For a Chicago Businessman, Philanthropy Is a Team Sport

A love of basketball helped lead John Rogers Jr. into the game of philanthropy.

When Mr. Rogers, founder of mutual-fund company Ariel Investments, first played for the Princeton University basketball team in the early 1980s, he thought mainly about his personal statistics: how many shots, assists, and rebounds he recorded.

But his legendary coach, Pete Carril, taught him that the best players put the team first. The young player absorbed the message, eventually becoming captain of the varsity team and helping the squad win key victories.

“I came home to Chicago with the attitude of wanting to be helpful, to be a good team player,” says Mr. Rogers, 58, who has donated more than $7 million to nonprofit causes and been involved with numerous charities and civic groups, mainly in his hometown.

One connection he made while at Princeton, to a teammate named Craig Robinson, is likely to involve him in Chicago’s next big philanthropic project. Mr. Rogers was an early donor to the Barack Obama Foundation — named for Mr. Robinson’s brother-in-law — and expects to help raise money for Mr. Obama’s presidential library.

Owning Stocks at Age 12

Mr. Rogers’s father, a juvenile-court judge, started giving his son gifts of stocks at age 12, whetting an interest in investing. After graduating from Princeton with an economics degree, he worked for two years as a stockbroker. Then at age 24, he rounded up investments from family and friends to start what would become the first minority-owned mutual-fund company.

Today, Ariel Investments — whose motto is “slow and steady wins the race” — manages $10 billion. Mr. Rogers was featured alongside Warren Buffett in hedge-fund manager Magnus Angenfelt’s 2013 book The World’s 99 Greatest Investors.

Mr. Rogers has directed the bulk of his philanthropy, $5 million, to the University of Chicago and its affiliated Laboratory Schools (commonly called the Lab Schools) for students in pre-kindergarten through high school. His parents are alumni of the university’s law school — where his mother was the first African-American female graduate — and he and his daughter, Victoria, attended the Lab Schools.

Mr. Rogers has served on the university’s board for 16 years; last year he ended a six-year run as chairman of the Lab Schools board, during which he helped raise a record $80 million for new buildings and programs.

“It makes sense to give to the community that you know well,” says Mr. Rogers, “to try to create opportunities for young people to have a similar experience that you had.”

The largest gift Mr. Rogers helped direct to the Lab Schools came from Mellody Hobson, Ariel’s longtime president, and her husband, filmmaker George Lucas. Through the George Lucas Family Foundation, the couple donated $25 million for the school’s new arts hall.

Mr. Rogers says his philanthropic outlook was deeply influenced by the Lab Schools, where he attended high school. “It’s a place all about ideas, intellectual inquiry, and debate,” he says. “You learn respect and trust for people who come from different backgrounds and walks of life.”

To help others who can’t afford the private high school’s price tag, Mr. Rogers donated $1 million a decade ago to endow scholarships for eighth graders graduating from Ariel Community Academy. The Chicago public charter school was formed in 1996 with the help of one of Mr. Rogers’s childhood friends, Arne Duncan, who would later serve as President Obama’s secretary of education.

The Ariel school serves a student body that is almost entirely black and largely from low-income families; 85 percent of students receive subsidized lunches.

Mr. Rogers’s company has donated $3 million to the school, which weaves financial literacy into its curriculum.

Beginning in first grade, each class learns to help manage a portfolio of investments worth $20,000; upon graduation, the principal is donated back to the next class of first graders. Graduating students make a gift to the school with some of the proceeds from the fund; the class of 2015 contributed several thousand dollars to purchase a new floor for the gymnasium. The remainder of the earnings is divided among the students. Students can opt to invest their individual portion in a college savings plan. If they do, Ariel donates $1,000 to the plan.

Accomplished Parents

Princeton has also benefited from Mr. Rogers’s philanthropy, including $1 million for athletic facilities. He served on the university’s board in the 1990s.

In 2008 Mr. Rogers was the first African-American recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Award, given to a Princeton graduate whose career exemplifies a commitment to national service.

Mr. Rogers had strong role models for civic engagement and perseverance.

An only child, his parents divorced when he was young, and he shuttled between his father’s spare studio apartment and his mother’s grand house in the city’s Hyde Park neighborhood.

His mother, Jewel Lafontant-Mankarious, participated in sit-ins to protest racial discrimination in the 1940s and was a founding member of the Congress of Racial Equality. She served as U.S. deputy solicitor general during the Nixon administration. His father, John Rogers Sr., earned the Congressional Gold Medal for his World War II service with the Tuskegee Airmen.

Financial Impact

Spreading financial literacy and building a stronger minority business community are Mr. Rogers’s key philanthropic passions, as demonstrated by his commitment to the Ariel Community Academy and other efforts. He also co-chaired a presidential advisory council aimed at strengthening young people’s financial skills. His long-term goal: develop a bigger cadre of local minority business leaders and increase urban wealth.

When “more of those kids graduate and become business leaders in our hometown,” Mr. Rogers says, “it connects to the thing we are trying to fight for.”