Frequently Asked Questions

We provide a limited number of grants each year to support U.S.-based, tax-exempt non-profit organizations engaged in efforts that strongly align with our Arts, Climate, and Justice program goals. The Fund does not make grants to individuals, scholarships, international programs, or for-profit businesses.

Further, we do not make grants to hyper-local initiatives without a connection to broader national components; afterschool, summer, and other out-of-school time programs for youth; individual museum and/or art gallery exhibitions, films, concerts/concert series, or theatrical productions; diversion and re-entry programs.

For additional information about our grantmaking priorities, please see Programs.

As we only provide a small number of new grants per year, we recognized that, historically, a very low percentage of letters of inquiry that we received were ultimately funded. Therefore, in the interest of respecting prospective grant partners’ time, we do not currently accept unsolicited letters of inquiry.

We are currently prioritizing sustained support for our ongoing grant partners as we engage in a multi-year strategy development process. Please continue to check our website for updates on this process and our approach.

The David Rockefeller Fund’s Justice Fellowship was a 2017 – 2022 initiative that offered interested CUNY students directly impacted by the criminal legal system an opportunity to gain hands on grants administration experience at a family foundation and inform our Justice-related grantmaking. This initiative was managed through a grant to CUNY’s Institute for Justice and Opportunity.

We are not currently hosting new Fellows. Please continue to check our website for updates on the fellowship.

At the Fund, we believe that it is critical to align our investment portfolio with science-backed targets for climate change mitigation. With that in mind, we are taking meaningful steps to move the investment portfolio toward net zero and thus maximize our contribution to the decarbonization of the real economy. To learn more about the Fund’s climate-related investment targets to be achieved by 2025, including our commitment to a 25% reduction in carbon emissions in the investment portfolio across selected asset classes, please see the linked press release.

We are also committed to increasing and retaining a diverse pool of investment managers within the portfolio and are committed to ensuring that at least 30% of the portfolio's total assets are invested with managers that are majority-owned and/or led by underrepresented groups by 2030. Learn more about our commitment to Confluence Philanthropy's Belonging Pledge here.

The publication Leading With Love and Gratitude: The David Rockefeller Fund at 30 offers a concise history of the Fund’s evolution between 1989-2019. For more recent updates, please see Media Highlights.