In February, as John Palfrey’s inbox overflowed with announcements about federal funding cuts for nonprofits, the president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation took action. The $8 billion foundation, which typically disburses grants of $400 million a year for initiatives to combat climate change, support nonprofit journalism, and push for criminal justice reform, among other causes, will bump up its giving by $80 million a year for at least the next two years.
Most of the money will go to buck up grantees “with whom we have long-term relationships so they can weather this period of disruption,” Palfrey says. He has called on similar-sized philanthropies to do the same.
A Mayflower descendant and great-great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, Palfrey has centered his stewardship of MacArthur since his arrival in 2019 on improving access and opportunity for underserved communities—precisely the kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that have been targeted for elimination by the Trump Administration. “That [focus] hasn’t changed just because of changes in Washington,” he says.
Since Palfrey took the helm, for example, the foundation’s most famous initiative, its annual $800,000, no-strings-attached “genius” grants, have gone overwhelmingly to people of color. The year before he arrived, the grantee class was 60% white.
Palfrey remains steadfast about the mission. He says, “I believe in our right and our freedom to give and invest according to our values.”