Jeff Yass Is One of America's Biggest Political Donors. What Does His Philanthropy Look Like?

There’s a cadre of ultra-rich Wall Street billionaires — Ken Griffin, Stephen Schwarzman, Charles Schwab — whose libertarian, free-market convictions have proved a massive boon for GOP politicians over the years. Pairing copious Republican political giving with philanthropy, these market-oriented moguls have propped up a right wing that now guards the assets of the rich while catering to the more deranged elements of Trumpist populism. For these men, the former seems to justify associations with the latter.

Though he’s less well-known, Jeff Yass is another name to add to that list. As cofounder of the trading powerhouse Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Yass, now in his mid-60s, has amassed a mighty fortune that Forbes currently puts at $28.5 billion. A large chunk of that consists of a stake in ByteDance, the company behind TikTok.

A lifelong gambler whose passion for bets took him from Vegas poker tables and horse racing to Wall Street billions, Yass is also fond of betting on politics — and that’s putting it lightly. In the 2022 election cycle, Yass and his wife Janine’s contributions to candidates and PACs totaled over $54 million, trailing only George Soros, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, and Ken Griffin — and outstripping Sam Bankman-Fried.

Yass’ political giving tends to outweigh the purely philanthropic giving that we know of. But there’s a good deal of that, too, and much of it exhibits the same libertarian leanings that characterize his political support. Notably, there have also been reports that Yass and his fellow SIG cofounder and philanthropic collaborator Arthur Dantchik are among the main moneymen behind the Kohelet Policy Forum, a right-wing Israeli think tank that “quietly authored and helped introduce” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intensely controversial judicial policy reforms.

Whatever his philanthropic plans going forward, Yass has the deep pockets and ideological inclinations to continue impacting the public square — here and possibly abroad — in profound and pointed ways.

In the footsteps of Milton Friedman

In an interview for the Adam Smith Society, Yass once revealed that he had socialist leanings in college, but that reading Milton Friedman set him on the libertarian path. It was with a cohort of friends from those formative years — including former roommate Arthur Dantchik, now worth $7.2 billion — that Yass founded Susquehanna International Group, naming the firm after the river that flows from their native New York through Pennsylvania, where the company is now based.

According to a report from ProPublica, Yass “speaks of capitalism in religious terms,” quipping that making new markets is akin to “a mission from God.” The same report detailed at length how lowering his tax bill is also high on Yass’ list of priorities. That’s something he shares with many of his billionaire peers, but unlike some of them, Yass isn’t at all shy about using his financial clout to push low taxes and small government.

The primary way Yass goes about that is via direct political giving. For many election cycles running, he’s been one of the top individual donors in the U.S. to outside political spending groups — mostly PACs — that can attack and defend political candidates and have no upper contribution limit. That started in 2016 when Yass backed a Rand Paul-affiliated super PAC to the tune of $2.5 million. He followed that up with around $7 million for GOP-oriented groups in 2018 and around $30 million in 2020. As noted, that upward trend continued in 2022.

While he’s had no issue supporting candidates and PACs that push election denialism and far-right social causes like the anti-abortion movement, Yass doesn’t appear keen on much of that himself. He’s stated, for instance, that he doesn’t believe the 2020 election was stolen.

Instead, Yass’ predilections seem best encapsulated in his deep support for the free-market, anti-regulation Club for Growth. The advocacy organization is structured as a 501(c)(4), but also maintains a PAC and a super PAC, Club for Growth Action, which has received millions from Yass over the years, along with a number of other conservative political action committees.

Yass’ libertarian leanings are also on full display in his funding for charter schools and educational privatization, mostly in his home state of Pennsylvania. On the political side, he’s moved over $41 million to Students First, a Pennsylvania-based PAC he founded that backs conservative candidates and politics throughout the state, with a focus on school choice. He’s also given millions as sole funder of the School Freedom Fund, another PAC.

The 501(c)(3) side of things

When it comes to 501(c)(3) philanthropy, it’ll come as little surprise that Yass supports the Cato Institute, perhaps the nation’s foremost libertarian think tank. He’s currently vice chairman of Cato’s board of directors and has been involved at the organization for over two decades.

It’s also worth noting the reporting from Haaretz, dating from 2021, on Yass and Dantchik’s support for the Kohelet Policy Forum in Israel. Neither the two billionaires nor Kohelet itself have confirmed the funding relationship. But its existence would mark some of Yass’ most consequential policy giving — albeit not in the U.S. — and part of what Jo-Ann Mort, in a recent guest piece for IP, called a successful effort on the part of a coterie of right-wing American donors to shift the public debate in Israel.

Closer to home, Yass plays a leadership role at two private foundations — the Susquehanna Foundation and the Claws Foundation. The former is associated with Yass’ firm and has on its board multiple top figures from SIG, including Yass, Dantchik, Joel Greenberg and others. It gave away just under $10 million in 2020.

According to the right-leaning website Influence Watch, the Susquehanna Foundation’s grantmaking decisions are heavily influenced by Janine Yass, a longtime charter booster and charter school founder. Most of the foundation’s largest grants in recent years have gone to school choice organizations in the Keystone State like Philadelphia Schools Project, Children’s Scholarship Fund Philadelphia, and Mastery Charter Schools Foundation. Smaller amounts go to individual charter schools and other educational institutions, as well as libertarian organizations like the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm. Zionist organizations have also received money. In addition, Jeff and Janine Yass have given to Pennsylvania school choice nonprofits directly.

As for the Claws Foundation, Jeff Yass cofounded it and sits on its board, but most of its funding in recent years comes from contributions by Arthur Dantchik. It moved over $36 million out the door in 2020. While Pennsylvania charities do get money from Claws, there’s less of an emphasis on charter schools and more money flowing to libertarian and free-market organizations like the Institute for Justice, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, Students for Liberty, the Mercatus Center, the Atlas Network and the Ayn Rand Institute. Jewish organizations, working in both the U.S. and Israel, also get plenty of money from Claws each year.

Tip of the iceberg?

Another thing to note about the Claws Foundation: Some of its biggest gifts in recent years have gone to a donor-advised fund at Fidelity Charitable. That’s par for the course at many foundations set up by living donors these days, and in the case of Claws, Dantchik is probably calling most of the shots. But it hammers home the fact that when it comes to ultra-rich donors — particularly ones as publicity-shy as Yass and his fellow SIG cofounders — what we know about their philanthropic activity may only be the tip of the iceberg.

Yass and Dantchik’s alleged support for the Israeli right, not to mention all of Yass’ transparent political giving in the U.S., indicates a real comfort with deploying the fruit of SIG’s bets to shape the public square. For Yass, philanthropy may play second fiddle to political giving at the moment. But it wouldn’t be at all surprising to find Yass backing libertarian causes in a much bigger way out of sight, via DAFs, or directing much larger donations to free-market policy grantees down the road. He certainly doesn’t lack the money for it.

Featured