Tapping an Online Fortune, a Billionaire Couple Looks to Give Locally and Strategically

NIRAJ AND JILL SHAH

NIRAJ AND JILL SHAH

Boston billionaire Niraj Shah, 45, is one half of the co-founding pair that launched online home goods giant Wayfair. The company offers some 14 million items from more than 11,000 global suppliers. His wife Jill is also a longtime entrepreneur, creating companies like SoLUXE, a network marketing retailer, and Jill’s List, a marketplace for consumers, doctors and integrative healthcare practitioners. As the Shahs rose in business, they also engaged in charity. And a few years ago, they established the Shah Family Foundation, which supports innovative work in education, healthcare, and community.

While Niraj is still active as Wayfair’s CEO, Jill stepped away from business and serves as president of the young family foundation. She enlisted the help of Ross Wilson, a Boston Public Schools veteran, who works as an executive director alongside about a dozen staff. “As I sold my last company and started thinking about what I wanted to do next, Niraj and I also started talking about being more organized in how we thought about our philanthropic giving,” Jill told me in our recent conversation.

The couple’s reasons for launching a formal family foundation echo familiar themes we write about often at Inside Philanthropy. It’s worth noting that this is a billionaire family turning to giving rather early, with many years ahead to deploy money toward their select causes. So far, the Shahs have put a philanthropic bullseye on their home of Boston, working in conjunction with the local government to help youth in particular.

Fortifying Young Bodies

Consider the foundation’s work with the Boston Public Schools (BPS), the oldest public school district in the country, dating all the way back to 1647. These 125 local schools serve some 57,000 students—more than 70 percent of whom are at or below the poverty level, according to Jill. Until recently, the majority of school meals were not prepared in full-service kitchens. Jill was invited to a cafeteria at the Mason School and was shocked to find the school’s kitchen consisted of a warming oven and a freezer.

“Students were eating prepackaged, manufactured food shipped up frozen from another state, heated up in plastic. Kids would take the meals off a line and not really eat them, never mind nutrition. The whole experience had nothing to do with learning or fortifying their bodies,” Jill tells me.

The Shah Family Foundation worked with the school system to identify how to build out micro-kitchens in schools so students could eat fresh meals prepared onsite. Fresh food is especially critical for many of these students, who grow up in food deserts. Starting with a pilot at a few local schools, the foundation used philanthropic dollars to cover capital expenses for three kitchens, working with food nutrition services to order whole foods, creating menus, and hiring and training staff.

On the heels of this work, Boston’s mayor decided to build out kitchens in 30 schools last year. And this summer, BPS added 30 more kitchens to its roster. Now, about half of BPS’s 125 schools have full-service kitchens, and Jill says that the remaining schools will add them within two years.

The effort is dubbed the My Way Café Lunch

“We really showed that this could work,” Jill explains, adding, “We’re already seeing the results. Kids more ready to learn. Waste way down. And kids much more engaged in the classroom.”

A Hands-on Approach

Jill sees her philanthropy working in tandem with local stakeholders. And because the Shahs are working locally, they’re able to engage in a more hands-on way. “We’re really looking to be instigators. We want to facilitate pilots so we can work in a quicker way than the government can on its own. But we work with them in conjunction to move out whatever case they’re looking to prove,” Jill says.

When I asked Jill how she felt about deploying philanthropy to fill a void in government services, she was quick to reframe the lesson here: “When you engage collaboratively with the government and take on some of this risk, they’re totally willing to step up to the plate.” She also mentioned a new documentary called “Eat Up,” available soon on Apple TV and Amazon, profiling this transformation within Boston Public Schools.

On another front, the foundation also works at the intersection of healthcare and education. The Shahs are interested in brain science and exploring mental health issues in youth. Jill believes tools like cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) can be introduced to the school system to give students and their mentors tools to self-manage and improve in the classroom.

The Shah Family Foundation is also exploring another youth-related space—pediatrics offices. “Right now, we’re looking at how, especially in a Medicaid environment, you can provide proximate resources that aren’t currently provided, using integrative therapies that are proven to be beneficial to kids and their families.” The Shahs are currently looking at school-based health systems as well as helping launch a pediatric practice in Boston.

A Vision for Boston

Away from their foundation, the Shahs also partner with Strategic Grant Partners, a collaborative funding group that helps children and families in Massachusetts. In addition, they’ve supported their local public library. Jill emphasizes, though, that they’re primarily focused on giving through their foundation. “We want to strategically look at how to preserve the middle class in Boston and help the underprivileged navigate through various systems.”

The Shah Family Foundation is open to contact, but primarily finds out about new nonprofits through referrals.

While the Shahs have their eyes keenly focused locally, they also hope the critical lessons learned in Boston can be applied in cities around the country. In this way, the Shahs echo Pittsburgh-based Evan Segal, another place-based giver I interviewed. “It’s interesting to see how we’ll work around the country,” Jill says. “We’re creating a playbook to help others around the country and working with the USDA, as well. On a national level, we’ll for sure participate at least on the level of thought leadership.”