The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will provide $50 million to groups that provide food, housing, and cash to people hardest hit by the coronavirus epidemic. The humanitarian assistance is a change of gears for the foundation, which usually supports long-term health care policy change.
Richard Besser, Robert Wood Johnson’s president, said he hoped the grants illuminate the inequities in health care faced by Americans.
“For some people, what’s being asked of them to help control this pandemic is an unfair question,” he said. “People are being asked to choose between putting food on the table, paying the rent, and taking steps to protect themselves and their communities. This nation is divided between those people for whom social distancing is inconvenient and those people for whom it can be a life-or-death struggle.”
The surge of grants reflects about 10 percent of Robert Wood Johnson’s 2020 grant making budget, which was projected to be about $500 million.
The foundation, which maintained an endowment of about $11.5 billion before the market went into negative territory, will not have to sell any of its assets to make the emergency grants, Besser said.
About half of the grants should be awarded within a week, according to the foundation. The final wording of the remainder of the grant agreements is still being worked out.
“This is the largest emergency health crisis since our foundation has been in existence,” said Besser, who called the emergency funds “a different type of response for us as a philanthropy.”
Rather than going to research institutions, think tanks, and advocacy groups, the money will go to organizations with a visceral connection to people who are suffering as a result of the coronavirus.
Of the total, $5 million will go to groups in New Jersey, where Robert Wood Johnson is located. The remainder will be split among eight groups: Catholic Charities, the Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition, Feeding America, One Fair Wage, Meals on Wheels, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, National Domestic Workers Alliance, and the NDN Collective.
Since the beginning of the year, the foundation has also responded to the pandemic with two $1 million grants to the CDC Foundation to support research labs and to supply basic needs for people under quarantine.
To make the current round of emergency grants, the foundation will use money in its grant-making budget that was unallocated and money that had been earmarked for grant programs that were under development but put on hold because of the pandemic.
Besser declined to identify those programs but said all current grantees would receive their grants and that the foundation would likely have to pay out a larger percentage of its assets in grants if the market declines continue.
Robert Wood Johnson’s grants come as a growing chorus of philanthropy groups are calling for foundations to spend money in response to the crisis even if it means liquidating portions of their endowment.
Besser said the foundation is still committed to its longer-term strategy of improving America’s health and reducing health disparities. The $50 million surge, he said, comes because it is an emergency and the cash could be used to draw attention to health inequity.
“Philanthropy is not going to solve the problems of hunger, homelessness, and the lack of a living wage in America,” he said. “But through this humanitarian assistance, I hope we can draw attention to those failures of public policy.”
