The David and Lucile Packard Foundation this year will boost the amount of money it gives to nonprofits working on the environment, health care, and other areas, citing concerns that cuts to government funding may reverse progress on those issues.
The California grant maker, which said it will increase its payout by up to $22 million this year, joins a number of other large foundations that have been giving more since President Trump’s victory in November. In 2014, the most recent year for which figures are available, Packard had $7 billion in assets and directed about $374 million to charitable activities.
In an announcement on the foundation’s website, Packard’s president, Carol Larson, did not mention Mr. Trump by name.
The decision follows President Trump’s announcement that the United States will exit the Paris climate accord and comes as Congress works to disassemble the Affordable Care Act.
“This is a time of great concern,” Ms. Larson wrote in the statement. “Commitments to halt dangerous climate change and increase the productivity of our oceans are being abandoned; and the fundamental right to quality health care is being undermined.”
Ms. Larson said $10 million of the grant increase had already been steered to groups working on scientific research, litigation, advocacy, communications, and building nonprofits’ organizational capacity.
By law, foundations must distribute at least 5 percent of their assets each year in the form of grants, taxes, and some administrative expenses. Since Mr. Trump took office, several progressive foundations have created emergency funds. Others have increased their grant budgets across the board.
Speedy Delivery
The Nathan Cummings Foundation, for instance, in April announced plans to pay out a larger share of its assets in response to the Trump victory. For the next two years, the foundation will direct 6.75 percent of its assets — up from 5.75 percent — toward charitable activities. The foundation said it was preparing to speed the delivery of grants to nonprofits.
“Our board was clear that this was no time for business as usual,” Sharon Alpert, Cummings’s president wrote in a letter posted on the foundation’s website.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, too, will give more in response to Mr. Trump. Viewing the president’s “America First” policies as a threat to the internationalist stance of the foundation, Rockefeller Brothers decided to increase grants by 12 percent this year.
Ms. Larson wrote that Packard’s sped-up grant payments do not diminish its ability to make long-term investments.
“We are in this for the long haul,” she wrote. “At the same time, we also know how important it is to respond quickly when the situation demands it.”
