The Gruber family Foundation is a foundation created by Jon D. Gruber, a partner in Gruber and McBaine Capital Management, a San Francisco-based investment advisory firm, and Linda W. Gruber. The foundation supports left-of-center women’s organizations including supporters of abortions; journalism organizations including National Public Radio, Mother Jones, and Public Radio International; environmentalist organizations such as The Nature Conservancy; and education and poverty-fighting programs in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Jon D. Gruber

Jon D. Gruber is president of Gruber and McBaine Capital Management, a San Francisco-based investment advisory firm. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964, has personally endowed a chair at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and donated $1 million in 2004 to support MIT’s efforts to place its courses online. ¹

Linda W. Gruber

Linda W. Gruber is the president of the Gruber Family Foundation. She served in the White House during the Johnson administration and has taught at San Francisco State University. She is a trustee of Mother Jones, a left-progressive ideological magazine, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and has been a trustee of the Global Fund for Women and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. ² In 2019, the Gruber Family Foundation donated $500,000 to Planned Parenthood; $333,333 to the Global Fund for Women; $52,000 to the Foundation for National Progress, the publisher of Mother Jones; and $100,000 to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. ³

Grants to Journalism Organizations

In 2007, the right-of-center publication Human Events noted that the Gruber Family Foundation was “a major funder” of Media Matters for America, along with the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and the Arca, Rapoport, Bohemian, and Streisand Foundations. ⁴ The foundation did not contribute to Media Matters in 2019. ⁵

The Gruber Family Foundation, along with the Sandler and Hellman Foundations and the Financial Times, has supported a program of investigative reporting fellowships at the University of California, Berkeley. ⁶ This fellowship program was suspended in 2020 due to a campus-wide hiring freeze. ⁷

Other journalism grants from the Gruber family Foundation in 2019 include $150,000 to KQED, the public television station in San Francisco; $100,000 grants to National Public Radio and WETA, the public television station in Washington, D.C.; and smaller grants to the Global Press Institute and Public Radio International. ⁸

Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund

In 2019 the Gruber Family foundation donated $300,000 to the Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund, created in 1986 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund.  The fund says since its creation it has donated $151 million in housing and “critical needs” and $28 million in food assistance to low-income families in the San Francisco Bay Area. ⁹

Other Grantmaking

In 2019, Gruber Family Foundation grants of over $100,000 include $300,000 to Summer Search and $200,000 grants to Student Leadership and Human Rights Watch. ¹⁰

1. ^[1] “Jon Gruber,” MIT Open Course Ware, https://mitocw.ups.edu.ec/about/ocw-stories/jon-gruber/ (accessed June 6, 2022).
2. “Mother Jones Board of Directors,” https://www.motherjones.com/about/board-directors/ (accessed June 6, 2022).
3. 2019 Gruber Family Foundation form 990.
4. Rondi Adamson, “Soros-funded Media Matters Attacks Conservatives,” Human Events, October 29, 2007.
5. 2019 Gruber Family Foundation form 990.
6. “New Investigative Reporting Fellows,” press release from the University of California (Berkeley), July 8, 2010.
7. “Investigative Reporting Fellows,” https://journalism.berkeley.edu/programs/mj/investigative-reporting/fellows/ (accessed June 6, 2022)
8. 2019 Gruber family Foundation form 990.
9. “About Us,” Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund, https://seasonofsharing.org/about-us/ (accessed June 6, 2022).
10. 2019 Gruber Family Foundation form 990.