The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a $25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death of the two founders, the foundation owned 90% of the non-voting shares of the Ford Motor Company. Between 1955 and 1974, the foundation sold its Ford Motor Company holdings and now plays no role in the automobile company.
The Rockefeller Foundation is an American private foundation and philanthropic medical research and arts funding organization based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The foundation was created by Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller ("Senior") and son "Junior", and their primary business advisor, Frederick Taylor Gates, on May 14, 1913, when its charter was granted by New York. It is the second-oldest major philanthropic institution in America and ranks as the 30th largest foundation globally by endowment, with assets of over $6.3 billion in 2022. According to the OECD, the foundation provided $284 million for development in 2021. The foundation has given more than $14 billion in current dollars.
Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a US-based grantmaking network founded by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with the stated aim of advancing justice, education, public health and independent media. The group's name was inspired by Karl Popper's 1945 book The Open Society and Its Enemies.
The Yale School of Management is the graduate business school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. The school awards the Master of Business Administration (MBA), MBA for Executives (EMBA), Master of Advanced Management (MAM), Master's Degree in Systemic Risk (SR), Master's Degree in Global Business & Society (GBS), Master's Degree in Asset Management (AM), and Ph.D. degrees, as well as joint degrees with nine other graduate programs at Yale University.
The Carnegie Corporation of New York is a philanthropic fund established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 to support education programs across the United States, and later the world.
The Russell Sage Foundation is an American non-profit organisation established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States.” It was named after her recently deceased husband, railroad executive Russell Sage. The foundation dedicates itself to strengthening the methods, data, and theoretical core of the social sciences in order to better understand societal problems and develop informed responses. It supports visiting scholars in residence and publishes books and a journal under its own imprint. It also funds researchers at other institutions and supports programs intended to develop new generations of social scientists. The foundation focuses on labor markets, immigration and ethnicity, and social inequality in the United States, as well as behavioral economics.
Kavita Nandini Ramdas is an American feminist and activist.
The Urban Institute is a Washington, D.C.–based think tank that conducts economic and social policy research to "open minds, shape decisions, and offer solutions". The institute receives funding from government contracts, foundations, and private donors.
Judith Rodin is an American research psychologist, executive, university president, and global thought-leader. She served as the 12th president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 2005 to 2017. From 1994 to 2004, Rodin served as the 7th president of the University of Pennsylvania, and the first permanent female president of an Ivy League university. She is known for her significant contributions to the fields of behavioral medicine and health psychology, higher education, and philanthropy, as well as championing the concepts of impact investing and resilience.
Alondra Nelson is an American academic, policy advisor, non-profit administrator, and writer. She is the Harold F. Linder chair and professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, an independent research center in Princeton, New Jersey. Since March 2023, she has been a distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. In October 2023, she was nominated by the Biden-Harris Administration and appointed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to the UN High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence.
Arthur Henry White was an American businessman and humanitarian. He was a co-founder and vice chairman of Yankelovich Partners, Inc., a research and consulting firm; a co-founder of Reading Is Fundamental, the largest non-profit children's literacy organization in the world; and a founder of Jobs for the Future, a non-profit organization which analyzes, develops, and provides job training and education.
Darren Walker is the 10th president of the Ford Foundation, a private foundation dedicated to human welfare, and President of the National Gallery of Art.
Dorceta E. Taylor is an American environmental sociologist known for her work on both environmental justice and racism in the environmental movement. She is the senior associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Yale School of the Environment, as well as a professor of environmental justice. Prior to this, she was the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Michigan's School of Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), where she also served as the James E. Crowfoot Collegiate Professor of Environmental Justice. Taylor's research has ranged over environmental history, environmental justice, environmental policy, leisure and recreation, gender and development, urban affairs, race relations, collective action and social movements, green jobs, diversity in the environmental field, food insecurity, and urban agriculture.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99 percent of the couple's wealth from their Facebook shares over their lifetime. The CZI is legally set up as a limited liability company (LLC) that can be seen as a for-profit charity and is an example of philanthrocapitalism. CZI has been deemed likely to be "one of the most well-funded Philanthropies in human history". Chan and Zuckerberg announced its creation on 1 December 2015, to coincide with the birth of their first child. Priscilla Chan has said that her background as a child of immigrant refugees and experience as a teacher and pediatrician for vulnerable children influences how she approaches the philanthropy's work in science, education, immigration reform, housing, criminal justice, and other local issues.
Elizabeth Howe Bradley is the eleventh President of Vassar College, a role she assumed on July 1, 2017. Bradley also holds a joint appointment as Professor of Political Science and Professor of Science, Technology, and Society.
Jean Emily Fairfax was an American educator, civil rights worker, community organizer, and philanthropist whose efforts have focused on achieving equity in education, especially for poor African Americans. She served as Director of Community Services of the NAACP from 1965 to 1984.
Clara Wu Tsai is an American businesswoman, philanthropist, and social justice activist. She is a co-owner of the Brooklyn Nets, the New York Liberty, the San Diego Seals, and Barclays Center. She is the founder of the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, a philanthropic organization; the Social Justice Fund, which focuses on economic mobility and racial justice; the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance, which funds health and scientific research; and is a founding partner of REFORM Alliance, a nonprofit focused on prison and parole reform in the United States.
Laura Arnold is an American philanthropist and co-founder of Arnold Ventures LLC. In addition to serving as co-chair of Arnold Ventures, Arnold became a founding partner of the REFORM Alliance, a national criminal justice advocacy organization in 2019. Prior to her work in philanthropy, she was a mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer and an executive at Cobalt International Energy.
The Heising-Simons Foundation is a private foundation established by philanthropists Elizabeth (Liz) Simons and Mark Heising in Los Altos, California in 2007. The Heising-Simons Foundation's board consists of Liz Simons, Mark Heising, and their daughter Caitlin Heising. Liz Simons and Mark Heising signed the Giving Pledge in 2016.
