The Nathan Cummings Foundation (NCF) is a private foundation that funds left-of-center and Jewish organizations and used its endowment investments as a vehicle for promoting environmentalist and left-progressive economic policies. 1 It is a leader in left-leaning “shareholder activism” and is annually one of the most active sponsors of shareholder resolutions designed to push corporations into publishing information or taking actions that would benefit left-of-center policy goals and narratives. 23
Nathan Cummings Foundation was started in 1949 by Nathan Cummings, the founder of Consolidated Foods (later Sara Lee Corporation), as a vehicle for his personal philanthropy. Cummings retired in 1968, and used his foundation as a vehicle for supporting mainstream organizations such as hospitals, the arts, Jewish causes (including organizations in Israel), and education. After his death in 1985, his foundation received the bulk of his estate, estimated at $200 million. 4
In the 2000s, under president Lance Lindblom, a former executive vice president at George Soros’s Open Society Initiative and veteran of the Ford Foundation and J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation, the NCF began to use its existing investment stakes in public companies to promote left-progressive policy priorities. 56 NCF moved beyond leveraging its existing investments and started actively investing its $443 million endowment to achieve policy goals in 2013 when it allocated $6.5 million to “impact investing.” 78
By 2014, it was one of the two most prolific activist investors in social causes, sponsoring 38 shareholder proposals that year. 9 That same year, its president Simon Greer announced that it was ending the “four core programs that have long defined the Foundation” — health care, Jewish causes, the arts, and environmentalism — in favor of a new focus on left-wing environmental activism and income redistribution. 10 During this time, the NCF produced a video that Greer said was designed to promote the idea that “without government involvement, we would not be able to grow together as a nation.” 11
By 2018, then-NCF president Sharon Alpert announced that 100 percent of the foundation’s endowment would be invested in the service of left-of-center policy change. 12
Shareholder Activism
Much of the Nathan Cummings Foundation’s shareholder activism focuses on pushing energy companies and electric utilities to disclose information about their activities, especially disclosures related to lobbying and industry advocacy efforts that would normally be confidential. 1314 Examples include:
After a 2014 Duke Energy coal ash spill in North Carolina, the NCF led a group of investors that included state treasurers and union pension funds to pressure Duke into publicly disclosing its related lobbying, advocacy and political spending. 15
In 2016, an NCF-led coalition forced a shareholder vote at electric utility FirstEnergy on a non-binding resolution asking the company to publicly report all its government and grassroots lobbying and expenses, including the amounts it contributed to organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council. 16
In 2017, a group of investors led by the NCF passed a nonbinding resolution at Occidental Petroleum’s annual meeting asking the company to predict what future risks it could face under a specific global warming outcome scenario. 17
The NCF also engages in other forms of shareholder activism, such as resolutions designed to force companies to meet racial and gender quotas in their slates of proposed board candidates. 1819
In 2025, the Nathan Cummings Foundation filed a shareholder resolution in partnership with As You So requesting PepsiCo commission a third-party report on how the company could improve “the racial impacts of its policies, practices, products, and services, above and beyond legal and regulatory matters.” 20
Renewed support to the New Israel Fund (NIF) for diverse grantmaking, campaigns, and field-building that broadly defends Israeli democratic values, practices, and institutions.
Renewed support to the New Israel Fund (NIF) for diverse grantmaking, campaigns, and field-building that broadly defends Israeli democratic values, practices, and institutions.
Renewed support to the Solutions Project for its work to invest in frontline women and leaders of color, amplify their stories and scale energy solutions that advance a just transition.
Renewed support for Rise Up: Nurturing the Soul of Jewish Justice (RU), a path-breaking initiative to strengthen movements for justice by building the spiritual and internal capacity of diverse anti-racist Jewish justice movement-builders, fiscally sponsored by the Social Good Fund.
To support Rise Up, a path-breaking initiative to strengthen movements for justice by building the spiritual and internal capacity of Jewish leaders, fiscally sponsored by the Social Good Fund.
To support the Center for Working Families Fund for the Green New Deal Network Coordinating Team, a new collaborative effort of 13 organizations, formed to build the long-term organizing infrastructure and power necessary to forge a more just and inclusive society and advance a bold transformative vision for a society rooted in equality, dignity, solidarity and compassion.
To support Allied Media Projects to fortify an ecology of alternative media makers, activists and cultural critics, and to establish the Critical Minded initiative, which supports individual cultural critics of color as well as publications and initiatives led by and serving people of color.
Renewed support for Rise Up: Nurturing the Soul of Jewish Justice (RU), a path-breaking initiative to strengthen movements for justice by building the spiritual and internal capacity of diverse anti-racist Jewish justice movement-builders, fiscally sponsored by the Social Good Fund.
Renewed support for Rise Up: Nurturing the Soul of Jewish Justice (RU), a path-breaking initiative to strengthen movements for justice by building the spiritual and internal capacity of diverse anti-racist Jewish justice movement-builders, fiscally sponsored by the Social Good Fund.
Renewed support to the Pop Culture Collaborative Fund (PCC), a funder collaborative working to transform the narrative landscape in America around people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and Indigenous Peoples, especially those who are women, queer, transgender, and/or disabled.
Renewed support to New York Renews (NYR) for its work to advance equity rooted climate and energy policy implementation, drive investment to frontline communities in New York, and hold policymakers and stakeholders accountable for meaningful and robust community engagement as New York State works to implement its transition to a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.
Renewed support to the Pop Culture Collaborative Fund (PCC), a funder collaborative working to transform the narrative landscape in America around people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and Indigenous Peoples, especially those who are women, queer, transgender, and/or disabled.
Renewed support to the Pop Culture Collaborative Fund (PCC), a funder collaborative working to transform the narrative landscape in America around people of color, immigrants, refugees, Muslims, and Indigenous Peoples, especially those who are women, queer, transgender, and/or disabled.
Renewed support to the Kentucky Coalition, dba Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC), for its efforts to help advance the next just and sustainable economy in eastern Kentucky, address racial and economic inequality, and support policies that advance a just transition for workers and communities.
Renewed support to Critical Minded (CM) to resource and amplify the work of cultural critics of color in the U.S. to ensure they are valued as essential to a thriving cultural sector and in advancing an inclusive democracy.
Renewed support to Auburn Theological Seminary (Auburn) for its national programs that build capacity of faith leaders, activists, and social movements.
Renewed support to Bend the Arc (BTA), a core power-building grantee in Jewish social justice that works to build a just and equitable U.S. free from white supremacy, where Black liberation is realized, and all people are thriving.
Renewed support to Color of Change (CoC) to expand its racial justice organizing to respond to flashpoint moments of violence and inequity, build policy, hold corporations accountable and shift narratives in mainstream media to reflect the lived experience of Black communities.
Renewed support to Critical Minded (CM) to resource and amplify the work of cultural critics of color in the U.S. To ensure they are valued as essential to a thriving cultural sector and in advancing an inclusive democracy.
Renewed support to Critical Minded (CM) to resource and amplify the work of cultural critics of color in the U.S. To ensure they are valued as essential to a thriving cultural sector and in advancing an inclusive democracy.
Renewed support to Color of Change (Coc) to expand its racial justice organizing to respond to flashpoint moments of violence and inequity, build policy, hold corporations accountable and shift narratives in mainstream media to reflect the lived experience of Black communities.
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