Inside Philanthropy

Who's Funding What & Why

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Doris Duke Foundation

OVERVIEW: The Doris Duke Foundation has broad grantmaking interests including the performing arts, the environment, children’s well-being, medical research and cultural inclusiveness.

IP TAKE: The Doris Duke Foundation is an iconic funder across a variety of funding areas. While it is hard to get through the funding door here, this major, national funder provides unrestricted report, in the case of the arts, or multi-year support in other cases, especially with 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. However, in other cases, it chooses a proactive approach, scouting who to fund. Overall, this is a largely accessible and transparent funder that likes to help its grantees in ways beyond project specific support, making it a great partner to have. It invites contact from grant seekers, but note that your work must be well developed and considered excellent in the greater community in order to receive support. One thing is certain, the Doris Duke Foundation is unafraid of taking risks to fill gaps in funding in areas that receive less support, as IP’s Kavate has reported.

PROFILE: The Doris Duke Foundation, formerly 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 Foundation aims “to build a more creative, equitable and sustainable future” by investing in artists and the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research, child well-being, and Building Bridges, which works with Muslim groups in the U.S. to increase understanding and inclusiveness. 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

DDF’s Performing Arts 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 has also occasionally supported visual arts, public radio, and television; however, each of these is mentioned in the lengthy list of arts genres and media the initiative does not fund.

Grants for Music, Dance, Theater and the Visual Arts

DDF’s arts grantmaking is primarily distributed through partnerships with intermediary organizations that “design, manage and administer national regrant programs on the foundation’s behalf.” In this vein, the DDF Arts Program offers “limited direct funding.” Arts grantmaking strategy is twofold: project support through intermediaries and core support to national arts service organizations.

           Arts guidelines and priorities:

    • Arts grants are available by invitation only. Invited grantees typically have “self-defined, long-term goals” and have demonstrated excellence in and sustained commitment to contemporary dance, jazz and theater.
    • DDF’s music grantmaking centers on jazz. Grants have supported 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 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.
    • DDF demonstrates a strong interest in modern and neoclassical dance. Past dance grantees include large organizations that promote dance, including Dance NYC, Dance USA, Gibney Dance, the Dance Theater of Harlem and the New York City Ballet. Dance companies that have received funding tend to be based in New York City. 
    • Duke’s theater funding mirrors its grantmaking in other areas of the performing arts, with grants supporting a combination of national organizations, small- to medium-sized theater companies and individual artists. DDF has been a crucial source of funding for the performing arts, especially when funding for such focus areas have been under greatest threat as during the COVID-19 era.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.”
    • While DDF doesn’t list the visual arts as a priority, it has funded some 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, and gave Sundance Institute a $1 million grant to create the Building Bridges Fellowship and Completion Fund. 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 strives to “advance the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases by strengthening and supporting clinical research.” Believing that scientific excellence through a diversity of clinical research leads to transformative health benefits across society, the Doris Duke Foundation focuses on supporting a wide range of pathways to medical innovation—especially those that receive less attention.

The Doris Duke Foundation also conducts health grants through the child well-being program, which strives to promote “children’s healthy development and protect them from abuse and neglect.” DDF invests in children through three initiatives:

    • OPT-In for Families, established in March 2024, builds on work done across the United States to create, as well as test, an alternative to the current child welfare system—one that moves from a punitive system focused on removal from homes to one focused on a “prevention-oriented well-being system that leads to better outcomes across a child’s life.” As IP has previously discussed, the OPT-In program seeks to fill a major gap in child welfare to help families on the edge of crisis before they need emergency intervention through a transformative approach.
    • The Strengthening & Coordinating Service Systems initiative invests in existing “social service systems to better serve those in places contending with sizeable inequities, more children and families can receive the essential supports and resources that help them to pursue full, healthy and happy lives.”
    • 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.” 

Grants for the Environment and Climate Change

The Doris Duke Foundation runs a robust Environment program that aims to 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.

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.
  • For medical research, the Doris Duke Foundation does not fund institutions outside the United States or research that uses animals as per Doris Duke’s will.
  • 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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