History of the Rockefeller Family Fund
Martha, John, Laurance, Nelson, and David Rockefeller created the Rockefeller Family Fund (RFF) in 1967. Since then, RFF has worked at the cutting edge of advocacy across our program areas. Explore the timeline below to learn more about our history as a creative grant maker and our role in the nonprofit and funding communities.
July 6, 1967
Signed Certificate of Incorporation.The Rockefeller Family Fund is incorporated, with an early focus on the problems of housing and education in the New York and Boston metropolitan areas, where many of the first trustees lived.
1967
Left to right: Laurance Rockefeller, Nelson Rockefeller, John E. Lockwood, unidentified, Dana Creel, David Rockefeller. Credit: Bob Wands, photographer.Dana S. Creel becomes the first employee of RFF, serving until 1972.
1971
Martha Baird RockefellerMartha Baird Rockefeller leaves a large bequest to the Rockefeller Family Fund, establishing its endowment.
June 1971
Trustees establish the five program areas in which the fund will make grants going forward: Arts-Public Aesthetics Program (ended in 1977), Education Program (ended in 1980, though briefly revived from 1988-1990), Equal Opportunity – Women Program, Conservation Program, and Institutional Responsiveness.
1972
Robert ScrivnerRobert Winston Scrivner appointed Director of RFF.
1972
Letter from Ruth Bader Ginsberg.RFF initiates support for the ACLU Women's Rights Project, led by Ruth Bader Ginsberg. The project establishes legal prohibitions against sex discrimination in the United States through a series of landmark court cases.
1974
Along with the John and Elizabeth Bates Cowles Foundation, RFF funds the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund as it launches a major national public service advertising campaign to fundamentally challenge the misconceptions about the role of women in the economy. The campaign is conducted in partnership with the Advertising Council and includes print, radio and television ads.
1979
RFF supports class action suits about the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Through a grant to American University Law School’s National Veterans Law Center, RFF supports Vietnam veterans exposed to the toxic substance dioxin. Veterans are eventually awarded $180 million, the largest amount won by a class of claimants for wrongful injury up to this time.
December 1979
Florence Howe, center, founder of the Feminist PressRFF provides support to the Feminist Press to study the quality of books published for eight-to-twelve-year-olds aimed at enhancing self-worth during this critical phase of development. Feminist Press also creates a critically annotated bibliography of significant books for this key age group.
1985
RFF grantee International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War receives the Nobel Peace Prize for uniting physicians from both sides of the Cold War divide to raise public awareness of the medical and environmental consequences of nuclear war.
January 1985
List of Scriver Award receipients.In memory of Robert Scrivner, the Council on Foundations creates the Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking to memorialize Scrivner's innovations in philanthropy.
1985
Donald K. Ross, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, public interest lawyer, and founder of the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) as well as a dozen other state-based PIRGs, is appointed as the Rockefeller Family Fund's next Director. He is the first public interest advocate to lead a national foundation.
1985
RFF supports the Tobacco Products Liability Project. The project is one of the first to assert that tobacco companies should be held accountable for the fact that smoking cigarettes is causing millions of Americans to sicken and die.
1985
RFF grantee the Women’s Legal Defense Fund drafts the Family & Medical Leave Act, granting 12 weeks of job-protected, unpaid leave to employees welcoming a new child or managing medical needs. This launches a nine-year struggle to enact this ground-breaking bill, which culminates in the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.
April 1986
RFF is one of the first funders of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), founded to promote government and corporate accountability by supporting and protecting whistleblowers. GAP remains the premier whistleblower-support organization in the country.
1986
The Board establishes the Economic Justice for Women program area, focusing specifically on pocketbook issues such as equitable pay for women, child care assistance, non-traditional employment, and family leave.
1986
The Board establishes a new Citizen Education and Participation program area to support innovative, nonpartisan efforts to help citizens exercise their right to vote. Groups like Human SERVE receive support to increase voter registration by registering people at social service centers and motor vehicle offices.
1987
RFF, in partnership with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and other foundations, establishes the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) and hosts EGA, which provides a network for environmental funders working to achieve a sustainable world, as an RFF project from 1988 through 2007.
January 1, 1991
RFF becomes the first organization in the nation to change its tax status from “private foundation” to “public charity,” expanding RFF’s ability to promote social change and creating the legal framework for new forms of collaboration with advocates and funder colleagues.
1995
RFF launches Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan federal budget watchdog organization led by Rafael DeGennaro and Jill Lancelot. TCS will become known for blocking funding for “The Bridge to Nowhere” in Southeast Alaska, among other achievements.
1996
RFF provides one of the first grants to Working Today, an organization founded by soon-to-be MacArthur “genius” award winner Sara Horowitz. Working Today offers a way for independent, part-time workers, who often lack the benefits afforded to traditional employees, to organize. In 2001, Working Today will launch the Freelancers Union to help freelancers develop new models to obtain benefits and improve compensation for independent workers.
1999
RFF provides the early seed money for the Hudson Riverkeeper to expand nationally under the name Waterkeeper Alliance. The Alliance is now an international organization.
1999
Lee Wasserman is appointed as the next Director of RFF.
1999
RFF creates the Environmental Enforcement Project to advocate for enforcement and implementation of federal environmental laws and regulations. The former head of civil enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency, Eric Schaeffer, assumes leadership in 2002 and the project's name changes to the Environmental Integrity Project. In 2004, EIP becomes its own non-profit organization and goes on to protect millions of citizens from a range of environmental pollutants.
2002
After the collapse of Enron & WorldCom RFF builds the campaign Restore the Trust to help pass the Sarbanes-Oxley reform bill, which ushers in a new era of corporate transparency and responsibility of corporate officers for financial management practices and reporting. The bill also includes the largest expansion of whistleblower protection in U.S. history.
2003
In partnership with Nick Lemann, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, RFF creates the project Campaign Desk to monitor and correct inaccurate reporting in the 2004 presidential campaign. According to Lemann, the project starts a new era of “accountability journalism.”
2005
Rick Piltz blows the whistle and resigns from the Bush Administration over political interference in government science reports on climate change. RFF provides start-up funding for Piltz’s Climate Science Watch project within GAP. In 2006, Piltz is awarded the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling for his work to prevent the politicization of climate science reporting in the federal government.
2005
RFF launches its National Coal Campaign, aimed at stopping plans to build hundreds of new coal-burning power plants. The scope of the project later expands to address the entire coal life cycle, including the mining, transport, and disposal of coal. With RFF’s support, advocates successfully stop proposals to build new coal plants in Florida, Iowa, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, South Carolina and Georgia, as well as coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest and in the Gulf of Mexico.
2006
RFF convenes a panel of military generals and admirals to analyze the national security risks of climate change. An analysis of the topic - National Security and the Threat of Climate Change – is published in 2007 in partnership with the CNA Military Advisory Board. Following publication of this report, climate security threats become regular features of military and intelligence-community assessments of the major risks to global stability and the New York Times recognizes climate security as one of the “critical concepts” of 2007.
May 2006
RFF is one of the first funders of MomsRising (founded by Joan Blades & Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner), an online organization designed to advocate for public policies to address the needs of families. The group’s membership quickly grows to more than one million people across the country.
2007
With support from the Growald Family Fund, RFF launches the Power Plant Finance Project. The project conducts groundbreaking research and analysis of the financial and economic risks of coal-fired power plants, and provides training in financial analysis for a new generation of environmental advocates. In 2013 it becomes an independent organization, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which expands its substantive scope to all fossil fuels and its geographical scope to every continent except Antarctica.
Summer 2008
RFF provides one of the first grants to Healthcare for America NOW!, or HCAN. The work of HCAN is seen as instrumental in passing the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare).
2008
Working with colleagues, RFF develops the concept of and starts a campaign for automatic universal voter registration. While a federal bill falls just short of passage, the idea takes hold and is passed in several states, including Oregon, Virginia, Vermont, and California. It is now considered the gold standard for voter registration practices.
2010
A political cartoon from the Fair Districts Florida campaign.RFF is one of the earliest funders of Fair Districts Florida, an ultimately successful effort to amend Florida’s constitution via ballot initiative to require creation of a nonpartisan redistricting commission. The initiative helps fix one of the most misrepresentative electoral maps in the country.
2011
Connecticut becomes the first state in America to require a right to earn Paid Sick Leave, after a multi-year effort by advocates. RFF is the major funder and a strategic partner in the campaign.
2012
RFF launches the Pathway Forward project to help the environmental community better understand how to improve its chances of enacting effective climate policy. Nick Lemann, then-Dean of Columbia University’s Journalism School, and Theda Skocpol of Harvard University co-chair the project. It results in Skocpol’s paper “Naming the Problem: What Will It Take to Counter Extremism and Engage Americans in the Fight against Global Warming.”
2013
Responding to a sustained effort by advocates, New York City passes a paid sick leave bill that provides over 1.1 million New Yorkers with this important workplace right. RFF’s funding is critical to the campaign’s victory.
2013
RFF’s grantees Democracy North Carolina and the NAACP successfully fight their state legislature’s voter suppression efforts. The effort culminates in a federal appeals court ruling striking down the state’s voter ID law, which also rolled back early voting and eliminated same-day registration, finding that the law intentionally targeted African American voters “with almost surgical precision.” Moreover, the arguments of RFF grantees help convince the Supreme Court to invalidate two of North Carolina’s Congressional districts, finding that they were racially gerrymandered.
November 2013
After the William B. Wiener, Jr. Foundation worked with RFF for many years on issues related to the environment and civil liberties, the RFF board approves a resolution to incorporate the Foundation as a supporting organization of RFF.
2014
RFF funds the Columbia School of Journalism’s Energy and Environmental Reporting Project, a wide-ranging effort by investigative reporters to discover what the fossil fuel industry knew about climate science and when they knew it.
2015
In an initiative created by RFF, the Columbia Journalism School in partnership with The Los Angeles Times, and RFF grantee InsideClimate News, publishes several articles showing that ExxonMobil did cutting-edge climate science research and had a sophisticated understand of the reality and danger of global warming as early as the 1970s. The reporting further demonstrated that the company engaged in a multidecade effort to confuse the public about climate science. This becomes the basis for the #ExxonKnew Campaign, to highlight these findings and push for accountability.
2015
Following the RFF-funded investigative reporting that discovered what ExxonMobil knew about climate change and its tactics to manipulate the public, New York and Massachusetts attorneys general open investigations into ExxonMobil for potentially misleading the public and investors about the risks of climate change.
2015
RFF establishes the Women Effect Fund, which promotes donor collaboration on an intersectional approach to achieving women’s equality.
March 2016
RFF announces its intent to divest from fossil fuels.
November 2016
RFF’s support for the community organizing group LUCHA helps Arizona become the first state in the Southwest to establish a paid sick leave law, guaranteeing that over a million people receive the right to paid sick leave. Since RFF’s first victory in Connecticut in 2011, a total of 7 states and 31 cities have passed such laws, covering more than 14 million Americans. RFF is the largest funder of paid sick leave work in the country.
December 2016
Former RFF President David Kaiser on CBS This Morning.David Kaiser and Lee Wasserman publish two articles in the New York Review of Books that describe ExxonMobil’s path from climate science leader to sponsor of a multi-decade effort to deceive the public about climate change; they also detail the company’s attempts to intimidate the civil society organizations that have exposed its deceptions. The articles gain significant public attention and are cited by Senator Tim Kaine during Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson’s confirmation hearing to be Secretary of State. Tillerson refuses to answer Kaine’s questions.
February 2017
RFF creates a new organization, the Center for Climate Integrity, to lead efforts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the climate damage they caused. The organization’s work leads to dozens of public interest actions filed by states and municipalities against the companies.
November 2017
In partnership with the Open Society Foundations and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, RFF launches the Local Solutions Support Center to counter the misuse of preemption and strengthen local democracy.
May 2018
RFF grantee Conservation Law Foundation files a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil for violating the Clean Water Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act by failing to fortify its Everett, MA, oil storage terminal against climate change risks its own science predicted. The suit links ExxonMobil’s knowledge about climate change risks to specific local harms that nearby communities face due to the company’s inaction. Exxon will eventually settle the litigation, agreeing to terminate the use of the facility, remove the infrastructure on the site, remediate the hazardous waste left behind, and provide resources to a community benefit fund.
July 2018
Rhode Island becomes the first state to file a climate damages lawsuit against major fossil fuel companies.
September 2018
RFF founds the Democracy Project, which ultimately becomes the Democracy & Power Innovation Fund.
December 2018
December 2018, RFF hosts the first gathering of what would become the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas, to raise awareness of the promote alignment among climate funders about oil, gas, petrochemicals, and plastics.
June 2020
Minnesota files a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute based on consumer protection claims, accusing them of fraudulently misleading consumers and the public about climate change for decades.
2020
DPI Fund launches the DPI organizing lab with 12 base-building organizing groups to identify the core practices of their power-building work that could be measured and visualized and that are common across regions and constituencies. These groups explicitly seek to build a base of constituents who can wield long-term political power independent of which political party is in office, starting at the local and state levels but with national impact.
2021
After the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the need for family friendly economic policies, RFF’s grantees are instrumental in ensuring that Congress provides emergency funding for child care centers in the American Rescue Plan Act.
February 2022
Long-time RFF grantee, the Environmental Integrity Project launches Oil & Gas Watch. Oil & Gas Watch is a database and news site which tracks and provides public records for hundreds of proposed oil, gas, petrochemical, and pipeline projects throughout the country.
May 2023
Governor Tim Walz signs the paid family and medical leave bill into lawAfter ten years of investing in a public education campaign on the issues in Minnesota, RFF grantees pave the way for the passage of paid sick days and paid family and medical leave.
September 2023
The Democracy and Power Innovation (DPI) Fund publishes Power Metrics: Measuring What Matters to Build a Multiracial Democracy, a research report that presents case studies of how organizations are understanding and measuring the strategies most effective for building their power and the impact of wielding that power in public.
November 2023
The Ohio Organizing Collaborative uses values and political identity research created by the DPI Fund in its voter education and outreach program.
January 2024
President Joe Biden announces a pause on approvals for pending gas export terminals until further analysis is completed by the Department of Energy and credits frontline communities and young people for their advocacy.
May 2024
Paul Burns, the Executive Director of Vermont Public Interest Research Group, speaks at the "Make Big Oil Pay" campaign kick-off event to support the creation of a Vermont Climate Superfund Vermont becomes the first state to enact a Climate Superfund Law, a concept RFF created and built a campaign to enact, representing the first time that a government anywhere in the world is requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for the climate damages they have caused.