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Major Introductory Resources:

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Rockefeller Family Fund
By Martin Wooster
January 2005

The Price of Doing Business
By Bonner Cohen
July 2006

437 Madison Avenue
37th Floor
New York, NY
10022

Phone :212-812-4252
Email :mmccarthy@rffund.org
URL :http://www.rffund.org/

Assets: $81,732,874 (2005)
Grants Received: $6,072,593 (2005)
Grants Awarded: $6,508,912 (2005)

The Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) was incorporated in 1967 by Martha, John, Laurance, Nelson, and David Rockefeller. Its principal beneficiaries are leftwing environmentalist organizations. Several RFF Board members formerly worked for the now-defunct San Francisco-based TechRocks company, which provided information-technology support and development for a number of anti-corporate, non-profit organizations. One RFF representative sits on the steering committee of the Peace and Security Funders Group.

Recipients of RFF philanthropy include: the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the Ms. Foundation for Women: the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund; Alliance For Justice; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the People for the American Way Action Fund; the American Civil Liberties Union's Women's Rights Project; the Sierra Club; Friends of the Earth; the NARAL Pro-Choice America, Environmental Media Services; the League of Conservation Voters; the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund; the Waterkeeper Alliance; the Izaak Walton League of America; the Environmental Working Group; the Public Citizen Foundation; Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet; the Wilderness Society; the Earth Day Network; the Women's Policy Education Fund; the Women's Funding Alliance; the Women's Development Institute; Planned Parenthood; the Proteus Fund; the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund; MoveOn.org; Defenders of Wildlife; Environmental Media Services; the Greenpeace Fund; the Brennan Center for Justice; the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the League of Women Voters Education Fund; Project Vote; the Institute for Women’s Policy Research; Campaign for America’s Future; the Center for Community Change; the Center for American Progress; the National Women’s Law Center; the National Wildlife Federation; the NAACP National Voter Fund; the New World Foundation; Earthjustice; the Friends of the Earth Foundation; the Wilderness Society; the Institute for Policy Studies; the Center for Public Integrity; TechRocks; the Public Citizen Foundation; Back From the Brink; the Environmental Policy Institute; the Pew Wilderness Center; Ozone Action; the Community Rights Council; the Dakota Resource Council; the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy; Working for Equality and Economic Liberation; the Environmental Health Fund; the Friends Committee on National Legislation Fund; the Lawyers’ Alliance for World Security; Native Action; the People for the American Way Action Fund; and the Women's Foundation, Inc.

RFF’s grant-making, which is designed to "suppor[t] advocacy programs of national significance that are likely to yield tangible public policy results," is divided into four separate program areas:

(a) The Environment Program "emphasizes public education [about] the risk of global warming, conservation of natural resources, protection of health as affected by the environment, meaningful implementation and enforcement of the nation's environmental laws, and public participation in national environmental policy debates.” In practice, this program supports numerous organizations committed to the anti-capitalist agendas of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is "not clean air and clean water, [but] rather ... the demolition of technological/industrial civilization."

(b) The Institutional Responsiveness Program seeks "to help provide organizations with the means to affect the policies and actions of public and private institutions.” Examples of past grants in this area include “a campaign to make tobacco companies accountable for the health effects of smoking”; “support for efforts to ensure that government records are open to the public"; “funding to aid groups to gain access to workplace-giving programs”; and “grants to promote greater accountability of financial institutions to small investors.”

(c) The Citizen Participation Program "encourages the organized participation of citizens in government, and seeks to make government more accountable and responsive." According to RFF, grants in this program area “support the efforts of nonpartisan organizations to help citizens exercise the right to vote, advocate for structural improvement to systems of government, and otherwise increase opportunities to participate in public policy formation." But in reality, the beneficiaries of this program's philanthropy are highly partisan. Among them are the Brennan Center for Justice; the People for the American Way Fund; the Public Citizen Foundation; the Center for Community Change; Alliance for Justice; the Center for American Progress; and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

(d) The Economic Justice for Women program "seeks to provide women with equitable employment opportunities and to improve their work lives." This program is founded on the premise that women in the United States are routinely and systematically discriminated against -- socially, professionally, and economically. RFF has initiated "a national advocacy, research, and public education effort aimed at achieving pay equity" -- a campaign based upon the axiom that women are paid less than men for doing equal work.

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