Born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, Lady Gaga grew up in an Italian-American family in New York City (her stage name is based on Queen’s “Radio Ga Ga”). Gaga studied at NYU Tisch before dropping out to manage her own career, and it paid off. Her 2008 debut album, fittingly titled “The Fame,” launched her into the spotlight. She’s since taken home 11 Grammy awards, as well as an Oscar for her work in 2018’s “A Star Is Born.”
Apart from music, she launched her own makeup line, Haus Laboratories, which has raised over $10 million in venture funding and is sold exclusively on Amazon. She recently starred in Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci,” about the rise and fall of the family behind the hallowed fashion brand. Gaga also helped organize One World: Together at Home virtual concert, raising about $130 million for COVID-19 relief during the height of the pandemic.
Some estimates put her net worth at $350 million.
Celebrities and athletes rarely have the billions associated with finance or tech winners, but an increasingly large number of them have sizable fortunes, in large part due to endorsements or entrepreneurial projects on the side. They also have their enormous platforms, which they can use to fundraise and inspire people around the world to give or otherwise rally around a cause.
In 2012, Lady Gaga founded the Born This Way Foundation, to focus on empowering youth, improving mental health, and preventing bullying. She cofounded the organization with her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, who serves as president of the foundation alongside a small staff. IP recently caught up with Executive Director Maya Enista Smith to find out more about the history of the foundation, its latest moves, including a $1 million commitment to mental health, and what to expect down the line from the singing sensation’s giving.
Standing up a foundation
Lady Gaga has been outspoken about the bullying she dealt with both in high school and in college. When Maya Smith joined the foundation in 2012, she recalls Gaga talking a lot about this as one of the driving forces of her philanthropy.
“The biggest thing was hope. She knows about the impact that kindness has had on her life. But also, about the impact the lack of kindness has had. And how she wanted to ensure that young people could survive and thrive. This work is super-personal,” Smith said.
Prior to coming to Born This Way Foundation, Smith worked for Rock the Vote and Mobilize.org, where she served as CEO and COO. One day, she received a call from a friend who said she had a client who was interested in starting a foundation. When Smith pressed for more details, she wasn’t given any, making her think this was an opportunity she could not pass up. Nine months pregnant at the time, Smith flew out against medical advice, and the rest is history.
Ten years into their mission, Born This Way’s work now falls into three buckets: to make kindness cool, to validate the emotions of young people around the world, and to eliminate the stigmas around mental health.
“Lady Gaga and Cynthia always talk about it in terms of an open-tent approach, where we want to work with everyone who believes in these values,” Smith said.
A key moment in the foundation’s growth took place during Lady Gaga’s Joanne World Tour, which ran from the summer of 2017 to the winter of 2018. Born This Way Foundation staff participate in volunteer projects alongside the tour, as Lady Gaga travels from city to city. And in Las Vegas, the team landed at The Center, an LGBT community space. One person stepped up and said that people needed hygiene products.
“It was like Supermarket Sweep. We went to CVS, cleared out the shelves, and brought back bags and bags of hygiene products. And out of that, this habit of asking this question became a core part about the foundation’s ethos,” Smith says.
The foundation also decided it wasn’t enough just to ask about unmet needs, but to resource nonprofits in more significant ways.
Ramping up giving
Fueled by these lessons, Born this Way Foundation launched the Kindness in Community Fund, a $1 million commitment to support local organizations and their community-led mental health work in coordination with Lady Gaga’s The Chromatica Ball Summer Stadium Tour. The 22 organizations, which are located in the metro areas of the U.S. tour stops, are focused on youth mental wellness and are informed and/or led by youth, rooted in practices of inclusion, access and equity. Grant amounts range from $25,000 to $50,000.
Among the grantees are Hopebound in Atlanta, Boston Alliance of LGBTQ+ Youth (BAGLY), Café Momentum in Dallas, Adolescent Counseling Services in San Francisco, and Civic Suds in Washington D.C., which serves disadvantaged communities by turning laundromats into spaces for enrichment, financial literacy and education. The key in all of this work, Smith says, is to build relationships in communities and empower local leaders.
“Our hope is that when the light gets shined on Lady Gaga and Born This Way Foundation, we’re able to turn it, and say, ‘look at these community organizations that exist every day, doing this important work,’” Smith said.
Smith also mentioned Our Minds Matter, a youth-led mission to end suicide. Born This Way Foundation also conducts research and runs programs including Channel Kindness, a storytelling platform that fosters wellness and connection; #BeKind21, a program that builds and strengthens kinder communities; and the Be There Certificate, a free, accessible online mental health course, designed for and by youth, available in multiple languages.
All hands on deck and looking ahead
Lady Gaga founded the Born This Way Foundation with $1.2 million of her own funds, a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation and an $850,000 gift from Barneys. Today, the foundation leans on support from individual donors and corporate partners including Deloitte, Starbucks, DonorsChoose and National Council for Mental Wellbeing. And during Lady Gaga’s summer tour, Born This Way Foundation receives $1 per ticket (according to Billboard, the tour grossed more than $80 million in ticket sales as of mid June).
Born This Way Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and has 13 team members who take a lean-and-mean approach to dealing with the day-to-day tasks of running the charity.
A decade ago, when Smith was first hired, Lady Gaga knew she wanted to work with young people. But rather than tell young people about their needs, Smith says Gaga was really open to just listening. And as the foundation moves into its second decade, expect this approach to remain the same. “I’m hopeful that institutions of all sizes, including philanthropic ones, will continue to find ways to authentically engage, listen, and let young people and their communities take the lead,” Smith added.