The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (also known as the MacArthur Foundation) was the twelfth largest foundation in the United States in 2014 with total assets over $6 billion.¹ From 2000 to 2017 MacArthur granted an average of just over $200 million each year to programs in support of higher education, the arts, mental health, and a large number of left-of-center causes including human rights, international affairs, disarmament, environmentalist policy, population control, abortion rights, economic development, affordable housing, and juvenile justice reform.⁷⁸as well as at least one drag performer.¹³

Lewis Beman has written in Fortune that MacArthur was a “staunch conservative with political views to suit his nineteenth-century personality.” Concurring, New York Daily News reporter Kiki Levathes described MacArthur as an “arch conservative” who complained, “The liberals have destroyed what makes this country great.”¹³

Early Political Division

When the MacArthur Foundation was created in 1970, it had six board members: William Kirby, two executives from Bankers Life and Casualty, radio commentator Paul Harvey, MacArthur’s wife Catherine, and MacArthur’s son Roderick. “I made the money,” MacArthur told the board, “you guys will have to figure out what to do with it.”¹⁵ Bankers Life president Robert Ewing, who served as the foundation’s first chairman of the board, said, “We’re mostly a bunch of Midwestern businessmen devoted to free enterprise and opposed to more government controls. That’s the way we operate our businesses, and that’s the way we will run this foundation.”¹⁶

Ewing’s plans never came to fruition. When MacArthur died of cancer on January 6, 1978, the foundation assumed his assets. Roderick MacArthur began to angle for control, and the foundation made its first two grants of $50,000 each to Amnesty International and the California League of Cities.¹⁷ Alleging conflicts of interest and misuse of the foundation’s assets by two board members who were top executives of Bankers Life, Roderick threatened lawsuits. As a compromise, the board agreed to expand. The Bankers Life executives appointed two new members, former Nixon White House Treasury Secretary William Simon and former University of Illinois president John Corbally. Rod MacArthur appointed two solidly liberal members, scientist Jonas Salk and physicist Murray Gell-Mann. Three other members with no ties to either Rod MacArthur or Bankers Life were appointed, Ford administration Attorney General Edward Levi, former M.I.T. president Jerome Wiesner, and former First National Bank of Chicago board chairman Gaylord Freeman.¹⁸¹⁶

As a result of this political divide, the board quarreled over the direction of the foundation. Roderick and Simon “fought openly,” wrote Brenda Shapiro in Chicago magazine. “Board members, unable to work together, established separate fiefdoms not only for grant-making decisions but for the complex affair of getting Bankers ready for sale.” By 1981, all the conservatives except for Harvey had resigned from the board, and Roderick began to move the foundation leftward.¹⁹

Liberal Takeover and Creation of the Genius Awards

One of Roderick’s earliest initiatives was the MacArthur Fellows Program, nicknamed “Genius Grants” by the media. With the first grants in 1981, the program was ridiculed by detractors on both the left and the right. They argued that too many of the grantees, which included scientists, writers, academics, artists, and musicians, were already at the peaks of their careers. Liberal commentator Michael Kinsley complained, “Not one of the first MacArthur Fellows is suffering from lack of recognition for his or her talents… not one really faces financial obstacles to exercising his or her creativity.”⁷⁸ Additional fellows included advocates for a variety of left-of-center causes including homelessness, environmentalism, abolishing the death penalty, prisoners’ rights, and the peace movement. Writing in U.S. News & World Report, John Leo described MacArthur fellows as “gender ideologues” and “low-luster laborers in the traditional vineyards of the left.”²³

The foundation’s first president, John Corbally, supported Roderick’ MacArthur’s left-of-center agenda and launched initiatives in support of public radio, peace and security, mental health, and the environment.²⁶

Expansion of Liberal Grantmaking

MacArthur’s third president Jonathan Fanton (1999-2009), oversaw grants to organizations that opposed the death penalty, advocated for increased environmental regulation, supported public housing programs, and funded the International Criminal Court.^{27 42}

Nuclear Challenges

While MacArthur Foundation does provide some grants to centrist organizations like the Center for Strategic and International Studies and center-right organizations like the Hudson Institute to study nuclear non-proliferation, most of the foundation’s grants go to left-leaning organizations like the Brookings Institution, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Public Integrity, Federation of American Scientists, Fund for Constitutional Government, Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation and Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Ploughshares Fund, and Natural Resources Defense Council.

American Democracy

MacArthur launched an American Democracy project from 2012-2016, granting more than $30 million to mostly left-leaning advocacy organizations focused on voting rights. Grantees included the American Civil Liberties Union, American Democracy Program, Advancement Project, Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, Democracy 21, Voting Rights Institute, and Justice at Stake.⁵⁰ Yield Giving Open Call is a $250 million initiative started in March 2023 by Lever for Change and MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. The initiative was created so that nonprofits could apply for donations to be used to improve their communities in areas including healthcare, economic development, education, and housing. Scott has admitted to using the initiative as a means of donating her wealth towards nonprofits that register in order to create a, “new pathway to support…organizations making positive change in their communities.” ⁵³Rushton, Katherine. “Marjorie Scardino: the softly-spoken American who rose to the top of Pearson.” The Telegraph. Published October 06, 2012. Accessed March 31, 2018. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/9591486/Marjorie-Scardino-the-softly-spoken-American-who-rose-to-the-top-of-Pearson.html