The Philanthropy 50 2009 Gift Profile: John M. Templeton

John M. Templeton: $573-million

Beneficiary: John Templeton Foundation

Donor’s background: Mr. Templeton was an international investor and a pioneer in mutual-funds management, who died in July 2008 at 95. He bequeathed $573-million in cash and stock to the John Templeton Foundation, in West Conshohocken, Pa.

Mr. Templeton established the foundation in 1987 to support research into the relationships between science and religion, and spirituality and health, and to support programs that promote free enterprise and character development. The foundation held nearly $822.4-million in assets at the end of 2008, and awards about $70-million in grants each year. With this large infusion of money from the bequest, the foundation is now among the 25 wealthiest grant makers in the country, with more than $1.6-billion in assets.

The foundation awarded grants last year to a wide array of nonprofit organizations including the Center for Spirituality, Theology, and Health, at Duke University, in Durham, N.C.; the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, at St. Edmund’s College at the University of Cambridge, in England; the Foundational Questions Institute, a physics and cosmology organization in New York; the Institute for American Values’ Thrift and American Culture Project, in New York; the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia; the Program on Indian Economic Policies at Columbia University, also in New York; and the SEVEN Fund, a Cambridge, Mass., group focused on finding entrepreneurial solutions to poverty.

Mr. Templeton, who was born in Winchester, Tenn., started his career on Wall Street in 1937 and created a number of lucrative investment funds. In 1972 he created the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities, which was designed to show that advances and achievement in work related to spirituality were as important as advancements in science, economics, and other disciplines. He stipulated that the monetary value of the Templeton Prize must always exceed that of the Nobel Prizes, and at a current value of approximately $1.6-million, the Templeton Prize is the world’s largest annual award given to a living person. Past winners have included the Rev. Billy Graham, the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the late Mother Teresa.

In 1992 Mr. Templeton sold his Templeton Fund to the Franklin Group for $440-million and devoted the remainder of his life to his philanthropy.

—Maria Di Mento

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