With Its Founder Gone and a New Leader in Place, the Robertson Foundation Is Set to Evolve

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Julian H. Robertson, Jr., the billionaire hedge fund manager whose long run of double-digit returns helped inaugurate the age of the hedge fund, died last month at 90. An award-winning philanthropist and avid donor across many issue areas, Robertson also helped set the stage for the current era of major Wall Street giving. At the same time, his legacy as a charitable donor is complicated.

Robertson’s passing comes at a turning point for the Robertson Foundation, the philanthropy he founded with his wife, Josie, in 1996. It’s one of four philanthropic foundations Robertson started, and the largest among them. For the first time in a dozen years, the fund has a new president. It is also roughly 10 months into a planning and visioning process — initiated before Robertson’s death and during which all new grantmaking is paused — that will conclude next spring.

For a foundation that sends out just as much in checks each year as better-known grantmakers like the Knight Foundation or the Schmidt Family Foundation, the work may mark the beginning of a new chapter for a large pot of philanthropic capital. It’s also one that could be set to get a lot bigger.

Robertson, a founding Giving Pledge signatory ranked by Forbes as one of the world’s most generous billionaires, reportedly had a personal fortune of nearly $5 billion. He told the New York Times it would “thrill” him to be remembered for giving his money away.

Could the Robertson Foundation newly emerge as a global funder, keen to become a better partner and looking to make a new wave of early-stage philanthropic bets with $100 million a year in spending money? Those were some of the hints its new leader, Richard Barth, previously the head of the national charter school network KIPP Foundation, shared in a conversation just a few days before Robertson’s death.

Adopting a more accessible, higher-profile stance is an intriguing possibility for a foundation that has mostly kept things low-key. However, Barth stressed that any such shifts are still under discussion. He said the foundation’s priorities — education, environment and medical research — may adjust focus, but are unlikely to change. 

“There’s little that suggests we’re way off there, but we’re taking a look at the whole,” Barth said. “Then the question is, within the work we do, given the world’s evolved a lot in 20 years, how do we want to go about doing that?”

The potential shifts ahead

More than any other change, Barth emphasized that a “generational shift” was underway. Before his passing, Robertson was “excited about the next generation stepping up,” Barth told me. The founder’s new absence, of course, underscores that point. But there remains a mix of ages among the trustees.

Robertson’s sister, Wyndham, a former Fortune magazine writer and editor, serves on the board, along with Robertson’s three sons — Alex, Jay and Spencer — and their wives, Alexandra, Claire and Sarah, respectively. The only other board member is James Freeman, an associate professor of medicine at Yale. The “Tiger Cub” John Griffin, a hedge fund manager who got his start under Robertson, left the board last year.

Part of the generational shift will involve reevaluating the foundation’s specific focuses. For instance, Barth said Robertson was “prescient” in putting funding toward climate change and methane well before other funders. Two other early bets? Teach for America, which Barth’s wife, Wendy Kopp, founded, and Barth’s former organization, KIPP, to which Robertson provided key early grants.

The family is considering to what degree their goal will be backing today’s longshots. “How we can be making some early-stage investments is one of the big questions we’ll grapple with,” Barth said. “What does that look like in 2022?”

Another topic will be the role of collaboration. Over the past two decades, there’s been a dramatic rise in the number of players in areas relevant to the foundation’s work, particularly in the climate space. Barth said there’s interest in learning more about other philanthropic work and potentially seeking leverage for the foundation’s funding. “How do we become an organization that is terrific at partnering? And is excited to work with others?” he said.

The family is also considering whether to keep the foundation’s focus on the U.S. or to look beyond its borders. In that vein, it is evaluating whether its investments have been reaching communities in need, those least likely to benefit from new innovations. 

“So many of the challenges that we face, we increasingly recognize they’re not limited by borders,” he said. “We’re going to answer that question in this next tranche.”

Who and how will the foundation fund?

Over the past 15 years, the Robertson Foundation quietly spent down its endowment from a peak of just over $1 billion to half that amount in 2020, while ramping up grantmaking into the nine-figure range for many years running. I asked Barth if there was anything to this, and particularly if the foundation intends to sunset.

“There is no sunset plan,” Barth said. “That doesn’t mean there never could be, but there’s not a sunset plan.” In fact, the aim is to set up the foundation to sustain its giving at that higher level, he told me. “I would be surprised if we’re anywhere below $100 million a year.”

In the past, the Robertson Foundation has given most of its money in multimillion-dollar grants to some of the largest institutions in the country, particularly those favored by other Wall Street billionaires. Examples include the Environmental Defense Fund, Harlem Children’s Zone and the New York Stem Cell Foundation. 

That funding is likely to continue, at least for now. While the foundation has paused new grantmaking for the time being, it still has about $200 million in long-term commitments, an amount that’s more than double its annual grantmaking. Barth said a first new round of grants will go out over the next five to six months.

Some of those long-term relationships run quite deep. EDF President Fred Krupp got an enthusiastic mention in Robertson’s Giving Pledge letter in a section about backing a successful bid for tough auto standards in California. “Fred is responsible for the most successful speculation I ever made,” Robertson wrote, high praise from a man who, you may recall, had a little bit of success betting on the stock market. 

Back in 2014, Inside Philanthropy Editor David Callahan wrote that limited disclosures made Robertson’s philanthropy a “tough nut to crack.” Little has changed — yet. The foundation does have a website, but it looks like it was designed around the time of its founding, circa 1996. The site includes no details about the foundation’s grants, hardly any names of grantees, and no identified staff members. 

Expect a transformation next year. The foundation plans to launch a new website, and while preserving Julian and Josie’s preference for putting the focus on the work and not themselves, to revamp its communications in what Barth said was another “generational shift.”

“There’s a culture of humility — that it’s not about us,” he said. “And then there’s a culture of just sort of modernizing… because there’s nothing there to hide.”

What’s next?

The Robertson Foundation is now taking its first steps into a future without its co-founder and benefactor, but with a new leader at its helm. It’s one of the largest 100 grantmakers in the country, and one of the first foundations born out of a new era of Wall Street mega-wealth. As such, the path it takes could shape how the coming generation of heirs guide their own philanthropic inheritances.

The foundation has a good footing to build upon. It has long been known for its multiyear general support, a best practice that remains an exception rather than a norm for much of the field. It was an early climate donor, even if Robertson, a Republican, backed Republicans who opposed climate action over the years, including in the election that brought Donald Trump to power. The foundation has also been a stalwart backer of young scientists struggling to find their first grants.

Flexible and trusting support, first-mover support and early-stage funding are all to be lauded. If the foundation can build upon those strengths and branch out into more equitable and field-building practices, it could start getting a lot more attention, whether it wants it or not.