OVERVIEW: The Rosenkranz Foundation supports the advancement of conservative and libertarian public policy in the United States. It also supports the arts, particularly Asian art, and a small number of higher education initiatives.
IP TAKE: This modest, private funder primarily supports its established initiatives, although it does make grants to right-leaning organizations. Grantseekers may find it difficult to pique this funder’s interest, especially if their work is left of center or progressive. Rosenkranz’s children are also very active in philanthropy and worth watching. This is not an accessible funder, but their contact information has been provided below.
PROFILE: The Rosenkranz Foundation was established in 1985 by Wall Street financier Robert Rosenkranz, CEO of Delphi Financial Group. He began his career as a tax attorney at Cahill, Gordon & Reindel, and worked as an economist at the RAND Corporation. He then joined Oppenheimer & Co., where he advanced to the position of general partner before forming his own private equity firm, Rosenkranz & Company. In 1987, his firm acquired Delphi Financial Group. Delphi was sold to Tokio Marine Group in 2012, and Rosenkranz continues to serve as its chief executive officer.
The foundation’s mission is to support “the highest levels of achievement and innovation in public policy, higher education and the arts” and promote “fresh and effective intellectual perspectives.” Its primary areas of interest are public policy, higher education, and the arts.
Grants for Civics and Democracy
The Rosenkranz Foundation carries out its grantmaking for democracy-related efforts through its Public Policy interest area. Many of these grants skew toward the right politically. Notable among these is the Translation Project, through a partnership with the Cato Institute and Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, which aims to translate seminal texts by authors like Adam Smith, Voltaire, Milton, Locke, and Spinoza into Arabic and Farsi for distribution in the Middle East. The Rosenkranz foundation also funds Intelligence Squared, a debate series distributed through NPR and PBS, and several policy-related publications. Grantees include the Manhattan Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Cato Institute, and Policy Exchange in London.
Rosenkranz sits on the board of the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy. Perhaps most notably, Rosenkranz started Intelligence Squared U.S., a public policy debate series that reaches a national audience. The Rosenkranz Foundation is also the site of an initiative called the Translation Project, which starts with assumption that “the war on terror is a war of ideas.” The initiative has supported the Cato Institute’s Lamp of Liberty, whose aim is to translate the works of Adam Smith, Voltaire, and others, into Arabic. It’s also worth noting that Rosenkranz’s son, Nicholas, is a professor of law at Georgetown, and a senior fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute. Rosenkranz’s daughter, Stephanie, meanwhile, is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Grants for Higher Education
The foundation’s Higher Education grantmaking supports several education initiatives, primarily at Yale University, the founder’s alma mater, including the Rosenkranz Writer-In-Residence Program at Yale University, which brings “prominent authors, critics, playwrights, journalists, screenwriters, essayists and social commentators to Yale on a temporary residential basis” to interact with “students through seminars, lectures, readings and office visits.” The higher education program also funds the Yale Quantitative Reasoning & Science Education Project, and The Rosenkranz Shakespeare Fund at Phillips Academy Andover’s Department of Theatre and Dance.
Rosenkranz has also started the Yale Quantitative Reasoning & Science Education Project and has funded the creation of 20 new courses, as well as providing “pedagogic support for the faculty members interested in creating them.” Rosenkranz also funded the construction of Rosenkranz Hall, the home of Yale’s international relations department.
Apart from Yale, the couple recently supported New York Law School and Prep for Prep, which helps children of color gain entry to private schools. This foundation does not appear to invest in public education, but rather in organizations with which family members are affiliated.
Grants for Arts and Culture
Much of Rosenkranz’s funding for The Arts focuses on art broadly; however, it prioritizes Asian art. Some of the general arts and culture initiatives funded by this program include the Video Arts Initiative, which “supports the exhibition, study and conservation of modern and contemporary video art.” The foundation’s predilection for Asian art is evidenced in its support for “The Art of Mu Xin: Landscape Paintings and Prison Notes,” an exhibition organized by the Yale University Art Gallery, and its “funding for a series of large-format, fully-illustrated books entitled The Culture & Civilization of China published by the Yale University Press.” Also, the foundation “has contributed to The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s purchase of the Gilman Collection of photographs, including photographs by Lois Conner,” and donated Chinese paintings to the Harvard University Art Museums.
Alexandra Munroe is prominent in the arts world and is a senior curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim Museum. Alexandra was raised in Japan, and is also a former vice president of the Japan Society, New York, and former director of its museum. The couple has supported the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, as well as the Parrish Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, among others.
Important Grant Details:
The Rosenkranz Foundation’s grants generally range from $10,000 to $100,000. The Rosenkranz Foundation does not accept unsolicited requests for funding. See a list of organizations and programs supported by the foundation here.
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