Roku Founder Anthony Wood Is a Billionaire Donor to Watch. Here's an Overview

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This article was originally published on March 15, 2023.

The term “serial entrepreneur” applies to a lot of living donors we write about, but few fit the description more than Anthony Wood. Born in 1965, Wood founded the digital media player and streaming company Roku and currently has a net worth of around $1.6 billion. If you’ve ever wondered why Roku is called Roku, it’s actually a reference to Wood’s prolific entrepreneurism — it’s the Japanese word for “six,” since Wood founded five companies before it (or four, if you count SunRize, the company he started in college and later refounded, as just one).

Wood is a relative newcomer to big philanthropy, but his penchant for setting enterprises in motion appears to be galvanizing a growing giving operation, if a bit of an unorthodox one. Sizable gifts to pump up several giving vehicles landed him a spot on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of America’s 50 biggest donors in 2022, with over $71 million in charitable commitments last year. 

The largest of those gifts, totaling $48.2 million, went to establish WoodNext Philanthropies, which the Chronicle describes as “a supporting organization [Wood] plans to use to fund some of his charitable giving.” But Wood and his wife Susan have already been ramping up their philanthropy across a range of issues — mental health, scientific research, disaster recovery, homelessness and more. Here’s a quick overview of a billionaire donor to watch.

The road to Roku

Born in Manchester in the U.K., Anthony Wood grew up in Georgia and then Texas, going on to attend Texas A&M. A lifelong tinkerer and tech aficionado who taught himself to code before college, Wood founded his first software company while pursuing an electrical engineering degree. That’s also how he met Susan, a fellow Aggie he hired during that initial foray as a tech founder. 

Having moved to California, Wood’s subsequent career as a startup guy saw him launch several enterprises during the dot-com era, including iBand, which was sold in 1996, and then ReplayTV. The digital video recorder (DVR) company (remember that?) could have been Wood’s big break, but it wasn’t meant to be. Faced with intense competition from TiVo, Wood sold ReplayTV to SONICblue, which, in turn, went bankrupt in 2003.

But Wood took the tidy proceeds from the sale and pumped them into his next venture, Roku, which helped herald the dominance of video streaming and propelled Wood into the ranks of tech billionairedom after an IPO in 2017. 

Today, Wood still serves as both chairman and CEO of Roku, Inc., and owns a sizable chunk of the company. As such, his net worth has been on a bit of a rollercoaster ride over the past several years — not uncommon among tech billionaires — having reached a high point of $7.1 billion in 2021, according to Forbes. But while Wood’s sizable loss on paper since then may have put a damper on some of his plans, his current fortune still gives him plenty of scope for philanthropic giving, an occupation he seems increasingly interested in pursuing.

Building a philanthropic brand

For the past couple of years, Wood has channeled his philanthropy through the WoodNext Foundation. The interesting thing here is that WoodNext doesn’t appear to be a foundation in the traditional sense, but rather an outward-facing brand for Wood’s philanthropy, which he manages via a family office.

The actual money involved runs through donor-advised funds, of which there are at least two — the WoodNext Foundation DAF at Greater Houston Community Foundation, and the WoodNext Foundation DAF at Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust. Besides his big commitment to WoodNext Philanthropies, which appears to be a separate, nascent entity, Wood also moved substantial amounts last year directly to those two DAFs. This is an increasingly common practice we’re seeing among new ultra-wealthy donors — reaping the benefits of non-foundation legal structures while incorporating select language and features of more traditional philanthropy.

Notwithstanding Wood’s apparent preference for DAF and LLC-based giving, he and Susan have been pretty transparent about what they’ve supported so far, and what they want to fund. The WoodNext Foundation website includes a lengthy list of recent grantees (no dollar amounts, though), and a description of its priorities, which “include mental health, homelessness, scientific and biomedical research, disaster recovery and economic opportunity with a focus on addressing root causes.” Interestingly, Wood also states an interest in “supporting free markets, individual freedom and transparency.”

What we know about Wood’s interests

So what kinds of organizations has WoodNext backed? Medical research concerns appear to get some of the biggest gifts, including $14.3 million to the University of Pittsburgh for heart disease and dementia research. Another recent gift that seems quite characteristic of Wood’s interests was $1.25 million to launch the American Cancer Society’s BrightEdge Entrepreneurship Fellows Program. Wood also gave $1 million to the Jed Foundation last year to support its mental health work. Some other notable health grantees include the American Brain Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the COPD Foundation and the Glaucoma Research Foundation.

Wood’s giving also has a geographical focus — Texas and the southern U.S. — although grants aren’t limited to those places. Numerous local charities across the Lone Star State get support, especially in and around Austin and Houston. Economic opportunity and poverty alleviation, including support for the homeless, are a theme there. Religion seems to be another — Wood has given to several churches as well as to Workfaith, a Texas-based organization that provides “faith-based training and coaching for anyone who desires long-term employment.”

While the website’s note about supporting free markets and individual freedom suggests a libertarian bent, WoodNext Foundation’s public list of grantees doesn’t include anything directly in that vein. In addition to what I’ve already noted, most of the recipients are more values-neutral, focusing on things like workforce development and general charitable relief — i.e., Meals on Wheels, Ronald McDonald House and World Central Kitchen. Unsurprisingly, the Texas A&M Foundation is on the list (Wood gave $7 million to his alma mater last year), as are a few renewable energy grantees and techie nods like the Computer History Museum and the Wikimedia Foundation. Burning Man also gets some love.

Beyond that, the DAF-centric nature of Wood’s giving makes it hard to say whether other money is moving out the door, possibly for more ideologically pointed causes. What we can say is that Wood is just one of many tech winners who’ve turned to DAFs, LLCs and family offices to spearhead their philanthropy — often for simple ease-of-use reasons, with privacy and selective anonymity as a bonus. Wood’s giving does appear to be in a state of evolution, though, so stay tuned.