Who Needs Techies? A Familiar Donor Steps up for Performing Arts in the Bay Area

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A little over five years ago, the Bold Italic asked, “Can SF’s Highbrow Arts Survive Without Tech Money?” A recent gift to the San Francisco Opera suggests that the answer is a qualified “yes.”

The opera netted a $6 million gift from philanthropists Tad and Dianne Taube to support the company’s general director position. The catch is that those who are familiar with the Taubes know that Tad isn’t the CEO of a social media company or an investor in a unicorn start-up. He’s an 88-year-old Bay Area businessman, chairman of Taube Philanthropies, and board president emeritus of the Koret Foundation in San Francisco.

Dianne Taube is a recognized community and board leader who has previously worked with the San Francisco Zoological Society and the Warrior’s Foundation, in addition to serving on various task forces focusing on Bay Area youth, including a focus on teen mental health. She is a former member of the opera’s Medallion Society Committee, a past director of the company’s opera guild and chaired its opera ball in 2000.

Of course, the Taubes’ age doesn’t make their donation any less valuable. It does, however, reinforce a common theme across the Bay Area’s highbrow arts funding landscape. Techies have little interest in bankrolling opera or ballet companies. Baby boomers and Silent Generation donors, coupled with regional foundations and, to a lesser degree, taxpayers, continue to carry the load.

The Taubes, who have been San Francisco Opera subscribers since 1991, fit the mold of the quintessential “old world” patron. The family has supported more than a dozen SF Opera mainstage productions, provided signature funding for the Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater, and bankrolled the company’s free live simulcasts.

“Dianne and I have a long history of funding a variety of projects that support and enhance the San Francisco Opera,” Tad said. “We wanted to establish a lasting and meaningful legacy, and it seemed to us that the best way to ensure our opera company remains one of the world’s best is to invest in the opera’s ability to recruit and retain brilliant general directors such as Matthew Shilvock.”

A Focus on “Social and Communal Needs”

Born in Poland, Tad Taube immigrated to the United States in the summer of 1939. After earning his master’s in industrial engineering from Stanford, he joined two Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicists to create E-H Research Laboratories. Taube left after the company’s IPO and used the proceeds to start his real estate career. Through Woodmont Real Estate Companies, Taube established a premier asset and property management company, which has managed a diverse portfolio of commercial and multifamily properties in Northern California for some 50 years. 

A Giving Pledge signatory, Tad Taube moves his philanthropy through several vehicles. His family foundation supports local educational, academic, cultural, community and youth organizations in the Bay Area. The Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture funds outfits around the U.S, Israel and Poland. Taube also served as the Koret Foundation’s board president until 2016, retiring from the board in early 2017 after a years-long legal battle with Joseph Koret’s second wife Susan Koret.

“I don't view money as an asset to be indefinitely accumulated,” Taube told the San Francisco Chronicle back in 2011. “I view money as an asset intended to take care of your primal needs, but also the social and communal needs that are begging to be given some attention.”

All told, the Taube Philanthropies have granted some $200 million over the years. A shortened list of commitments includes $15 million to the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Israel, $10.1 million to the University of California, Berkeley’s Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, $6 million for pediatric cancer research at Stanford, $14.5 million for youth addiction and children’s concussion initiatives at Stanford, $2 million to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans to develop the Taube Family Holocaust Education Program, and $20 million to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

When asked by Liz Harris of the Jewish News of Northern California to list his greatest philanthropic accomplishment, Taube cited his role in catalyzing the Jewish rebirth of Poland. Since its inception in 2003, Taube’s Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland has disbursed more than 450 grants totaling more than $30 million to over 100 cultural and communal programs and organizations.

Where are the Tech Donors?

Other notable donors to the San Francisco Opera include the 86-year-old investor and classical music composer Gordon Getty, fourth child of J. Paul Getty; board of directors chairman John Gunn, who, along with his wife Cynthia, gave the opera a historic $40 million gift in 2008; and 90-year old book distributor and publisher, winery owner, art collector and philanthropist Jan Shrem and his wife Maria Manetti Shrem.

This short list underscores tech donors’ stinginess across the Bay Area’s performing arts landscape. Commentators have been calling attention to this tepid support for the arts since at least early 2016, when the Silicon Valley Ballet ran out of money and closed its doors—in a region awash with new wealth.

To engage new audiences and donors alike, the Bay Area’s legacy cultural institutions have worked to make highbrow art forms more relevant and accessible. The SF Opera, for example, offers a variety of relevant programming, including Voices for Social Justice program, where students create a musical story based on challenges they face every day in their communities.

Conventional wisdom suggests this is the proper course of action. Last year, I spoke with M+D co-founder Sean McManus about how performing arts organizations can appeal to younger donors on the receiving end of a collective $20 billion wealth transfer. “The social justice issue is huge” for this demographic, he said. “It’s one thing to experience traditional works of art, but what are institutions doing to drive social change?”

Yet with a few exceptions, we haven’t seen a seismic shift in tech donors’ priorities in the region since the Silicon Valley Ballet called it a day. This lack of support is especially concerning given how declining subscriptions are upending what the New York Times’ Michael Cooper calls the “already fragile economics of opera” and orchestras.

This isn’t news to SF Opera donor and board member Diane “Dede” Wilsey. A few years ago, she spoke to Haute Living magazine about the Bay Area philanthrosphere’s generation gap.

“The new philanthropists, such as those we see in the tech industries, who have been extremely generous with their funds, are very focused on science, medicine and global warming, which are all extremely important causes that I fully support,” said San Francisco’s 76-year-old “queen of fundraising.” “However, my worry is that there may not be as much support for art and culture nowadays, which I believe unifies us across the globe.”

Support from the Usual Suspects

Barring any unforeseen developments, the Bay Area’s museums, symphonies, and opera and ballet companies will continue to rely on the largesse of the usual suspects—taxpayers, institutional funders and patrons, many of whom were born during the Great Depression. So far, each source seems to be pulling its weight.

Last August, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and city administrator Naomi Kelly announced that, thanks to the 2018 passage of Prop. E, the city increased funding for its Grants for the Arts program by 18 percent to $12.9 million for fiscal year 2020. The funds will benefit 220 city arts organizations. Legacy recipients included the San Francisco Ballet and SFJazz.

Meanwhile, Taube’s old employer, the Koret Foundation, emerged from its legal woes to roll out a new $10 million arts and culture commitment in December 2017. One of the inaugural recipients was San Francisco Opera, which received $990,000 to develop and pilot a new music residency and mentorship program with the San Francisco Unified School District.

Four months later, while the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation made a $46.4 million gift to support the expansion of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s (SFCM) campus and the construction of the Ute and William K. Bowes, Jr. Center for Performing Arts. One of the SFCM’s objectives as part of its expansion is to “harness strong partnerships” with the technology sector, the San Francisco Symphony, SFJAZZ, and the San Francisco Opera to “propel student experiences unmatched within the profession."

Then, of course, there are the Taubes. Tad may be pushing 90, but he has no intention of slowing down anytime soon. “I not only want to deal with the philanthropic challenges that are before me today,” he told the Jewish News of Northern California’s Harris, “but I also have to deal with philanthropic challenges that are ahead of me. It’s a geometric progression—and has me pretty much committed to a non-retirement status.”