Philip F. Anschutz, a conservative businessman and the president of the Anschutz Corporation, and his wife Nancy Anschutz created the Anschutz Foundation in 1984. The Anschutz Foundation’s primary grantee is the University of Colorado, whose medical school is named for Anschutz. Other beneficiaries include nonprofits in Colorado, the American Museum of Western Art in Denver, and center-right political organizations.

Background

Philip Anschutz heads Anschutz Corporation, with divisions including Anschutz Entertainment Group, which runs music festivals and owns arenas around the world; Walden Media, which produces movies; Clarity Media Group, which owns the Washington Examiner magazine and daily newspapers in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Xanterra Travel Collection, which operates hotels in six national parks and the Grand Canyon Railway; and, separate from Xanterra, the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs and Sea Island on the Georgia coast. ¹

Philosophy of Giving

Philip and Nancy Anschutz expressed their philosophy of giving in a 2009 article in Philanthropy. Nancy Anschutz said that the foundation’s original emphasis was health research, but then expanded into poverty fighting in the Denver area, “shelters for abused women,” and “commitments to church and faith-related organizations.” The grant programs of the foundation have expanded as the Anschutz’s three children take active roles in the foundation. ²

The Anschutz Foundation is a perpetual foundation that is not set to spend out its assets. Philip F. Anschutz said while he and his wife discussed a termination date for his foundation, they elected not to set one, holding that “there should be long-term commitment and long-term commitments to needs.” Nancy Anschutz said that they did not want the Anschutz Foundation to “become a Ford Foundation or a Pew Foundation [sic], where the men who actually created the capital behind it would not have believed what happened to their efforts” but that term limitation was rejected because she wanted to pass the foundation “down to children, grandchildren great-grandchildren.” ³

Donations to the University of Colorado

The largest recipient of Anschutz Foundation grants has been the University of Colorado (CU), which has named its hospital the CU Anschutz Medical Campus.  By 2013, the Anschutz Foundation had donated $120 million towards development of the medical campus, including $57 million as part of a 2006-13 capital campaign. ⁴

In August 2018, Philip F. Anschutz and the Anschutz Foundation jointly donated $120 million to the Anschutz Medical Campus. The gift brought total Anschutz Foundation donations to the Anschutz Medical Campus to $300 million since 2000. Much of the gift will be used to create the Anschutz Health Sciences Building, scheduled to be opened in 2021. Philip F. Anschutz declared that the gift would ensure that the Anschutz Medical Campus would stand “as a Colorado landmark and a hub of leading-edge research, innovation, and education.” ⁵

American Museum of Western Art Anschutz Collection

Philip F. Anschutz has collected Western art, including paintings by Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, George Catlin, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Thomas Moran. Since 2010, the collection has resided in a small museum in Denver run by Philip F. Anschutz’s daughter, Sarah Anschutz Hunt. ⁶

The New York Times reported in 2019 that the museum’s “annual budget is almost entirely covered by the Anschutz Foundation.” The Times characterized the museum’s collections as “lean but meaningful,” and offered the assessment of Denver Art Museum curator Thomas Brent Smith that the museum didn’t “collect 10 Remingtons, they collect one or two, but they’re among the very best.” ⁷

Coachella and the Anschutz Foundation

Among the businesses owned by the Anschutz Entertainment Group is Coachella, a large music festival in California, which the group acquired in 2001. In 2016, Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart wrote a column denouncing “a conservative cabal actively working the levers of power” to block gay and lesbian rights. Accompanying the article was a chart from the LGBT-interest group Freedom for All Americans that condemned Philip Anschutz as an “enemy of freedom” because of Anschutz Foundation grants to the Alliance Defending Freedom, National Christian Foundation, and the Family Research Council, three social-conservative groups. ⁸

Early in 2017, a blog post at the music site Afropunk declared that Anschutz’s politics are “Icky, sticky with the slime of the swamp” and used the research from Freedom for All Americans as a way of denouncing Anschutz. ⁹

Anschutz then issued a statement stating that “recent claims published in the media that I am anti-LGBTQ are nothing more than fake news—it is all garbage” and that “neither I nor the (Anschutz) Foundation fund any organization with the purpose or expectation that it would finance anti-LGBTQ initiatives” and that “we have immediately ceased all such contributions to such groups” once their anti-gay activities were identified. ¹⁰

In 2018, the Anschutz Foundation donated $1 million to the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Anschutz told Billboard the grant was made “to emphasize that we support freedom of all people to live peacefully, without interference from others…I support the rights of all people and oppose discrimination and intolerance against the LGBTQ community.” ¹¹.

In 2019 Paul Tollett, who co-founded Coachella and retained half-ownership of the festival, told the Los Angeles Times that Anschutz had “given hundreds of millions to charity and made some mistakes, and he addressed it” and that Anschutz is “good to all of us” and “there’s no discrimination” at the Anschutz Entertainment Group. ¹²

Grantmaking

In its 2019 grantmaking, the Anschutz Foundation’s largest grants were to the University of Colorado Foundation totaling $27.8 million. It also made large contributions to the Denver Art Museum, Kent Denver School, and the U.S. Olympic Museum. The foundation also contributed $600,000 to the Foundation for a Better Life, a private operating foundation the Anschutz Foundation created and supports. ¹³

Among the center-right public policy organizations receiving Anschutz Foundation grants in 2019 were the American Enterprise Institute ($200,000), the Philanthropy Roundtable ($150,000), the Center for Education Reform, the Institute for Justice, Moving Pictures Institute, and the Institute for Humane Studies.  Also receiving a $10,000 grant was the center-left Business Executives for National Security. ¹⁴

1. “Philip Anschutz.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Accessed August 25, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/profile/philip-anschutz/?sh=47f9a52f5fdb.
2. Jonathan V. Last, “Pass It On,” Philanthropy, Fall 2009.
3. Jonathan V. Last, “Pass It On,” Philanthropy, Fall 2009.
4. “CU Surpasses $1.5 Billion Creating Futures Campaign Milestone,” press release from the University of Colorado (Denver), November 21, 2013.
5. “120 Million Gift From Phil Anschutz And The Anschutz Foundation Accelerates Shared Vision of Establishing The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus as Medical Destination.” Press release from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, August 21, 2018.  
6. American Museum of Western Art, “Our Mission,” https://anschutzcollection.org/our-mission (accessed August 20, 2021)
7. Ray Mark Rinaldi, “in Denver, A Sharp Focus On Westward Expansion And Its Impact,” New York Times, March 12, 2019.
8. Jonathan Capehart, “Here They Are, The ‘Enemies of Equality” For All Americans, Washington Post, July 7, 2016.
9. Spencer Kornhaber, “Waking Up to Coachella’s Conservative Tinge,” The Atlantic, January 13, 2017.
10. “Statement Issued by Philip F. Anschutz, Owner of AEG,” press release issued January 5, 2017.
11. Dave Brooks, “AEG Owner Philip Anschutz Donates $1 Million to Elton John AIDS Foundation,” Billboard, March 20, 2018, https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8254682/philip-anschutz-elton-john-aids-foundation-donation (accessed August 20, 2021)
12. Jessica Chasnar, “Coachella Founder’s Tough Truth To Liberal Fans:  ‘Most Billionaires Are Republicans,’ Washington Times, January 14, 2019, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jan/14/coachella-founders-tough-truth-liberal-fans-most-b/ (accessed August 20, 2021)
13. 2019 Anschutz Foundation Form 990.
14. 2019 Anschutz Foundation Form 990.