Forty Years on, Newman’s Own Continues its Charitable Mission, with a Focus on Helping Kids
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Newman’s Own Foundation President and CEO Miriam Nelson
Boomers look at the label on a bottle of Newman’s Own salad dressing and see a megawatt movie star. Gen X and Gen Z, on the other hand, see a handsome man selling vinaigrette.
Both can feel good about their purchases. Back in 1982, when the actor Paul Newman founded the food and beverage company that bears his name, he made one of philanthropy’s first real moves to link business performance to “doing the right thing.”
The company committed 100% of brand profits to charity, and specifically, to helping kids facing adversity. That radical move created a model whereby a business exists to support a cause, rather than the other way around — and a legacy of “giving it all away.” Though to date, there isn’t a company that’s been all-in on following suit, Newman was an early influencer in getting corporate CEOs to see philanthropy as essential and strategic. He co-founded what’s now known as the Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP), which encourages businesses to be a force for good in society. Its hundreds of members include Apple, Target and 3M.
Forty years on, the foundation has outlived its famous founder — Newman passed away in 2008 at age 83. So how does an organization stay true to the foundational ideals of its guiding light, while facing a changed world? IP connected with Miriam Nelson, the organization’s leader since 2020, to find out.
From humble beginnings, a radical idea
Any fundraiser will tell you that star power has an important place in philanthropy. And Newman’s glow has shown enormous staying power.
In 1982, he invested $40,000 in personal funds to launch the Newman’s Own brand. Based in Westport, Connecticut, the company was “something of a lark” at the beginning, according to Newman. The entire product line consisted of two thousand bottles of vinaigrette salad dressing made from his own recipe. Friends and family did the taste testing. His co-founder, the writer and editor A.E. Hotchner, was a neighbor.
Right away, Newman vowed that all profits would go to charity and began converting 100% of the company’s bottom line into ways of helping kids. In 1988, he made his first move, opening The Hole In the Wall Gang Camp, a place where kids with serious illnesses could find some joy. A-list actors like Jack Nicholson and Julia Roberts rallied around the cause. Even today, the company’s starry board includes actors Bradley Cooper and Bridget Moynahan.
In 2005, Newman formalized the practice of “giving it all away” by creating a private foundation that is and always has been 100% funded by Newman’s Own profits from sales. The foundation’s donors are the people who buy their products. All other comers are encouraged to support one of its partners rather than the foundation itself.
Today, Newman’s Own, Inc. products like popcorn and lemonade still fly off the shelves. Average annual revenues from profits and royalties hover around $25 million; average charitable disbursements hover at around 10% of that. The organization’s most recent 990, for 2020, showed revenue of $24 million and payouts of more than $15 million.
Altogether, Nelson said the foundation’s donations over the past four decades will top $600 million by the end of the year, delivered to more than 22,000 organizations. As that milestone approached, the foundation underwent a strategic review to better position itself for the years ahead, a process that was led by President and CEO Miriam Nelson.
A change agent
Nelson’s background is rooted in academia and public health nutrition policy. She spent 15 years directing the John Hancock Research Center on Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Obesity Prevention at Tufts University, for example, and co-founded ChildObesity180, an initiative that then-First Lady Michelle Obama embraced through the “Let’s Move” campaign. Nelson has also authored a series of 10 books to help women live stronger and healthier lives. Together, they’ve sold more than 1 million copies in 14 languages.
Now, with nearly three years in the role, Miriam Nelson’s relationship with the foundation started as a grantee, then as a board member of the food company. When the foundation was looking for a new leader, it reached out. Nelson characterized the timing as a “transformative moment,” one that she felt would put her experience creating systemic change on public health policy to good use.
Of course, change is never easy. “We spent the last two and a half years thinking about the position of what we stand for,” she said. The foundation has always been 100% behind children facing adversity. But streamlining the focus to that alone will make the work “much easier to understand” and allow NOF to be “much more vocal” in the ways it “shows up” for kids. It also gives the foundation a “bigger voice to amplify the work” of its partners.
Partnerships
What started as a summer camp initiative for sick kids has become a mandate to help the 34 million children across the U.S. facing adverse factors like extreme poverty, health conditions and lack of nutrition.
Partnerships will help it meet three clear program objectives — providing joyful experiences for kids with serious illnesses, delivering nutritious food in schools, and funding food security for indigenous youth.
A long-time partner in creating joyful experiences is SeriousFun Children’s Network, which operates a global community of 30 camps for sick kids, including the Hole in the Wall Camp in Connecticut that started it all. Nelson noted that the foundation doesn’t foot the bill for all operations, and that each camp fundraises separately.
Two major partners for providing nutritious food in schools are FoodCorps, which works in schools and communities to provide both direct service and nutrition policy advocacy, and Food Research Center, or FRAC, which organizes to eliminate poverty-related hunger and undernutrition. But smaller organizations are also in the mix, like FoodWhat?! in Santa Cruz, California, the Green Bronx Machine, a school-curriculum-based urban garden in the Bronx, and the Grow Dat Youth Farm in New Orleans.
Nelson said that Newman’s Own Foundation has been supporting Indigenous youth since 1996. Nutrition security grantees include the Oyate Teca Project on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project in what’s now western New Mexico. Others include Dakota Rural Action, a farm-to-school program in South Dakota, and First Nations Development Institute, which also received funding from MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett as part of their concerted investments in Indigenous communities.
The hard part
Of course, not all grantees can come along, and Newman’s Own Foundation is moving away from supporting veterans, animals and wildlife, and independent journalism. Nelson sees exiting as a “hard but necessary part” of being a radically good organization. “By definition, any mission shift or narrowing of mission means not funding others.”
Her background, she said, made her particularly empathetic to grantees. All of the funding for Nelson’s academic work required philanthropic or federal grants, a process that attuned her to the constant “narrowing focus and shifting priorities” demanded of those seeking funding.
The foundation took care to follow best practices by communicating openly, and sunsetted grants over a three-year period. It’s also taking pains to be as generous as possible about amplifying former grantees’ work.
On the flip side, its goal of working with the “best and brightest” organizations in its focus areas presents opportunities for new partners.
Parameters
Geographically speaking, Nelson said partnerships will, by and large, stay in the U.S., home to the lion’s share of its buyer/donors. But the foundation’s reach has always been global, and Newman’s Own products also sell in places like the U.K. and Italy. The foundation made its first international grant in 1984, more than 20 years before the foundation was formally established.
In terms of size, Nelson said average grants will still run between $5,000 and several million dollars. Smaller investments in organizations that foster innovation and social enterprise mostly fall in the $20,000 to $50,000 range.
A changing face
All these years later, the idea of investing every dime of business profits in philanthropy remains a radical idea, though Nelson is still hopeful that “more and more companies and influential people” will emulate their founder’s generous mindset.
Essentially humble, Paul Newman once told a Harvard Business School class that he was reluctant at first to associate his image with the product, until a colleague convinced him that he wouldn’t otherwise sell a single bottle.
If all goes well, the famous face that got things off the ground will become even less relevant over time, as the face of the Newman’s Own Foundation shifts to children experiencing joy, wrapped in the security of good nutrition.
