Patricia Bauman likes to say that her foundation, with its modest assets, is “the tugboat dragging the supertanker,” prodding bigger foundations to be less cautious. In her mind, the ideal funder is an “activist and an organizer” willing to collaborate with others and to support nonprofits that are working for systemic reform.
The longtime progressive philanthropist and faithful Democratic donor is following her own advice, shaking up the Bauman Foundation to make it more effective and more focused on preserving civic participation at a time when disinformation and voter suppression threaten democracy.
Beginning with a legacy worth about $100 million, the foundation’s giving has routinely exceeded its required 5% payout. But while her assets may be dwarfed by those of a Ford, Rockefeller or OSF, their size belies her influence. Bauman has held leadership roles on the boards of major nonprofits, and has also been willing to lend her name and money to collaborative efforts — such as protecting the Census from political interference — and convincing much larger foundations to join her.
Her life’s work began 35 years ago, after Bauman’s father, Lionel, who was the son of immigrants and went on to become a successful lawyer and real estate investor, received the “terrible diagnosis of pancreatic cancer,” she recalls. Bauman hadn’t paid much attention to the foundation her father founded in 1982, where he intended to bequeath his entire estate upon his death. She and her brother had received a “nice inheritance” from their late mother’s estate. But the degrees she earned and career paths she took made her knowledgeable about philanthropy and its potential. When she flew to see him, they discussed the foundation. She offered a couple of options — big grants to the United Jewish Appeal or to his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania. But the alternative, she advised, was to “support advocacy for social change.”
“And he turned to me — and this is a man who was dead three days later — and he said, ‘Will you do it?’”
The elder Bauman had always cared deeply about social justice and civil rights, but making his vision a reality was now in her hands. “So it’s my legacy.… he gave that to me in trust.… it was kind of pure chance that he had an experienced daughter to turn it over to,” Bauman says.
She has always thought of the foundation’s assets as her father’s money, not hers. Nevertheless, the Bauman Foundation is Patricia Bauman. As president, she operated with the help of a few consultants and virtually no staff until 2011, when she hired the foundation’s first executive director.
Her vision, using funds to support the work of nonprofits to advance fundamental reform, has been and will remain Bauman’s lodestar. Indeed, the foundation’s operating principles are clearly stated on its website: “Long-term general support; solicited proposals only; active collaboration with other foundations and nonprofits, and support for policy change. Bricks-and-mortar projects, research or direct services will be supported only rarely.”
Still, changes are afoot. Bauman is selling the handsome four-story Georgian mansion built in 1905 in Washington, D.C.’s tony Dupont Circle neighborhood, which housed the foundation and several other nonprofits. Bauman has decamped to her posh home in Manhattan, which will serve as the foundation’s headquarters. Gary Bass, long active in the D.C. nonprofit community and the foundation’s executive director since 2011, has given up that position, although he remains a consultant.
She’s also disbanded her board of advisors. The governance of the foundation is now in the hands of Bauman, her spouse, John Landrum Bryant, and Yale University Professor of Law and Environmental Justice Gerald Torres.
“Fighting for our lives to protect democracy”
Maybe the biggest change, though, is that Bauman has narrowed the scope of the foundation’s giving — she’s planning to contribute almost exclusively to groups doing civic participation “in all its guises” — addressing voting rights, election protection, election misinformation and “litigation against what’s going on in the states that are suppressing the vote.”
This is an area she’s funded for more than two decades. But with limited resources and the need to ensure that all citizens participate in their government, it’s become her highest priority. “This is a very dangerous time,” she says. “We are fighting for our lives to protect democracy.”
To that end, she’s made final grants to roughly a dozen nonprofits Bauman had funded for years, among them, the Center for Progressive Reform, the Project on Government Oversight, and the Economic Policy Institute. These groups were given about a year’s notice. They received tie-off grants in 2021, says Bass.
If these nonprofits harbor any bitterness about the potential loss of future grants, they’re not expressing it, even off the record. Rather, they’re grateful to Bauman for its years of long-term support. Bauman was an early funder of the Center for Progressive Reform, says University of Texas administrative law professor Thomas McGarity, one of the nonprofit’s founders. Even more helpful, he adds, she arranged for CPR to meet other funders. And her steady stream of grants for general support “is gold to a small organization like ours.”
Bauman does not accept unsolicited proposals, and most grantmaking in any given year is in the form of ongoing, general operating support for its grantees. Over the past 14 years alone, the foundation has given more than 840 grants totaling more than $78.6 million. The foundation, she estimates, has about $60 million left, a number that will increase once the D.C. building is sold.
Bauman has “definitely dipped into capital” to meet its philanthropic goals, she says. The foundation may or may not exist in perpetuity. “I’m still open to spending down,” she says.
And while she plans to spend her funds “very aggressively,” in the neighborhood of $6 million to $7 million per year, she likely will be giving fewer but larger grants, with most of the money going to a pooled fund focusing on civic engagement, sponsored by the Tides Foundation. Donors make recommendations about which groups they prefer, but the final decision resides with Tides.
A quiet power player on the left
But Bauman’s influence has always been larger than the foundation’s assets. She intends to continue her service on some of the most active and influential boards in the nonprofit galaxy, including the Brennan Center for Justice and the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Brennan has been sounding the alarm about voter suppression laws that have been passed in 19 states this year.
To keep up with new developments, the board holds a weekly call to hear from its executive team and President Michael Waldman. “My experience in philanthropy is helpful to [Brennan’s] organizing and policy decisions,” she says, while co-chair Robert Atkins is “a well-known figure in the New York legal community” and an “outstanding” lawyer. “Bob and I have a wonderful relationship. I think it’s a pretty good model… for many organizations where you have a need for different perspectives and you’re pressed for time.”
After serving on the board of the Natural Resources Defense Council, she saw the benefit of creating a 501(c)(4) affiliate, the NRDC Action Fund, which builds political support for NRDC’s goals. Bauman now chairs the action fund. The staff was “initially reluctant” about the decision. “That’s changed,” she says. “I think the last years of Trump made [the need] extremely clear.”
It’s not just nonprofits that have sought her advice. Bauman, a longtime Democratic donor, also chairs the board of managers of Catalist, LLC, which uses sophisticated technology to collect voter data and calls itself “the data utility powering the progressive community.”
Torres serves on three boards with Bauman. He finds her to be “utterly principled.” But sometimes, people mistake her firm views for being “set in her ways,” he says. To the contrary, he says, “her views are always subject to more information, more persuasive arguments.”
Ask people in the nonprofit world about Bauman, and you hear the same terms — very bright, with the ability to look beyond immediate problems to bigger issues. For example, she was quick to understand the importance of the 2020 Census to the larger progressive agenda, says Bass. Getting an accurate count is crucial to “fair political representation in this country, and fair distribution of federal resources, and many other things, too, like enforcement of voting rights laws.”
In 2020, the pandemic and interference by the Trump administration jeopardized the count even more.
The Bauman Foundation led the effort to build a large funding collaborative of foundations, most of which didn’t even have the Census in their portfolios. The pooled fund raised more than $117 million at the national level, and helped local activists press for a Census count that did not leave out any marginalized communities. Funder support also helped successfully block a citizenship question that would have discouraged immigrant participation.
As a result, the 2020 Census results, Bass says, while far from perfect, could have been much worse. And a more formalized Census Equity Initiative is already planning for 2030.
“What Patricia has created isn’t just a model for [the] Census,” he adds. It’s changing the way funders think about the connection between the issues they care about and the importance of a democracy that represents all stakeholders.
Indeed, collaboration has always been important to her. In 2010, Bauman was one of a handful of funders that initially invested in NEO Philanthropy’s State Infrastructure Fund to support resource-strapped grassroots groups so that they could work on civic and voter engagement year-round. “It was really Geri Mannion who did it,” Bauman demurs, referring to her good friend and head of the Carnegie Corporation’s democracy program. The other funders just gave “to help Geri enlarge the pool.” The fund now has more than $140 million from 40 funders supporting more than 140 state-based and national nonpartisan groups in 17 states.
Thrust into philanthropy
Bauman hadn’t been groomed by her father for her position. But her education and job history turned out to be the perfect training for her lifelong role. After graduating from Radcliffe/Harvard University, she earned a graduate degree in public health from Columbia University and a law degree from Georgetown University.
Her first job out of college was in New York Mayor Robert Wagner’s administration, where she worked as a liaison to the poverty program. She also worked for Mayor John Lindsay, helping with the administration of New York’s abortion law, which legalized the procedure in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade.
Bauman went on to work for New York Sen. Jacob Javits, serving on the staff of what is now called the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Javits was the ranking Republican senator on that committee, she recalls, remarking that “they don’t make Republicans like Javits any more.” It was in that job that she learned how important citizen activists were to achieving reform.
Consulting for the Milbank Memorial Fund reinforced that notion. At that time, Milbank was focused on occupational health for migrant workers. Instead of using its grants to build a clinic, or do yet another epidemiologic study, the foundation gave its money to the Texas Center for Policy Studies, which advocated for better state pesticide laws.
Foundations are often too timid about supporting nonprofits that do nonpartisan advocacy, she says. “It’s easier to fund your local clinic than think about change.”
Another part of the Bauman approach is giving general support. “Nonprofits need money to meet basic needs, like overhead,” she says. “Somebody’s got to buy the paper towels.” But giving this way also benefits the foundation. “If a grantee does something wrong, crosses a line, you’re not liable. You haven’t told them what to do with the money.”
The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals, but Bauman said she’d hear about worthy nonprofits from foundation colleagues and through other relationships. Bass, who ran the transparency nonprofit OMBWatch and had an office in Bauman’s building, became an advisor and friend. “We were in and out of each other’s offices all the time,” she says.
Treat grantees with respect
Bauman believes that funders should behave professionally when it comes to the treatment of their grantees. Groups that apply for grants should receive timely responses. Foundations should think beyond time-limited awards for specific projects, and give more general support without artificial time limits.
It is unfair of foundations to sponsor conferences and require that their grantees pay their own way. That’s something Bauman never did, she says.
“The other thing that drives me crazy about big foundations is that they’re constantly navel gazing and reevaluating, doing strategic planning,” she says. When foundations suddenly change their funding priorities, grantees have to scramble.
She never thought that it was her money she was giving when she awarded grants.“I’ve seen program officers… who act as if it is their own money and lord it over their grantees,” she observes. “I really think that that’s wrong.… Grantees should be treated with respect.”
Bauman’s grants were never timid. In 1989, in the early days of the internet, she invested in the Right-to-Know Network, an electronic service providing public access to data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency. Her support angered two camps, Bass recalls: activists, who thought that the money should have gone to grassroots groups, and many national environmental organizations that contended that they should be the ones dispensing the data. She has also been a supporter of David Brock, the one-time conservative firebrand who repented and founded Media Matters for America. “I was very impressed by his media tracking ideas,” she says.
Some grants, in particular, give her pride. Bauman, who had worked for the AFL-CIO on occupational health, praises the work of the Labor Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles. The nonprofit ensured that vital federal transportation funds would not be diverted for light rail to reach the wealthy in L.A.’s suburbs, successfully fighting for more bus service for the working poor.
She also supported Catholic environmental theology, including a conference at Georgetown University, pleased that Pope Francis’ first encyclical embraced care for the planet.
Bauman herself grew up Jewish, but in a “very secular” household. As a college student, she explored many religions. If she ever did espouse a faith, she’d become a Catholic, she recalled thinking to herself. She ultimately did become a convert. But like her politics, her Catholicism is progressive.
Bauman’s longtime spouse, John Landrum Bryant, has played an important role in the foundation over the years, deftly handling the financial side of things, she says. In the early years, for example, Bauman’s resources were limited, but the foundation’s bottom line got a lot healthier with the sale of a large property in lower Manhattan. While the foundation lost income from building rents, the sale yielded “a huge influx of capital that had to be invested,” Bauman says.
She met Bryant, an artist and entrepreneur, at a party after she’d moved to Washington. Bryant contacted the party’s host, asking him for her contact information. Bauman tells the anecdote with relish.
The host said, “Well, you know she’s Jewish.”
That didn’t deter Bryant, a Catholic. “Well, how do I get in touch with her?”
Then the host tried a different tack. “Well, you know she’s been divorced twice.”
“Well, yeah, but I’d like her phone number,” Bryant responded.
“We’ve been together 40 years,” Bauman says.
Those years have not been without challenges. Bauman is a cancer survivor, and gives high praise to Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, not only for its excellent medical team, but also for being a “bastion of community medicine. They treat anybody and everybody who comes through the door.” She’s been a longtime board member, but may give up that commitment.
There is one other board membership she might drop — that of the American Bird Conservancy, which she supports as an effective way to bridge the political divide. “I’m not a birder,” she says,” but I think there are a lot of right wingers [who] respond to nature and maybe don’t want to destroy the land and poison the water. And I think birds are a way in, to talk to people about what they value. I’ve now persuaded ABC to set up a 501(c)(4).”
Despite these few concessions, the 80-year-old philanthropist doesn’t intend to slow down. “I just need to take naps in the afternoon.”