Milken Family Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Milken Family Foundation prioritizes K-12 education. Other areas of interest include Jewish music and cancer research.
IP TAKE: The Milken Family Foundation is not an accessible or approachable foundation. A significant portion of the foundation’s music and cancer research funding also goes to projects bearing the Milken name, so smaller and mid-size grant seekers will find this to be a challenging funder.
However, one in-road here for funding would be to collaborate with one of Milken’s signature programs.
PROFILE: The Milken Family Foundation (MFF) was established in 1982 by brothers Lowell and Michael Milken, who was a former Drexel Burnham Lambert banker who gained notoriety as a pioneer of “junk bonds,” as well as his subsequent felony conviction and prison sentence for U.S. securities law violations. The brothers' financial fortunes serve as the basis for the foundation’s assets. Based in Santa Monica, California, the foundation “strives to discover and advance inventive, effective ways of helping people help themselves and those around them lead productive and satisfying lives.” Milken primarily supports K-12 education, but has also given to projects related to the music of the American Jewish experience and a variety of medical research and public health causes. Grantmaking prioritizes the state of California.
Grants for K-12 Education
Education is Milken’s largest grantmaking focus area. Grantmaking for K-12 education seeks “to champion strategies that elevate education in America and around the world.” While this funder works broadly in this area, it runs some signature initiatives for the recognition of outstanding students and educators. The Milken Scholars program “promotes and supports young people as they acquire the skills necessary to make the difficult transitions from high school to college and from college to graduate school or the world of work.” The foundation also runs the Milken Educator Awards program, which recognizes educators around the country with $25,000 unrestricted awards. The program “targets early-to-mid career education professionals for their already impressive achievements and, more significantly, for the promise of what they will accomplish in the future.” Another program, the Jewish Educator Awards recognizes “K-12 teachers, administrators and other education professionals who are making outstanding contributions to the Jewish and secular education of students in BJE (Builders of Jewish Education)-affiliated day schools across Greater Los Angeles.” The foundation also created the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, which partners “with schools, districts and states to develop sustainable systems for school improvement, teacher and leader development, rubric and observation and comprehensive reform.” In addition to these signature programs, the foundation has given to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, California’s New School for Child Development and the Milken Community School, a private Jewish school in Los Angeles.
Grants for Music
Milken’s music grantmaking focuses narrowly on music of the “American Jewish experience.” Founded in 1990, the Milken Archive focuses on the “body of music that had helped shape the American Jewish experience.” It currently houses over 600 pieces of music by 200 composers. It has also “documented the history of Jewish music in America through more than 180 oral histories with composers, cantors, educators, and performers, and invested heavily in the creation of comprehensive essays and liner notes that examine the cultural and historical contexts in which this music has been created.” In addition to preserving Jewish musical history, the archive also works to “disseminate and provide access to that history.” Finally, it supports the development of research and educational materials in order to “foster a broader understanding of the artistic, historical, social, and cultural forces at play in the world of Jewish music.” Related grants have supported the archive’s affiliations and collaborations with organizations including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Los Angeles Ballet, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Art of Elysium.
Grants for Diseases
The Milken Foundation has demonstrated a strong interest in cancer research and care over the past several years. Mike Milken is the founder and chairman of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, which is also one of the largest recipients of MFF grants. Other disease-related grants have supported Stand Up 2 cancer, the Melanoma Research Alliance Foundation and Stop Cancer. The foundation has also funded FasterCures, a D.C.-based center of the Milken Institute aimed at accelerating and improving systems of medical research.
Important Grant Details:
The Milken Family Foundation made about $30 million in grants in a recent year. Grants range from $5,000 to over $1 million, with the foundation’s largest grants supporting signature or named projects. The foundation’s average grant size is about $25,000. Education is the foundation’s largest area of giving, and California appears to be an area of geographic priority. For additional information on past grantmaking, see the foundation’s recent tax filings.
This funder has a strict policy of not accepting unsolicited proposals, opting instead to support the initiatives it develops on its own and those organizations it invites to submit proposals. The foundation may be contacted through its online contact form or by telephone at 310-570-4800.
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