It’s no secret that philanthropists can influence each other. This was part of the spirit when Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett first launched the Giving Pledge, and it animates all sorts of other donor circles and collectives, including Michael and Xochi Birch’s Battery Powered, in which wealthy members nominate giving themes and contribute to local, national and international nonprofits.
It’s also no secret that most major individual donors are white and male. Things are changing, however, and it’s a philanthropic shift we’ve called out often. So it stands to reason that as more major donors of color arrive on the scene, there will be a broader pool from which to draw ideas and inspiration.
In 2019, Robert F. Smith, the richest Black American, made a surprise move to wipe out the student loan debt of the nearly 400-member Morehouse College class of 2019. A year later, in 2020, fellow black Wall Streeter Frank Baker and his wife Laura Day made a $1 million gift to Spelman College, the Atlanta-based HBCU for women. Baker says the donation was inspired by Smith, who wrote on social media: “So proud of my brother Frank Baker and congratulations to the Spelman Class of 2020!”
We’ve been keeping an eye on Frank Baker’s evolving philanthropy for a while now, and named him one of our 10 Rising Philanthropists of Color. A Goldman Sachs alum just like Smith, Baker was a managing director at Ripplewood Holdings LLC, a global private equity firm, and went on to cofound Siris Capital Group, a middle-market private equity firm.
Born in 1972, Baker still has plenty of runway to expand his giving and build out a formal family foundation. But getting a handle on what he’s into now will be useful for when his philanthropy kicks into higher gear down the line. As a sign of things to come, Baker and Day made another big gift to an HBCU earlier this year.
I recently spoke with Baker about what inspired that gift, the mission of his growing philanthropy, and where he sees it all going.
A Detroit beginning
Baker grew up outside of Detroit, Michigan. His mother owned a beauty salon and his father worked for Ford, rising from foreman to plant manager. He calls them entrepreneurs at heart who instilled in him the value of hard work and determination. In terms of philanthropic lessons, he says that kind of language was never explicitly used, but he saw his parents helping out where they could.
“They made donations at church. They were the backbones of their families. They helped out in their community. My parents were the go-to people,” Baker says.
Baker attended Detroit Country Day School and then public high school in the predominantly white suburb of Bloomfield Hills. He went on to major in economics at University of Chicago, where he also played football. But it was a chance meeting with a recruiter from Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (SEO), he says, that really helped change the trajectory of his life.
Founded in 1963, SEO is a nonprofit that provides educational and career programs to young people from underrepresented communities. And through the nonprofit, after his sophomore year, he worked as a summer intern at Goldman Sachs in New York. It was his first time in the Big Apple, getting his feet wet in the heart of Wall Street.
Unsurprisingly, some of Baker’s earliest philanthropic gifts were to SEO, where he joined the board. After graduating from SEO in 1992, Baker accepted a full-time position at Goldman Sachs in the mergers and acquisitions department in 1994.
“I never even would have been to New York if it weren’t for SEO. It was literally a life-changing event for me. I gave them what I could at the time and it grew from there. I wanted them to continue to expand and touch more kids,” Baker explains.
Education and access
Baker’s philanthropy then touched his alma mater, University of Chicago, where Baker and Laura Day’s $7 million gift endowed undergraduate scholarships and internships for lower-income students. Each year, several students are selected to receive Frank Baker and Laura Day New Leader Odyssey Scholarships and New Leader Odyssey Internships, as well as an annual stipend for summer research, travel or internships.
Baker calls this gift a big inflection point, when he was able to speak fully to his philanthropic mission. “My giving is centered around education, leveling the playing field, and providing more access. Laura and I wanted to make sure we were consistently giving back,” he says.
The couple has also given to Spelman College, Florida A&M University (FAMU) and Studio Museum in Harlem, where Laura, an interior designer, sits on the board. Baker says that Laura often drives the couple’s giving on the arts and cultural side. In addition to their scholarship gift to Spelman, the couple made a gift naming the Frank Baker and Laura Day Baker Theater Performance Room at the Center for Innovation & the Arts.
Then, in the spring of 2022, the Bakers made a $1.2 million donation to Florida A&M to establish the Frank and Laura Baker Graduation Fund, which will provide funding for students who are qualified to graduate in four years but have an outstanding account balance. The couple recently took up residence in Florida and Baker wanted to support the school, one of the biggest HBCUs in the country.
Baker stressed the importance of being creative in his giving.
“We wanted to make sure that students who were on the path to graduate in four years, graduated in four years. Because that was one of the key metrics Florida used to determine who would get state funding,” Baker explains.
In a country where young people overall are saddled with student debt, the burden is even higher in Black communities.
“That was the power of Robert’s gift to Morehouse, which I kind of ripped off for Spelman and FAMU, but on a smaller level,” Baker says.
Baker hopes that these students, now unencumbered by debt, can get into careers and start giving back more quickly themselves. “It’s up to us to actually train the younger generations and show them the power it has for our community. And the easiest ones to touch are those who benefited from these gifts. It’s my expectation that they pay it forward.”
Looking Ahead
Not even 50, Frank Baker is only getting started with his philanthropy and has plenty of runway to become a major philanthropist. On the question of whether the family is going to establish a family foundation, Baker says they are in the early days of getting it up and running. And in the meantime, he and his wife are still focused on making individual donations.
“This is going to sound trite, but the goal is to make a difference, right? That’s the point. It’s a bit of a long game because we’re making investments now and we will see how they pay off for years to come. I want to do more on a broader scale,” Baker added.