Continuing a Giving Tradition

Editor’s note: David Rockefeller, a scion of one of America’s wealthiest and most famous families and a towering figure in philanthropy, business, and foreign affairs since the 1940s, died March 20 at age 101 at his home in Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

Mr. Rockefeller’s seven decades in public life included heading Chase Manhattan Bank; serving as board chair at the Museum of Modern Art, of which he was also an influential patron; and donating hundreds of millions of dollars for higher education, the environment, and other causes. In this 2006 Chronicle profile, he talked about his family’s philanthropic history and the precepts underpinning his “philosophy of giving.”

David Rockefeller, the 91-year-old financier and last living child of John D. Rockefeller Jr., plans to announce this week what he calls the crowning touch to his philanthropy: a $225-million pledge to the foundation he established with his four brothers 66 years ago.

The donation to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund — which will be made as a bequest from his estate after his death — follows two other big gifts by Mr. Rockefeller in the past 19 months to nonprofit groups with long associations with his family. Last year he announced $100-million for the Museum of Modern Art, which his mother co-founded in 1929, and for Rockefeller University, founded by Mr. Rockefeller’s grandfather in 1901.

With those pledges, Mr. Rockefeller’s total charitable giving reaches $900-million.

The dollar amount, however, does not equal the vast philanthropy of his grandfather or father, who combined donated more than $10-billion in today’s dollars. Such giving, which was derived from the massive fortune the family generated in the oil business, established the Rockefeller Foundation, in New York, which is no longer connected to the family, as well as the University of Chicago and the Cloisters, a collection of medieval artifacts in Manhattan.

‘Thinking About the Future’

In an interview at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund headquarters here, David Rockefeller says he wanted to announce the recipients of the bulk of his remaining fortune before he dies.

“I have to be thinking about the future, and it seemed to me this was an appropriate time to do now something that could be continued by my will,” he said.

The public announcement of the bequest plans has benefited the recipients of the gifts. Both Rockefeller University and the Museum of Modern Art have used Mr. Rockefeller’s example to motivate other people to give.

“It does encourage others of substantial means to donate to the university,” says Paul Nurse, president of the university.

Adds Glenn D. Lowry, director of the art museum: “There’s a lot of people with money who have an enormous amount of generosity — thank God for the cultural institutions in the United States — but very few have the clarity of vision and understanding of how individual philanthropy can further large institutional goals” like Mr. Rockefeller.

Mr. Lowry estimates that the $100-million from Mr. Rockefeller will help spur contributions several times that amount from the organization’s trustees and the philanthropist’s friends.

Mr. Rockefeller is even credited with providing inspiration to the world’s wealthiest donor, Bill Gates.

“His basic generosity has been an influence,” says Bill Gates Sr., the father of the Microsoft co-founder. The Gateses have met several times with Mr. Rockefeller and have modeled their giving in part on the Rockefeller family’s philanthropic focus on global problems that they felt were being ignored by governments and others, he says.

Aside from his giving, Mr. Rockefeller’s achievements have included playing a pivotal role in the growth of several venerable nonprofit institutions, including the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard University, where he has supported the institution’s Latin American-studies department.

Mr. Rockefeller says his “philosophy of giving” revolves around several key principles, some of which are drawn from his 35-year career at Chase Manhattan Bank, in New York, where he retired as chairman in 1981.

Chief among them is his view that gifts should not include requirements that they achieve immediate results. He considers them “patient capital” that may take years, or even decades, to bear fruit.

Perhaps Mr. Rockefeller’s most important rule, he says, is to support causes to which he has a personal connection. “The impulse to participate in philanthropy comes from the heart, not just from the mind,” he says. Giving “will be much less well done if it’s just an intellectual conviction.”

His most recent gift to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund will establish the David Rockefeller Global Development Fund to further the foundation’s support of projects that improve access to health care, conduct research on international finance and trade, fight poverty, and support sustainable development — causes Mr. Rockefeller has been concerned about most of his life.

The efforts Mr. Rockefeller’s gift will underwrite will be separate from the organization’s other grant-making programs, but the money will be added to the foundation’s endowment, which was $821.8-million as of August.

Global Warming

While the Rockefeller Brothers Fund will not receive the windfall until Mr. Rockefeller’s death, the philanthropist said he will underwrite other projects supported by the foundation in the meantime.

One such program is already in the works. Mr. Rockefeller and the foundation are supporting a meeting organized by the Partnership for New York City, a civic group Mr. Rockefeller helped found, on climate change next spring. The conference will bring together business leaders and mayors from around the world to brainstorm about how cities can reduce their carbon emissions.

“More and more people are recognizing it as one of the serious problems that faces the Earth and that if we don’t deal with it soon it’ll be much worse,” said Mr. Rockefeller about global warming.

He has served on the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s board, about half of which is made up of Rockefeller family members, for 47 years, and today is an advisory trustee.

The fund is widely seen as a lodestar in the nonprofit world, often trying to push the boundaries of domestic and international philanthropy.

And yet the foundation grew out of a casual, twice-yearly meeting in the late 1930s among the five Rockefeller brothers. The get-togethers were a way for them to catch up on one another’s lives and careers and discuss global affairs during the early stages of World War II.

Philanthropy was a frequent topic during the discussions. Each brother routinely donated to an array of charities; the older and more established brothers gave $1,000 or more to charity, but Mr. Rockefeller quips that he couldn’t match their generosity. Being the youngest, “I was the one who was apt to give the $100,” says Mr. Rockefeller with a laugh.

In 1940, the brothers decided to set up the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to make their giving to causes in which they had a common interest more efficient. Their father was very supportive of the idea, and in 1952 he gave $57.7-million to establish the fund’s endowment, the steady growth of which has allowed the foundation to expand its programs as the world changes.

“Even though the context of today’s global problems are so different than in the context of 1940, the fund remains relevant both to the contemporary context and relevant to the legacy of the family’s approach to philanthropy,” says Stephen B. Heintz, the fund’s president.

Cultivating a Tradition

Mr. Rockefeller, whom Forbes magazine estimates to be worth $2.6-billion, is trying to pass on his passion for philanthropy to other members of his family.

The David Rockefeller Fund, a small family foundation in New York that Mr. Rockefeller created in 1989, serves as a kind of training ground for his 10 grandchildren. It is a place where, as Mr. Rockefeller describes it, “they can cut their teeth” as junior philanthropists.

The foundation, which has a $5-million endowment, supports nonprofit organizations in Westchester and Columbia, New York State counties where Mr. Rockefeller lives when he is not in the city, and Mount Desert, Me., where he spends his summers.

Mr. Rockefeller says the best thing about the small foundation is that it gives him and the grandchildren, who range in age from 18 to 37, a chance to collaborate on issues in which they share a mutual interest.

In addition to participating in board meetings and discussions with the patriarch, each family trustee is responsible for directing $10,000 in grants a year.

“That’s a huge incentive to really participate actively in the DR Fund by the grandchildren, and they just love it,” says Richard G. Rockefeller, 57, the philanthropist’s son who is the chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Under the grandchildren’s oversight, the fund has expanded its grant making to include the arts, education, criminal justice, and the environment.

One grandchild, Miranda Kaiser, 35, says she has learned the best life lessons from Mr. Rockefeller in less formal settings. She recalls a telling moment several years ago when she accompanied him along with other nonprofit and business leaders to Russia on a trip organized by the Council on Foreign Relations.

The visit included a meeting with government officials at the Kremlin, but when their group arrived, the Russians expected the women to go furniture shopping. Mr. Rockefeller quietly moved his granddaughter to his side, said, “Stick close to me,” and sneaked her into the male-only meeting.

“He’s determined to allow access to everything he does,” she says. “He leads by example.”

Ms. Kaiser has taken that example to heart. She is the first of her generation to join the board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a fact her grandfather notes with some pride.

While Ms. Kaiser and other family members are deeply committed to nonprofit work, they admit their efforts will be much smaller than previous generations because the Rockefeller fortune has been greatly dispersed since John D. Rockefeller Sr. earned his massive wealth as head of the Standard Oil Company in the early 20th century.

“We have to temper them by a certain reality,” said Richard Rockefeller about the charitable goals of his siblings and his cousins, known collectively as the “cousins generation.”

But the cousins also have helped to reshape some of the family’s philanthropic interests, especially in the environment.

Older Rockefellers focused mainly on land conservation. The cousins generation, however, took a different approach.

“Environmental causes like protecting species, protecting habitat, and so forth became more and more important to the family, and younger generations’ advocacy for those [causes], sometimes hard-hitting advocacy, differentiated our generation from that of my father’s,” said Richard Rockefeller.

Regardless of changes in the style and scope of their giving, the Rockefellers say they will continue their long tradition of philanthropy, a generational conviction that puzzles even many of the family members.

“People ask me all the time, Why is it that your family keeps on being so philanthropic? And quite honestly, I don’t have the answer to that,” says Richard Rockefeller. “I think it’s just the strength of conviction of the founders of philanthropy — John D. and John D. Jr. and then [dad’s] generation — that just create models.”

Other people have perhaps a simpler explanation about the family’s commitment.

Says Mr. Heintz, the president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund: “I’m almost convinced it’s in the DNA.”