Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has broad grantmaking interests including the performing arts, the environment, children’s well-being and global health.
IP TAKE: The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation tends to provide multi-year support to organizations with which it maintains ongoing relationships. In some areas, it collaborates with grantees on data collection and research. The foundation accepts proposals for some of its grant and award programs and runs open competitions and awards programs. This is a largely accessible and supportive funder that likes to help its grantees in ways beyond project specific support, making it a great partner to have.
PROFILE: The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation was established in 1996 and is based in New York City. The foundation reflects the work and interests of the late philanthropist Doris Duke. Duke was the daughter of James Buchanan Duke, the founder of the American Tobacco and Duke Energy Companies, and she was a billionaire during her lifetime. She was a longtime supporter of the performing arts, an environmentalist and, in addition to her charitable foundation, established the Newport Restoration Foundation, which has overseen the preservation and maintenance of 18th century architecture in Newport, Rhode Island.
Today the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation aims “to build a more creative, equitable and sustainable future by investing in artists and the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and child well-being, and greater mutual understanding among diverse communities.”
DDCF also runs two signature programs: Building Bridges, which works with Muslim groups in the U.S. to increase understanding and inclusiveness, and the African Health Initiative, which aims to strengthen health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2020, the foundation joined several other New York City area funders to form the NYC COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund to support service providers in the areas of health, hunger and the arts through the crisis.
Grants for Arts and Culture
DDCF’s arts and culture grantmaking comprises the foundation’s largest area of giving. Doris Duke envisioned that this program would support “actors, dancers, singers, musicians and other artists of the entertainment world in fulfilling their ambitions and providing opportunities for the public presentation of their arts and talents.” The initiative supports both individual artists and arts organizations through two separate funding lines. The foundation also occasionally supports visual arts and public radio and television.
Grants for Music
The focus of the foundation’s music grantmaking is jazz. Grants have gone to numerous jazz festivals and venues in recent years, including the D.C. Jazz Festival, the Detroit Jazz Festival, Jazz St. Louis, the Earshot Jazz Society of Seattle and the Jazz Institute of Chicago. The foundation has also supported Jazz Night in America broadcasts on NPR and an initiative to promote female jazz musicians at the organization 651 Arts. Individual artist recipients include the jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington and the avant-garde trombonist George Lewis.
Grants for Dance
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation demonstrates strong interest in modern and neoclassical dance. Funding has gone to large organizations that promote dance, including Dance NYC, Dance USA and Jacob’s Pillow, an annual summer dance festival in the Berkshires that produces over 300 free events and draws audiences of tens of thousands each year. Dance companies that have received funding tend to be based in New York City. Past grantees include Bebe Miller’s Gotham Dance Company, Gibney Dance, the Dance Theater of Harlem and the New York City Ballet.
Grants for Theater
Duke’s theater funding mirrors its grantmaking in other areas of performing arts, with grants going to a combination of national organizations, small- to medium-sized theater companies and individual artists. On the national level, the foundation has supported the Network of Ensemble Theaters, which supports and advocates for ensemble theaters across the country, and the National New Play Network, which comprises nonprofit theaters that promote the development of new dramas. The foundation has also supported the National Asian-American Theatre Festival, the Classical Theatre of Harlem, Pregones Theater and Theater Offensive, a Boston-based group that is dedicated to producing plays that are “by, for, and about queer and trans people of color.”
Grants for the Visual Arts
While the foundation doesn’t list the visual arts as a priority, Duke has funded some arts and culture organizations that promote visual arts. One grantee, 651 Arts, used funding to support its merger with the Museum of Contemporary African Diaspora Art. Through its Building Bridges program, the foundation supported an exhibit of Islamic Art, “Ink Silk and Gold,” at the First Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee. Duke also gave $4.5 million to the Center for Asian American Media to create the U.S. Muslim Documentary Fund.
Grants for Health and Medical Research
Duke’s Medical Research funding area works to “accelerate the translation of biomedical discoveries, technology and medical insight into clinical applications that equitably improve human health.” In addition to its priority areas outlined below, the initiative also supports Incentivizing Early-career Creativity for Transformative Health Solutions via its competitive Doris Duke Foundation awards for early-career faculty and scientists, the Clinical Scientist Development Awards and the Physician Scientist Fellowships. The awards are for $150,000 and $100,000 respectively. Guidelines and application details for the fellowship are available on the initiative’s FAQ page.
The Medical Research funding area also supports groups and projects whose efforts aim to Build a More Equitable Medical Research Enterprise through several initiatives, including a collaborative focused on supporting caregiving needs in biomedicine, an initiative focused on addressing the misuse of race in clinical algorithms, and a national effort to achieve equity across STEMM sciences by 2050. Each program provides grants only to preselected medical organizations or institutions of higher education.
Grants for Disease Research
This funder runs a medical research initiative that aims to “advance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human diseases by strengthening and supporting clinical research.” The program’s grantmaking has previously focused on gene and drug treatments for sickle cell disease. Grantees include individual and team research projects at the Icahn School of Medicine, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Stanford University School of Medicine.
Grants for Public Health
Public health is mainly funded through Duke’s child well-being initiative, which names health and the coordination of health and social services as areas of grantmaking interest. Programs housed in this initiative include place-based approaches to wellbeing, the strengthening and coordination of service systems and building capacity and sharing knowledge.
The New York Academy of Medicine received funding for a multi-year project to reduce health inequalities of children living in New York’s East Harlem Neighborhood. In Alaska, the Mat-Su Health Foundation received $1 million for expansion of its preventative and support services.
The foundation has also demonstrated strong support for public health research in the area of pediatrics and family medicine. At the Research Foundation of the City University of New York, Duke funded a Lancet Commission to study the effects of the Trump administration’s policies on the health of vulnerable children and families.
Grants for Mental Health
Mental health is an important element of this funder’s child well-being initiative, which is sub-divided into three goals for support.
The place-based approaches to wellbeing sub-initiative focuses on neighborhoods, addressing local contexts of mental health and empowering families to take an active role and family and community well-being.
The strengthening and coordination of service systems program focuses on projects that effect collaboration between social service, health and mental health providers, emphasizing “culturally appropriate, evidence-based, and context-specific prevention and treatment programs for parents and children.” The foundation also supports programs that increase capacity and collaborations toward equitable mental health outcomes for underserved families.
The building capacity and sharing knowledge sub-initiative also supports the development of leadership in the mental health field, focusing on leaders “who reflect the experiences, cultures and backgrounds of the communities they serve.”
Past mental health grantees include the National Indian Child Welfare Association, Covenant House Alaska, the Children’s Bureau of Southern California, the Institute for Family Health, the Chapin Hall Center for Children and the National Black Child Development Institute.
Grants for Global Health
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s African Health Initiative maintains the broad goal of supporting the development of comprehensive health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, investing in health infrastructure, healthcare access and professional development programs. The program also engages in data collection for the analysis of program effectiveness, which it shares publicly via Harvard’s Dataverse website.
African Health Initiative Grants have gone to JSI Research and Training Institute, which used funding to accelerate and expand a health information system in Ethiopia, and Columbia University, which received $8.1 million to expand a health intervention program in Ghana.
Grants for the Environmental and Climate Change
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation runs a robust environmental program that aims make grants for conservation and climate change that also “promote a more equitable society.” The program’s three sub-initiatives are nature, climate and equity.
The nature subprogram goes beyond typical conservation funding by supporting conservation with a nod to climate change and the interconnectivity of ecosystems and habitats.
The climate funding program supports “natural climate change solutions” including land and tree restoration for carbon storage. Other areas of interest include policy development, scientific research and innovative finance.
And the equity subprogram supports conservation and climate change solutions that are led by and inclusive of “communities who identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC).”
The environmental program also aims to diversify the conservation work force and runs the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program, which supports “the next generation of environmental conservation professionals from a diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives.”
Past environmental grantees include the Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Theodore Conservation Partnership, the National Wildlife Federation and the National Audubon Society, which used funding to bolster its coastal habitat protection program.
Grants for Higher Education
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation does not name higher education as an initiative, but colleges and universities receive support through the foundation’s medical research, performing arts and child well-being funding programs. The medical research program supports higher education via its clinical research careers sub-initiative, which aims to support scientists at every career stage through a series of competitive awards programs. Awards include:
Clinical Research Continuum: High School to College awards support students from underrepresented groups develop interest and expertise in scientific research through hands-on projects, mentoring programs and career counseling at participating schools.
Clinical Scientist Development Awards support junior-level medical researchers as they transition to independent research projects. Monetary support of $195,000 is disbursed over 3 years.
The Fund to Retain Clinical Scientists provides flexible monetary support to promising young researchers at participating universities. These grants aim to help researchers overcome the “extraprofessional demands of caregiving” often faced by young women researchers. The foundation awards grants in the amount of $540,000, to be disbursed over a 5-year period.
Additional opportunities for higher education grants exist within the foundation’s performing arts and child well-being programs. Emerson College received funding for a multi-year initiative to produce Latino/a/x plays, and Columbia University’s Teachers College received funding for a large-scale study of the combined effects of subsidized housing and harsh parenting on urban children. Duke also committed $1.6 million to the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums to preserve the oral histories of Native Americans. Several universities are also partnering on this project, including Arizona State Museum at the University of Arizona, University of Florida, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of New Mexico, University of Oklahoma, University of South Dakota and University of Utah.
Other Grant Opportunities
The foundation launched the Opportunities for Prevention & Transformation initiative in March 2024. With a $33 million commitment over three years, it seeks to “transform our nation’s response to children at risk of abuse and neglect by helping jurisdictions build a prevention-oriented child well-being system that supports children and families within their communities.”
Important Grant Details:
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation awards over $50 million in grants a year, with an average grant size of about $100,000.
The foundation maintains a detailed, searchable database of past grantees and funded projects.
This funder does not run an open application system, but maintains a page for some of its open competitions and funding opportunities.
Awards and fellowships for individual artists and researchers generally run open application protocols with varying deadlines.
General letters of inquiry are also accepted through an online form. The foundation can be reached via telephone at 212-974-7590.
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