Bruce and Suzie Kovner say it wasn’t exactly a date, but it was one of the first times they met: drinks an hour before the 2004 Broadway opening of Michael Frayn’s play Democracy. At the time, Ms. Kovner was development director at the American Associates of the National Theatre, the organization that brought the play to the United States. Mr. Kovner had seen the play in London. He critiqued it harshly.
“I just sort of sat there thinking he has so much insight into the theater and is so bright and right on,” says Ms. Kovner. She realized she had found someone she really wanted to talk to about theater, dissecting everything that works and doesn’t about a performance. Today, the couple, who married in 2007, have turned their shared love of arts and culture into a strong philanthropic force, giving more than $400 million to an array of causes that are knit together primarily by a desire to give talented but needy kids a leg up in life.
‘Like a Bottle of Vitamins’
The Kovners like to give quietly and stay out of the limelight. They describe themselves as shy, yet they are anything but that when talking about the causes they love the most. While scholarships for needy students and arts and culture groups — especially the Juilliard School — top that list, there are also others.
The Kovners give personally — Mr. Kovner made an estimated $5.3 billion fortune from Caxton Associates, a hedge fund he started in 1983 — and through their foundation. About half of their total giving so far has gone to Juilliard, where Mr. Kovner has been chairman of the board since 2001.
A self-described music and theater “nut” and amateur musician (he plays piano and harpsichord), Mr. Kovner gave the performing-arts school a priceless collection of 139 rare music manuscripts in 2006. The collection, which he had steadily amassed over a decade, includes original scores, composer-amended and -edited proofs, and first editions of works by Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Schubert, and others.
“For me, great music is an enormously powerful source of spiritual connection,” says Mr. Kovner. “It’s a way of feeling what other people feel, a place where you can come into contact with the great minds and artists who have produced works of art that are really all about human empathy.”
The couple gave Juilliard $60 million in 2013 to launch the Kovner Fellowship Program to help financially strapped music students cover their expenses at the school. The couple say many of the students have spent their lives focused on their music and may not have been exposed to other performing arts, so the Kovners organize dinners out and trips to theatrical and other cultural events in New York.
“Spending time with them, it’s like a bottle of vitamins,” says Ms. Kovner. “Your faith in the youth of this world is restored.”
The Kovners give to a wide range of causes. They back think tanks, and charter schools like Success Academy. They also support nonprofits working to overhaul the criminal-justice system and protect civil and private-property rights. And they give smaller gifts of $1,000 to $100,000 to a variety of charities near their homes in New York and Florida.
But the overarching theme of supporting educational efforts for young people with few resources and lots of talent is rooted in both of their backgrounds.
An American Story
Mr. Kovner’s grandparents were Eastern European immigrants. He was born in Brooklyn, where his parents struggled mightily through the Great Depression. In 1953, the family moved to the Los Angeles suburbs, where he excelled academically. A scholarship to Harvard in 1962 was a watershed moment.
“Harvard made a big difference in my life. I saw a lot of people there who came from relatively simple circumstances putting an enormous amount of effort behind teaching themselves and learning how to help others and think critically,” says Mr. Kovner. “Those have always been important elements of my personal philosophy, and I’ve tried to express them in what we’re doing.”
He was taken under the wing of the prominent political scientists Edward Banfield, Henry Kissinger, and James Q. Wilson. Mr. Banfield and Mr. Wilson encouraged him to go further. After earning a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1966, he stayed at Harvard to study for a Ph.D. in the same discipline.
Spending time with young musicians is ‘like a bottle of vitamins.’
He completed the coursework but left academe before receiving a doctorate and spent the early 1970s trying out different careers. He worked on political campaigns, wrote music criticism for Commentary magazine, and drove a cab. He married his first wife around this time. The couple divorced in 1999 and have three grown children.
He soon made his way into finance, working as a commodities trader before launching his hedge fund.
Aiding Young People
Suzie Kovner studied art history and graduated from Colgate in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in English, then worked in broadcast television and at Sotheby’s before joining the National Theatre of Great Britain’s U.S. administrative staff. She opened the organization’s first U.S. office in 2001 and today serves on its board.
Her grandfather, Edgar W.B. Fairchild, was the son of a founder of Fairchild Publications. The family did not have much money in those days and needed Mr. Fairchild to join the family business. As a result, he never attended college. He regretted it for the rest of his life, says his granddaughter, and made sure Ms. Kovner and her three sisters went to college.
“He said you can do anything you want to do, but you’re going to get an education,” she says. “That’s why Success Academy and the Kovner Opportunity Scholars are so important to me, because there are so many talented, young, qualified people with great ambition, but they don’t have the resources to go to a great university.”
The couple recently started the scholars program after they bought a home in Hobe Sound, Fla. Ms. Kovner says the program works with local schools to provide financial aid to qualified students who otherwise couldn’t afford to attend top universities. Many of the students are first-generation Americans, and as with their Juilliard fellows, the Kovners take a personal interest.
The program starts when the students are in their junior year. The Kovners help coach the students through the process of finding and applying to colleges and try to make sure a student’s scholarship money doesn’t negate any financial aid they might get from universities.
The Kovners work with individual students for years to ensure success.
“Our intention is to work with them through at least all of college,” says Mr. Kovner. “So we’ll be very closely personally involved to make sure the holes in the system are covered with both mentoring and special financial aid.”
The program just gave out its first 10 scholarships this year, and the Kovners plan to expand it over the next decade.
“From experience, I know that one has to start slowly and learn about what one is doing because you never get anything completely right the first time,” Mr. Kovner says. “We very much want to listen and absorb and learn.”
No Named Buildings
The Kovners have two scholarship programs named for them, but they say in most cases they prefer not to have their name attached to a program or a building.
“I want to make sure that when we do philanthropy it’s principally about accomplishing something good for the cause and not drawing attention to us,” says Mr. Kovner. “We’re lucky to have been able to get financial resources to let us do this kind of thing.
“It doesn’t mean in any sense that we deserve attention,” he adds. “The attention really should be on the programs and the purposes, the great kids or adults and artists who are doing great things.”
