John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur

I watched The News Hour on PBS last night.   I don’t watch it very often, but I do like to watch the news when I get home from work.   I’m usually there in time to get the local news on KGW (Channel 8 in Portland), but I got home a little late last night and didn’t quite get enough news from them.     The News Hour comes on at 7:00, after the local news, so I decided to watch it.    PBS is in the midst of fundraising so I also got to feel guilty about not donating to them in the last few years.  

PBS always gives the list of major donors at the end of their programs.   It’s always interesting to me to see who donates enough money to get their name listed.   The one I always hear on PBS is The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.   Who are these people?   I decided to go find out.    It seems that John D. MacArthur was one of the 3 wealthiest people in America at the time of his death in 1978.   He made his money in Insurance and Real Estate Development.    His wife Catherine worked with him throughout their lives doing bookkeeping and developing business procedures.    The latest financial information I could find shows that their foundation paid out $298M in grants in 2009.   They have paid out $100M or more every year since 1987.   This is quite a big organization with over $5B in assets.   They are in the business of giving away money.

I think I would like to start a foundation to give away my money after I’m dead.   I doubt that I will be able to have one as big as the MacArthur Foundation, but we’ll see how it goes.   There are a lot of worthy causes that need donations to survive.   I think if we all started donating a bit more we might find that it’s a little bit addictive.  I also believe that if we took personal responsibility for supporting various causes that our government would not feel the need to do it for us.