Rockefeller Foundation: history of creation, features, priorities

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Western rich people are people with a special mind and extraordinary outlook on life. It was thanks to this combination that, in fact, they became we althy people. At the same time, in addition to their enormous we alth, many of these we althy men were also well-known benefactors, deducting part of their funds for the development of various social and other projects. This article will discuss the structure called the "Rockefeller Charitable Foundation", its features and directions of work.

Founder

The man who gave impetus to the development of an entire dynasty is John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (a little later he had a son with the same name), who was born in the town of Richford, New York. It happened in 1839. The parents of the future magnate were Protestants, and the family had many children, of which John was the second. His father was the owner of insignificant capital, but very often traveled to sell various elixirs. At the same time, the mother of the family was forced to save heavily on everything.

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The Rockefeller Foundation would not have been created if its creator had not learned from early childhood to be frugal and rationally use hismaterial resources. So, for example, John bought a pound of sweets for himself, after which he divided them into several piles and eventually resold them to his own sisters, but at a higher price. At the age of seven, the boy worked part-time with his neighbors, growing potatoes and turkeys for them. John was also trained to keep a record of all his finances, registered them in a book, and also set aside part of the money he earned in a piggy bank.

At the age of thirteen, a young man gave a loan to his friend in the amount of fifty dollars at 7.5% per annum.

The start of the path to we alth

In 1857, John learned that one of the entrepreneurs of England was looking for a partner with a fortune of 2,000 dollars to do business together. At the time, Rockefeller had only $800, but he was inspired by the idea and borrowed money from his father, which allowed him to take the position of junior co-founder of Clark and Rotchester, which sold grain, meat, hay and other goods. After some time, the company needed a loan, it was John who negotiated with the bank, who managed to convince the manager to issue the money.

In 1870, John Davison, who founded the Rockefeller Foundation a few years later, opened his own oil company. While doing this business, the American introduced a truly unique incentive system for all his employees: he did not pay the usual salary, but settled with people with company shares, the quotes of which were constantly going up and allowed him to receive decent dividends. In this waythe brilliant businessman managed to interest his subordinates to work actively for the benefit of the company, because each of them understood that his personal financial success would depend on the quality of the work performed.

Charity

The Rockefeller Foundation is a charitable organization that was established in 1913 and is based directly in New York.

In fact, from a young age, John regularly contributed 10% of his income to the Baptist Church. In total, during his life he gave over $ 100 million to it. In addition, the rich man gave 80 million to the University of Chicago, he also helped the New York Institute for Medical Research.

Today, this structure is run by the former head of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Judith Rodin, who became the first woman in this post, replacing her predecessor Gordon Conway in 2005.

The main activities to which the Rockefeller Family Foundation has dedicated itself are:

• medical research;
• education;
• providing grants and scholarships in agriculture, the public sector, and to study various issues related to global environmental protection;
• funding building a democratic society, raising the cultural level and development.

Failure to finance hydrocarbon production

In the spring of 2016, the Rockefeller Foundation decided to withdraw assets from all companies thatinvolved in oil and coal mining. In particular, this affected a giant called ExxonMobil. According to representatives of the charitable organization, today there is no need to continue investing money in these areas due to the fact that the global community is striving to abandon the use of fossil fuels. In addition, the Rockefellers also stated that some of the already explored reserves must be stored underground in order to leave hope for future generations of people to survive and preserve the ecosystem intact.

In connection with all of the above, now the Rockefeller Foundation will have only about 1% of its assets in the oil and coal business (of its entire investment portfolio). Although, given the scale of investments of this charitable structure, in the end the amount will still be impressive.

Also, all this makes it clear that such a decision by the Americans will lead to the fact that now the Rockefeller Foundation in Russia will be much less active than it was before.

Conclusion

One more noteworthy fact is worth noting. In 2012, the Rockefeller and Rothschild families announced the creation of an international trust. Now it becomes completely clear that not a single serious event in the world takes place without the influence of these powerful families.