The Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation, also known simply as the Milbank Foundation, is a private grantmaking organization that supports programs that aid the disabled and gives money to center-right organizations involved in health policy.

Investment banker Jeremiah Milbank, a lifelong Republican who advised presidents from Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon created the J M Foundation in 1924 to support his philanthropic interests, including supporting funding for disability research. In 1995, the Milbank Foundation split from the J M Foundation.

History

Jeremiah Milbank

Investment banker Jeremiah Milbank began giving grants to support the disabled in 1917.  John Briggs, author of a history of the J M Foundation, says it is not clear why Milbank acquired this interest, but he became concerned about the many disabled men he saw begging on New York City streets. A survey he commissioned found that most of these men were ready and willing to work if employers could accommodate their handicaps. ¹

The largest recipient of grants from the J M Foundation between 1924-72 was the International Center for the Disabled, which received $36 million in this period. In the late 1920s, he expanded his interest to other areas of health policy.  He began an effort to eradicate diphtheria, which was largely accomplished by 1930. ²

In 1928, he joined with other prominent Americans to form the International Committee for the study of Infantile Paralysis, a clearinghouse of information for ways to treat and prevent polio.  He gave $1.6 million in 1929 to establish the committee and added millions more until Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine became widely available in the mid-1950s. ³

“The war against disease in all its forms,”: Milbank wrote in 1928, “presents a stirring challenge and maintains a keen and never-failing interest.” ⁴

Jeremiah Milbank Jr. and Margaret Milbank Bogert

The J M Foundation continued its funding for health policy under Jeremiah Milbank’s son and daughter, Jeremiah Milbank Jr. and Margaret Milbank Bogert.  In 1982,Bogert was given an award for “more than 50 years of dedication to the rehabilitation of the disabled.” She said she first visited the International Center for the Disabled with her father in 1932, when she was 17. Between 1935 and 1950 she volunteered there. “My greatest interest was teaching people how to walk with crutches,” she told the New York Times. She subsequently chaired the center’s board and served as a trustee of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. ⁵

Grantmaking

In 2012 the Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation made a $250,000 grant to the Yale Cancer Center as the first installment of a four-year, million-dollar grant.  Milbank Foundation executive director Carl Helstrom told the Yale Daily News, “we’re not a huge foundation, so we like to get into situations that are highly leveraged.” He expressed hope that other foundations would match or exceed the Milbank Foundation grant. ⁶

In 2020, the Yale Cancer Center ($400,000) received the largest Milbank Foundation grant, with grants of over $100,000 going to the center to Advance Palliative Care at the Icahn School of Medicine $150,000), the National Mentoring Partnership ($100,000), Operation Surf ($100,000), and the Viscardi Center at the Novelli Health Foundation ($100,000). Four center-right groups received grants for health care policy work: State Policy Network ($125,000), Foundation for Government Accountability ($100,000), Pacific Research Institute ($50,000) and Philanthropy Roundtable ($50,000). ⁷

1. John Briggs, The Face of a Family (Greenwich, Connecticut:  JM Foundation, 1992.) For more about Milbank’s interest in aiding the disabled, see Martin Morse Wooster, How Great Philanthropists Failed And How You Can Protect Your Legacy (Washington, D.C.:  Capital Research Center, 2017), 228-230.
2. Martin Morse Wooster, HOW GREAT PHILANTHROPISTS FAILED AND HOW YOU CAN PRESERVE YOUR LEGACY (Washington, D.C.:  Capital Research Center, 2017), 229.
3. HOW GREAT PHILANTHROPISTS FAILED AND HOW YOU CAN PRESERVE YOUR LEGACY (Washington, D.C.:  Capital Research Center, 2017), 229.
4. “The Quiet Milbank Millions,” Fortune, May 1959.
5. Judy Klemesrud, “50 Years; Devoted Aid to Disabled,” New York Times, July 4, 1982.
6. Lindsay Uniat, “Donation to Expand Palliative Care,” Yale Daily News, January 18,2013.
7. Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation, “2020 Grants,” https://fdnweb.org/milbank/grants/year/2020/category/grants-awarded/ (accessed December 13, 2021).