wife of Ray Kroc, the charismatic and sometimes blustering leader of the McDonald’s fast-food chain who died in 1984, chafed at the constraints imposed on her giving by her Joan B. Kroc Foundation — so much that she dissolved the grant maker in 1991 and simply handed out checks to charities she decided to support.
The book portrays Ms. Kroc as a reluctant public figure who strove for a simple, quiet approach to philanthropy yet also attracted attention and criticism for her bold, often whimsical approach.
Among the causes she gave to was alcohol addiction, something her husband suffered from, though most people didn’t know it.
In an interview with The Chronicle, Ms. Napoli talked about her book and the ongoing repercussions of Ms. Kroc’s philanthropy. (You can also hear her read an excerpt from the book.)
Did you know about Joan Kroc before you wrote this book?
No. I had started working in public radio around the time she gave the NPR gift, and I remember the controversy and curiosity around the gift, I just thought a rich person gives a lot of money. That happens a lot. But I never thought about the back story until my encounter with Paul Conrad’s sculpture about nuclear war, “Chain Reaction,” which Joan had anonymously underwritten decades earlier.
Time and again, when I talked to people about what I was working on, I found that most people didn’t know about her.
Did the Kroc family or McDonalds talk to you for this book?
The family was helpful, but they were reluctant. You can imagine they spent their whole lives fending off people asking them for things.
The McDonalds people were a different story. They were guarded about talking about her. I think some of the old-guard McDonalds people were taken aback by her outwardness, her zealousness, and where and how she chose to give. It was unorthodox.
Some aspects of the alcoholism-education program she created, Operation Cork, and its “Corky” mascot, appear unsophisticated by today’s standards. How was it viewed when she established it in the 1970s?
It was seen by some that way, but others saw it as brave. She had the money to hire the best, and she did — addiction counselors, graphic designers, filmmakers, and writers.
When she insisted that Corky, a little cartoon cork, be the representative icon of the charity, many of them tried to persuade her against that because they felt it diminished her message.
Reporters questioned her because she was the wife of a wealthy man, and it wasn’t like she was an addiction counselor. Yet everybody I’ve talked to who was in the addiction-recovery movement in the ’70s will say how incredibly important she was. She had the money to bring them all together. They didn’t have to write a grant proposal. She gave the movement voice by making films, publishing books, and having the PR might to get people on The Today Show and to get Dear Abby to write about it.
She had hardcore PR muscle because of McDonalds, so she was “marketing” addiction recovery in a way that nobody had before.
What does her decision to dissolve the foundation say about the way she thought about philanthropy?
Most people don’t understand that there isn’t still a Joan Kroc Foundation doling out money to public radio and to the Salvation Army and all the myriad things she supported. She had felt harassed by the avalanche of requests every time she gave. The fact that she dissolved the foundation speaks to how incredibly unorthodox and self-possessed she was. She never wanted to do something that was expected or that you should do because you’re a certain sort of person.
The Kroc Foundation was set up in part because Ray wanted to give money away. He felt like he had hit the lotto.
He was advised to set up that foundation because it was a wise tax move, but that wasn’t part of Joan’s ethos. She just really liked being this guardian-angel person who could just swoop in — or send the plane with people representing her to swoop in — and dole out money. And she didn’t want to have to deal with the minutia of a foundation.
Some of her largest bequests were controversial because some people thought the money wasn’t going where there was much need or to groups that could handle such large amounts of money. And, in fact, some of the nonprofits did have trouble dealing with the windfall. Did any beneficiaries express regret that they were saddled with such large gifts?
I don’t know because most of them wouldn’t talk about it. I do know the Salvation Army apparently prayed about whether to accept the gift because they recognized how altering it would be for them to accept $1.5 billion. I know that NPR was put in a very complicated position with its affiliates because of the gift, and because of people’s lack of understanding about how finance and philanthropy, when it comes to public radio, work.
If you go down the line of the big gifts that she gave at the end of her life, which were made when she found out she was dying, people always said to me that if she had lived another five or 10 years and had more time to think through her giving, things would have been completely different.
What do you think her philanthropic legacy is now, 13 years after her death, and what will it be to the future?
You have these Salvation Army Kroc Centers all around the country that are important parts of the communities. There’s a study about the halo effect of these centers. They have indelible positive effects on individual people and things like real estate and development around those areas, so that’s an interesting legacy. On NPR, you hear her name every day and there are programs to help young journalists go out and cover the world, so that’s an interesting legacy. There are these peace centers that have her name, and people come from all over the world to study peacemaking.
Her philanthropic legacy really was this idea of ecstatic, radical giving. Someone like Joan Kroc had this incredible experience where she fell in love with a man who was incredibly difficult and in many ways very charismatic. He hit life’s lotto, and she inherited it.
She lived lavishly but also felt obligated to put some of that money to good use. So that’s the legacy I hope I can help people see. Everybody talks about the Gateses and Buffett, and that’s fabulous, but Joan was doing what they did before they did it, and I want people to know that she gave away almost everything, and that’s radical and important, and we should all be talking about what that means and why others aren’t doing that.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
