SOURCE OF WEALTH: Actor
FUNDING AREAS: Youth & Education, Health
OVERVIEW: Established in 2006, just keep livin Foundation was started by Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila. The foundation started fitness and wellness programs in inner-city schools. It also funds charter schools, and more. Grants also support health causes.
BACKGROUND: Matthew McConaughey was born in 1969 in Texas. He was an athlete at a young age, playing golf and tennis at Longview High School. McConaughey graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. McConaughey got his first big break in the 1993 film Dazed and Confused, and soon achieved leading-man status with A Time to Kill. McConaughey earned the Best Actor Academy Award for Dallas Buyers Club.
ISSUES:
YOUTH & EDUCATION: According to its website, just keep livin Foundation seeks to empower “high school students by providing them with the tools to lead active lives and make healthy choices for a better future.” The foundation has partnered with nonprofit organizations to implement after-school fitness and wellness programs in inner-city high schools. just keep livin currently serves over 2,400 students at 20 programs located in California, Texas, Louisiana and Washington D.C. Partners include the Brees Dream Foundation, providing “afterschool fitness and wellness programs in the New Orleans,” The Texas Rangers Baseball Foundation, and the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation. Just keep livin has also given quite a bit of support to Communities in the Schools (CIS), “a nonprofit dropout prevention organization”, to implement fitness and wellness programs in large inner-city high schools.
The foundation has also funded charters, such as New Orleans-based Warren Easton Charter High School and Lusher Charter School, and Los Angeles-based Green Dot Public Schools. The foundation also supports college and career readiness. One grantee in this area is Step Up Women’s Network, which helps “girls under-resourced communities to fulfill their potential by empowering them to become confident, college-bound, career-focused, and ready to join the next generation of professional women.” The foundation steadily supports the Boys & Girls Clubs of Austin.
HEALTH: The foundation has supported Heartview Global Foundation, which seeks to “identify heart disease in its latent ‘clinically silent’ phase.” Movember Foundation, and Epidermolysis Bullosa Medical Research Foundation, which researches Epidermolysis Bullosa, a group of inherited connective tissue diseases. It is worth noting that McConaughey’s father died of a heart attack.
LOOKING FORWARD: McConaughey is only in his 50s, and for now, seems primarily focused on supporting youth. Down the line, though, especially with his personal history, perhaps heart disease research will become another priority. In addition, apart from the couple’s work through just keep livin, they may have other more direct ways of grantmaking and some important grants may be missing from this rundown.
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