Three Years After His Passing, an Entertainment Mogul’s Estate May Be Ramping Up Giving
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late Hollywood mogul jerry perenchio’s family foundation recently made some big gifts to fresno state. Kristopher Kettner/shutterstock
Every now and then, we come across a notoriously publicity-shy billionaire whose philanthropic profile significantly expands after his passing. Consider businessman and entertainment mogul Jerrold “Jerry” Perenchio, who passed away three years ago at the age of 86.
Perenchio’s tens of millions in donations “were nearly impossible to tabulate because most were given under the veil of ‘anonymous,’” read his obituary in the Los Angeles Times. The Wall Street Journal’s James Hagerty wrote that Perenchio “was famous for not being famous.” Variety’s Ted Johnson cited his “fierce determination to stay out of the limelight.”
A search of Perenchio’s name on Philanthropy News Digest’s gift database generates only five hits dating back to 2001.
Perenchio was worth $2.8 billion when he died in 2017. The next year, his estate went on a selling spree. Sotheby’s sold his collection of wines in two auctions, netting $12 million for the Perenchio Foundation. A Christie’s auction in November raised $18.7 million for the foundation.
His estate sold off a number of properties in Malibu, where Perenchio had been the city’s largest private landowner, netting approximately $63 million in the process. In 2019, Lachlan Murdoch, the eldest son of Rupert Murdoch, purchased Perenchio’s Bel Air mansion for $150 million, making it the most expensive home ever sold in the city. And in September of 2020, Christie’s auctioned off yet another trove from Perenchio’s collection, generating $6.5 million for his family foundation.
That’s a quarter-billion dollars flowing into the family coffers in a little over three years. Could this flurry of activity translate into more giving from the Perenchios’ foundation in the months and years ahead? It sure looks like it.
In mid-August, the Perenchio Foundation made two gifts to Fresno State—$500,000 for emergency student aid and $5 million to create the Perenchio Family Endowed Scholarship Fund. Two months later, the foundation announced a $5 million commitment to fund the Perenchio Family Endowed Scholarship to “support diverse voices” at the American Film Institute’s AFI Conservatory.
The donations raised Perenchio’s profile by some quantitative measures—they represented two of the five results on PND’s 20-year search. And while the $10.5 million payout may not seem like evidence of a post-2017 boost in giving, the figure represents a 1,873% (!) increase over the Perenchio Foundation’s 2018 grantmaking, when it made $532,100 in disbursements for charitable purposes.
We can’t say for sure that we’ll be hearing a lot more from Perenchio’s charitable vehicles in the future. If we do, it will likely be good news for organizations based in Los Angeles and Perenchio’s hometown of Fresno.
“Famously Close-mouthed”
Perenchio was born in Fresno and got his start as a young agent at MCA before founding an agency of his own, Chartwell Partners, which was later purchased by International Creative Management. With Norman Lear, Perenchio formed T.A.T. Communications, which grew into a wildly successful production and distribution company.
In 1992, he purchased Univision Communications. When a group of investors led by billionaire Haim Saban acquired the company in 2007 for $13.7 billion, Perenchio netted $1.1 billion.
In 2014, Perenchio announced he would donate his $500 million art collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) upon his death. The bequest came with one huge string attached: If the museum did not finish construction of its new Peter Zumthor-designed building by 2023, the gift would be retracted.
Two years later, Perenchio gave the museum $25 million for the controversial project. He said he normally donated anonymously, but “in this case, I’ve decided that it’s worth a temporary step into the spotlight to encourage other collectors to give to LACMA and support the fundraising.”
The museum has yet to hit its revised $750 million fundraising goal. In June, the LAist’s John Horn wrote that the new LACMA building is scheduled to open in 2024—a year after Perenchio’s deadline. However, the bequest clearly didn’t account for the pandemic, which forced the museum to close for four months.
Perenchio was also a political donor. He “bankrolled political candidates and the Republican Party to the tune of $30 million while he was alive,” wrote the Fresno-based GVWire’s Bill McEwen, who dubbed Perenchio “the Quiet Giver.” Not to be outdone, Nancy Watzman of the Sunlight Foundation called him “famously close-mouthed” in a 2012 piece exploring Perechio’s political giving.
A Focus on L.A. and Fresno
“Los Angeles helped make my career possible,” Perenchio said after announcing his artwork donation to the LACMA. The city also factored heavily in his charitable giving. He established the Perenchio Foundation in 2011. The foundation’s top recipient in 2018 was the Los Angeles Opera, which received $500,000—94% of its total giving for charitable purposes that year. The remaining payments came in the form of in-kind donations to four L.A.-based organizations.
Perenchio’s philanthropy also flowed through Chartwell Charitable Foundation, which he ran with his wife, Margaret. The couple funded a broad array of L.A.-based organizations, including Geffen Playhouse, where Perenchio was a founding trustee, UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Women’s Cancer Research Fund. The foundation allocated $916,733 in disbursements for charitable purposes in 2018.
While Perechio made his fortune in L.A., he never forgot his hometown of Fresno, where his family owned the Fresno Grape Exchange and the Crestview Winery. Previous grantees included the Fresno Chaffee Zoo and Fresno State. In 2011, Perenchio was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts at Fresno State’s centennial commencement recognizing his contributions in entertainment, education and philanthropy.
In mid-August, the Perenchio Foundation donated $500,000 to Fresno State’s Good Samaritan Fund, which provides emergency support to students during the 2020-21 academic year. Seeded with $5 million from the foundation, the Perenchio Family Endowed Scholarship Fund provides scholarships and grants for students of all backgrounds and majors, including “Dreamers,” immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. Fresno State will award the first round of scholarships in the 2021-22 academic year.
Launched in 1969, the AFI Conservatory offers a two-year MFA degree in six filmmaking disciplines. AFI will announce its AFI Conservatory Perenchio Fellows in the coming months. “Though he was famously anonymous in his philanthropy, Jerry’s generosity knew no bounds,” said Bob Daly, chair of the AFI Board of Directors. “Through this endowed scholarship at the AFI Conservatory, his legacy will continue to echo across generations in tomorrow’s storytellers.”
