Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation Grants

Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation Grants is sponsored by Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation.

Provides grants in various sectors, including education, health, and community development.

Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation | Inside Philanthropy OVERVIEW: The Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation supports higher education, medical research and healthcare institutions, cultural institutions, civic groups and a small number of education/youth organizations.

IP TAKE: The Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation is a high-capacity but low-access prospect: private, preselected and largely opaque, with no website or public grant guidelines. Its latest tax-filing indicates that it does not accept unsolicited proposals, and observed giving points to a relationship-driven foundation built around recurring institutional commitments rather than open program areas.

New York remains a major center of gravity, especially for institutions connected to the Kravises’ board, civic and philanthropic circles. But the foundation’s move to West Palm Beach, along with recent giving in Palm Beach, Tulsa and Vail, suggests a gradual expansion into communities where the couple has personal ties.

The strongest fits are large, established and board-connected institutions in medicine, biomedical research, higher education, arts and culture, civic leadership, and selective youth or education pipelines. Realistic entry points run through senior leaders, trustees, peer funders or existing grantee networks, including MSK/Rockefeller/Mount Sinai, MoMA/Lincoln Center/NY Phil/Carnegie Hall/Studio Museum, Columbia/Claremont McKenna.

PROFILE: Based in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation was established in 1985 in New York City by Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis. In 2019, the Kravises were awarded the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy for their outstanding contributions to society at large.

The son of a Jewish oil engineer from Oklahoma, Henry Kravis graduated from Claremont McKenna College and Columbia Business School before going to work at Bear Stearns, where he worked for roughly 7 years before leaving to form his own firm. He and his wife Marie-Josee Kravis, a prominent Canadian economist, are both active board members for a number of health, educational, and cultural institutions.

Along with his cousin George Roberts and investor Jerome Kohlberg, Henry Kravis created Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (now KKR), which Forbes in 2019 noted “popularized the leveraged buyout of the. 1970s and 1980s and became known as the face of Wall Street’s conquest of corporate America. ” Marie-Josee Kravis is an economist who has worked as a senior fellow and vice-chair of the Hudson Institute board of trustees.

She has also served on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The foundation supports many prestigious hospitals and cultural institutions though little is known about the foundation’s broader priorities given its lack of web presence. This funder’s grants for K-12 education and higher education closely follow its founders personal affiliations and interests.

In this light, Henry Kravis has made significant capital grants to elite private schools, among them the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. Loomis Chaffee announced in 2024 a $100 million gift from Henry R. Kravis ’63 to the school’s endowment, its largest single gift.

Though not a grant pathway in and of itself, the family established the Henry R. Kravis Center for Excellence in Teaching , administered through Claremont McKenna College, and is currently not accepting candidate suggestions. It was created with $100 million .

In higher education, the Kravis Foundation also makes substantial donations to a handful of universities, with which the family may have personal connections, including Columbia, Rockefeller University, and Claremont McKenna College. Grants for Health and Diseases The Kravis Foundation supports major medical institutions and universities in the areas of disease research and health care.

In 2016, Kravis made a $10 million donation to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and he donated another $100 million in 2022 to support the Cancer Ecosystems Project, which studies caner relapse. The foundation gave Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center $40 million to establish the Marie-Josée Kravis Center for Cancer Immunobiology in 2023.

Kravis WiSE is an institutional fellowship initiative at MSK, not as a grant program accessible to outside organizations. Other grantees include Johns Hopkins University, Rockefeller University, and Mt. Sinai Medical Center.

Grants for Arts and Culture The Kravis Foundation’s observed arts grantmaking primarily takes the form of donations to prominent cultural institutions, particularly in New York City. Past grantees include the Museum of Modern Art, the Philharmonic-Symphony Society, and the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts.

It has also supported a handful of institutions beyond New York City, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. However, all grants for the arts prioritize established and renowned institutions rather than small or community outfits.

Marie-Josee Kravis is also the president of New York’s Museum of Modern Art Board of Trustee and presides over the Marie-Josée Kravis Prize for New Music —one of the world’s most prestigious awards for emerging composers. She was named president of the Museum of Modern Art board of trustees in 2005 and became board chair in 2021 .

The New York Philharmonic’s official page says the prize is awarded to a composer for extraordinary artistic endeavor in new music. It consists of $200,000 and a New York Philharmonic commission; the orchestra also names a Kravis Emerging Composer, who receives $50,000 and a commission. This is a composer prize and commission funded by a prior $10 million gift to the NY Phil.

The official NY Phil page says that 2009 gift also supports the Kravis Nightcap series, the Marie-Josée Kravis Creative Partner position and the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence position.

The couple has given smaller donations to museums such as the Met , the Churchill Museum , the Whitney , and the Smithsonian , and other cultural organizations such as the National Actors Theatre, the Lincoln Center Theatre , Carnegie Hall, the New York Public Library, New York public TV, Playwrights Horizons, and several Jewish cultural organizations.

These donations are generally centered in New York, though a number have been to organizations based in DC or other areas. In 2019 the Kravises pledged $10 million to the restoration of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after a fire. The Henry R.

Kravis Prize in Nonprofit Leadership is a separately administered recognition program affiliated with Claremont McKenna College; its website says it is currently in transition and not accepting candidate suggestions. ” The prize recognizes extraordinary accomplishment and bold nonprofit leadership, usually an individual and sometimes an organization.

Candidates have typically come from formal nominations by invited nominators and candidate suggestions submitted through the website; however, the official “Suggest a Candidate” page currently says the Kravis Prize is “in transition” and is not currently accepting suggestions.

Past recipients include Endeavor, Helen Keller International, Right To Play, INJAZ Al-Arab, mothers2mothers, Fundación Escuela Nueva, Pratham, Afghan Institute of Learning, FAWE, BRAC and Landesa. Grants generally range from $10,000 to $100,000, but the foundation sometimes makes donations of millions of dollars to select institutions. This foundation does not maintain a website.

General inquiries may be directed to its New York City office. Working predominantly in the Northeast, this funder’s education grants typically invest in elite, private secondary schools. Marie-Josée and Henry R.

Kravis Foundation Co Eag 505 S Flagler Dr 900 WEST PALM BEACH, FL 33401 Telephone: (561) 832-9292 Enable JavaScript to continue This site uses JavaScript to verify your account, display articles, and provide other features. Please enable JavaScript or allow scripts for Inside Philanthropy, then reload the page.

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