John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

History

John D. MacArthur owned Bankers Life and Casualty and other businesses, as well as considerable property holdings in Florida and New York. His wife, Catherine T. MacArthur, held positions in many of these companies. Their attorney, William T. Kirby, and Paul Doolen, their CFO, suggested that the family create a foundation to be endowed by their vast fortune. One of the reasons MacArthur originally set up the Foundation was to avoid taxes.

When MacArthur died on January 6, 1978, he was worth in excess of $1 billion and was reportedly one of the three richest men in the United States. MacArthur left 92 percent of his estate to begin the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The composition of the Foundation’s first board of directors, per MacArthur’s will, also included J. Roderick MacArthur, John's son from his first marriage, two other officers of Bankers Life and Casualty, and radio commentator Paul Harvey. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine, later joined the Foundation's board of directors.

MacArthur believed in the free market. However, MacArthur did not spell out specific parameters for how his money was to be spent after he died. MacArthur told the Foundation's board of directors, "I figured out how to make the money. You fellows will have to figure out how to spend it."

Between 1979 and 1981, John's son J. Roderick MacArthur, an ideological opponent of his father with whom the elder MacArthur had an acrimonious relationship, waged a legal battle against the Foundation for control of the board of directors. The younger MacArthur sued eight members of the board, accusing them of mismanagement of the Foundation's finances. By 1981, most of the original board had been replaced by members who agreed with J. Roderick MacArthur's desire to support liberal causes. This ultimately resulted in the creation of what, in 2008, historian and conservative commentator Martin Morse Wooster called "one of the pillars of the liberal philanthropic establishment." In 1984, MacArthur again sued the board of directors, asking a Cook County circuit court to liquidate the entire MacArthur Foundation. He dropped the suit later that same year when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Personnel

John E. Corbally, the first president of the Foundation and later board chairman from 1995 to 2002, was followed in 1989–99 by Adele Simmons, who was the first female dean at Princeton University. Jonathan Fanton, president of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, served as the Foundation's next president. Robert Gallucci, formerly dean of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, served as the Foundation's fourth president from 2009 to 2014. Gallucci was fired in 2014, with the Foundation's board announcing it was "looking for a new kind of leadership." Julia Stasch, who formerly served as MacArthur's vice president for U.S. Programs, was named the Foundation's new president in 2015. Stasch had formerly served as chief of staff to Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley.

MacArthur Fellowship

The MacArthur Fellowship is an award issued by the MacArthur Foundation each year, to typically 20 to 30 citizens or residents of the United States, of any age and working in any field, who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work." The program was initiated in 1981. According to the Foundation, the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but an investment in a person's originality and potential. MacArthur Fellows receive $625,000 each, which is paid out in quarterly installments over five years. No one can apply for the program, and, generally, no one knows if he or she is being considered as a candidate. Nominators, serving confidentially, anonymously and for a limited time, are invited to recommend potential Fellows. Candidates are reviewed by a Selection Committee, whose members also serve confidentially, anonymously and for a limited time. Ultimately, the Committee makes recommendations to the Foundation's Board of Directors for final approval.

100&Change

A competition launched on June 2, 2016, will award a $100 million grant to a single proposal designed to help solve a problem affecting people, places, or the planet. The Foundation’s competition, called "100&Change", is open to organizations working in any field of endeavor. Applicants must identify both the problem they are trying to solve, as well as their proposed solution. Competitive proposals must be meaningful, verifiable, durable and feasible. A winning proposal is expected to be selected in 2017.

Reception

In May 2016, Phillip Jackson, of the Black Star Project, criticized the MacArthur Foundation for the racial homogeneity of its grant recipients. Jackson wrote that in 2015, the foundation gave $56 million to Chicago causes, but only $375,000, or one-tenth of 1 percent, went to "black-led organizations that primarily serve Chicago's black communities." In response, MacArthur President Julia Stasch wrote that Jackson's critique "inaccurately and grossly understated our efforts to address the urgent problems that confront our city" and that "Since 1979, we have provided $1.1 billion in grants and direct impact investments to Chicago organizations—more MacArthur funds than to any other place in the world."