Laura and John Arnold Foundation

Structure

See also Arnold Ventures

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation was established in 2008. In January 2019, John and Laura Arnold announced that they would form a limited liability company called Arnold Ventures. Arnold Ventures oversees the operations of the Arnold Foundation as well as the 501(c)(4) lobbying arm of the foundation (called Action Now Initiative). Operating as an LLC grants the organization greater flexibility in funding capabilities. Both the Arnold Foundation and the Action Now Institute continue to operate as nonprofit entities. The restructuring was the latest in a trend beginning in 2010 of prominent philanthropists relying more on LLCs for their charitable endeavors; other examples include Laurene Powell Jobs, Pierre and Pam Omidyar, and Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. ^{2 3}

Arnold Family

John Arnold began his career as a trader for Enron, and once made $750 million in revenue for the company in a single year. He left the firm taking an $8 million bonus before the energy company collapsed, causing the largest bankruptcy in American history to that point. He was never accused of wrongdoing in the investigation of the energy company’s collapse. ^{4 5}

In 2002, Arnold founded a hedge fund, Centaurus Advisors, LLC. During his time running the fund, Arnold gained a high reputation among his colleagues and even among the federal investigators who investigated the Enron collapse. In 2006, Centaurus placed a large bet against hedge fund Amaranth Advisors, which inaccurately predicted a rise in gas prices and subsequently lost $5 billion, netting Centaurus massive profits. In 2012, with the growth of hydraulic fracturing and the expansion of gas supply undermining the natural gas futures market, Arnold decided to retire to focus on philanthropy. At the time, his fortune was reported at $4 billion. As of 2021, John Arnold’s estimated net worth was $3.3 billion. ^{6 5 7}

John Arnold’s wife, Laura Arnold, attended Harvard University and Yale Law School before working in mergers and acquisitions with a New York City law firm. Later, she worked for an oil exploration firm in Houston where she met John Arnold. ^{8 9} Laura Arnold has been relatively more politically outspoken than her husband. In June 2018, Laura wrote an op-ed for the Houston Chronicle in which she called on private philanthropic organizations to increase their funding for research into gun violence. ¹⁰ In August 2022, Arnold wrote an op-ed for CNBC in which she endorsed the executive action that President Joe Biden had taken to unilaterally cancel a portion of federal student debt. ¹¹ She is a founding partner of the REFORM Alliance, an activist group that works towards softening probation and parole laws, primarily at the state level. ⁹

In 2012, when John Arnold retired, John and Laura signed the Giving Pledge, a promise signed by numerous billionaires including Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to give away at least half of their wealth. ⁵

During the 2018 elections, the Arnold family gave $10 million to the super PAC called Patients for Affordable Drugs Action to endorse candidates who would demand changes to drug pricing policies. ¹²

Foundation Initiatives

Inside Sources has described John and Laura Arnold’s approach to philanthropy as “the way any Wall Street veteran would: they’re attracted to risky bets.” ¹³ WonderWork founder Brian Mullaney has also characterized the Arnolds as risk-tolerant, seeking big impacts, and as being highly “impatient.” ¹⁴

Education

Among the first beneficiaries of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation was the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP. KIPP schools are a network of charter schools founded by Teach for America alumni that work to get children from poor families into college. ⁴ Arnold’s first gift to KIPP was $30,000 in 2004. In 2006, both Arnolds pledged $10 million to help KIPP grow to 42 schools in Houston by 2017; the effects of the 2008 financial crisis delayed that target. ⁴

In 2018, Laura and John Arnold made a personal undisclosed donation to the Texas School Venture Fund, a school choice fund established by KIPP co-founder Mike Feinberg. ¹⁵

In 2013, there was a risk of a government shutdown due to a budget fight between Democrats and Republicans. In October of that year, the Arnold Foundation gave $10 million to the National Head Start Association which would keep the Head Start program running through the end of October 2013 in the event of a government shutdown. ¹⁶

Criminal Justice

Later in 2008, the Arnold Foundation played a role in bringing in Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, a group that works to free people who were wrongly convicted, to Houston. Scheck pitched his organization to some of Houston’s wealthiest, and in April 2009, the Arnold Foundation paid $150,000. They have made additional donations, and Laura Arnold previously sat on the Innocence Project’s board in 2010. ^{17 18}

Government Worker Pensions

John Arnold began supporting government-worker pension-policy studies in 2009. He began by donating relatively small grants to non-profits and think tanks, no more than $200,000 a piece to study the issue. Arnold sent $5 million to the Pew Charitable Trusts to support its Public Sector Retirement Systems Project. The Arnolds increased their contributions to $9.7 million to Pew to research the issue through 2019. Their foundation has contributed nearly $28 million to fund pension research. ¹⁹

In addition to the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Arnold Foundation has given over $3.5 million to the libertarian Reason Foundation to advocate for changes to pensions. The Arnold Foundation also helps fund Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research to maintain its well-regarded and widely used databases on pension health. The Arnold Foundation and Pew convinced the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government to publish a series of papers warning of the increasing risk of default of public pensions systems. ¹⁹

Scientific Replication Crisis

In 2012, the foundation began funding the work of a scientist named Brian Nosek. Nosek and other researchers began redoing old experiments to see if they could replicate the results and they kept a public log of them. The log, called the Reproducibility Project, would test whether or not scientists were making progress or chasing headlines. ²⁰

With Nosek, the Arnold Foundation co-founded the Center for Open Science in 2013 with $5.25 million in seed money. More than $10 million in Arnold Foundation grants have come since. ²⁰

Dietary Policy

The Arnold Foundation has supported also the work of the Nutrition Science Institute founded by controversial diet-science journalist Gary Taubes. Taubes has argued that saturated fat does not make people fat. It also supports the work of Nina Tiecholtz who also argues the same thing. Finally, the foundation supports the work of British science journalist Ben Goldacre. As of 2025, Goldacre was building an open, searchable database that will link all publicly available information on every clinical trial in the world. ²¹

Leadership

Kelli Rhee has worked as the president and CEO of the Arnold Foundation since October 2017, and previously worked in various roles at the foundation going back to June 2013. From 2010 to 2013, Rhee worked at the Baylor College of Medicine as executive director. Earlier, she worked as the vice president of Sandbox Industries, as the director of finance and operations at Tea Collection, as a senior associate consultant at Bridgespan Group, and as a senior associate consultant at Bain and Company. ²²

Rhee succeeded Arnold Foundation president Denis Calabrese. Calabrese left the foundation in 2019 after being convicted for tax fraud. Subsequently, Calabrese was sued by the Arnold Foundation for allegedly using his positions at the Arnold Foundation from 2010 to 2017 to steal over $2 million by extorting contractors for kickbacks. The illicit funds were then funneled to offshore accounts which led to Calabrese’s tax troubles. ²³ Calabrese eventually lost the suit and was ordered to pay the Arnold Foundation more than $8 million. ²⁴

Criticism

The Arnold Foundation has come under criticism from both right-leaning and left-leaning sources. The right-of-center Capital Research Center (CRC) has called John and Laura Arnold “dark money entrepreneurs” for their philanthropic restructuring in 2019 in which the Arnold charities were placed under the control of the new Arnold Ventures. The maneuver enables the Arnolds to engage in both philanthropic and political donations with fewer restrictions, such as the requirement that charitable foundations pay out at least five percent of their endowments each year, and there being no restriction on corporate political spending. LLCs also have significantly fewer requirements regarding public transparency compared to 501(c)(3)s or 501(c)(4) organizations. Given the scale of the Arnold Foundation and the Arnolds’ other charitable ventures in light of their political goals, CRC called their donation strategy “a recipe for plutocracy.” ⁵

The Arnold Foundation and the Arnolds have been criticized by other sources for blurring the lines between charity and political activism. In 2014, inspired by news that pharmaceutical company Sanofi was charging $11,000 per month for cancer drug Zaltrap, the Arnold Foundation began contributing millions of dollars to medical research groups, such as the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The Arnolds publicly stated that the donations were designed to provide more freedom to medical researchers by counteracting the control of the pharmaceutical industry. Over years, the influence of the Arnolds expanded into “direct political advocacy; funding researchers and academics critical of high drug prices; a public opinion blitz featuring op-eds and Democratic pollsters; and state initiatives that have led to major, if unheralded, drug pricing reforms.” They played a key role in pushing the Lower Drug Costs Now Act. ²⁵

In 2019, a representative of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) stated, “Arnold is often portrayed as a philanthropist, when in reality he’s increasingly funding lobbying efforts and political campaigns that advance his political agenda.” ²⁵

Barrett Thornhill, a pharmaceutical lobbyist, has similarly criticized the Arnolds: “Dealing with the Arnold Foundation is like shoving your hand in a barrel of fishhooks… they started out like others — better outcomes! lower costs! — but have slipped into pitching inflated claims about how 0% net drug price growth has caused mass ruination and then bought themselves a news outlet to sell it.” ²⁵

In 2018, the right-of-center group 2nd Vote published an article criticizing the Arnold Foundation for contributing to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates. It also criticized John and Laura Arnold for raising money for the reelection campaign of President Barack Obama and other Democrats in the 2012 elections. ²⁶

The foundation has also come under fire from the left. Governing magazine has described John Arnold as “the most hated man in Pensionland” and “public enemy No. 1 among lots of government workers and union leaders.” This reputation is a result of the Arnold Foundation donating millions to Pew Charitable Trusts’ Public Sector Retirement Systems project, as well as political donations from the Arnolds to candidates proposing reforms to municipal pension systems. Many of these left-leaning critics characterized Arnold as having made a fortune from financial transactions at a fraudulent company and then dedicating his wealth to reducing public employee pensions. ²⁷

Labor unions have criticized the foundation’s work on public pensions. In 2013, the labor-union-funded Institute for America’s Future blasted the foundation and John Arnold’s business career. ²⁸ In 2014, left-wing news outlets Alternet and Salon condemned Arnold for his work on public employee pension reform. It also attacked PBS for working with Arnold to produce stories focusing on insolvent public employee pensions. ²⁹

In 2016, the foundation funded a controversial surveillance program by Baltimore police. The program drew opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union, which has also been funded by the foundation. ³⁰

Funding

Financial Overview

In 2018, the Arnold Foundation reported total revenues of $334 million, total expenditures of $238 million, and grants paid totaling $205 million. ³¹

Donors to Arnold Foundation

Between 2008 and 2018, John and Laura Arnold donated $1.8 billion to their foundation. They were the foundation’s sole donors. ³²

Grants from the Arnold Foundation

According to a January 2026 study by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), out of Higher Education’s annual $772 billion “revenue base,” reportedly only 0.16 percent (or $1.2 billion per year) goes towards the humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) from U.S.-based private foundations. In addition, the same study showed that in 2023, nearly 80 percent of private grantmaking towards HASS-based fields that year came from only 25 foundations. The top ten listed are: the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (over $160.7 million), the “Foundation to Promote Open Society/Open Society Institute” (over $84.9 million), the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (over $66.2 million),  the John Templeton Foundation (over $66.5 million), the Duke Endowment (over $62.5 million), the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (over $51 million), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (over $49.7 million), the Windgate Charitable Foundation (over $48.5 million), the JPB Foundation (name changed to Freedom Together Foundation as of 2024) (over $36.6 million), and the Zell Family Foundation (over $35.2 million). ³³

In 2014, the Arnold Foundation donated $85 million to various organizations. In total, the foundation spent over $110 million. In 2018, the foundation gave $250 million in grants. ³⁴