Ray of Light Foundation is a private grantmaking foundation funded by pop music star Madonna Louise Ciccone, known by the stage name Madonna. The foundation’s grantees are a mix of traditional charitable non-profits and left-of-center advocacy groups, especially pro-Palestinian groups. It also provides substantial funding for projects influenced by Madonna’s interest in Kabbalah, a Jewish mystical sect.

The foundation shares its name with Madonna’s seventh studio album, released in March 1998, just before the foundation was established. ^[1]

Activities and Grants

Ray of Light Foundation has a substantial international program, funding projects such as disaster relief in Haiti, programs for street children in the Philippines, and girls’ education in Pakistan and Afghanistan. ^[2] It has also supported charter schools and a boxing gym for at-risk youth in Madonna’s native Detroit. ^[3]

Palestinian Territories

The foundation supports projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and pro-Palestinian advocacy groups. It pays the salaries of teachers in UN-funded schools in the Gaza Strip, stepping in after the Trump administration cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA),^[4] which the administration called an “irredeemably flawed operation” and an impediment to peace efforts. ^[5]

It also funds a women’s farm microloan program through the Palestine Fair Trade Association. ^[6]

In May 2019, during the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest held in Tel Aviv, Israel, Madonna was criticized on the one hand for funding these grantees by pro-Israeli commentators, and on the other by the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for attending the contest. ^[7] In the United States, the foundation has supported the radical-left anti-war group Code Pink,^[8] which advocates for Palestinian interests and BDS, though it later criticized Madonna for appearing at Eurovision. ^[9] The foundation also supports Americans for Peace Now, which advocates for diplomatic recognition of the Palestinian territories as a sovereign state. ^[10]

LGBT Issues

In response to the 2016 Islamist terror attack by Omar Mateen on the Pulse Nightclub, Madonna announced a partnership with the National LGBTQ Task Force to expand that group’s “violence prevention work, especially as it affects transgender women of color.” ^[11]

Kabbalah

The foundation gave nearly $4.4 million between 2001 and 2006 to the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles;^[12] Kabbalah is a form of Jewish mysticism that Madonna became involved in in the 2000s. In 2007, the Foundation followed up those gifts with more than $2.6 million, the vast bulk of its giving for that year. ^[13]

With Michael Berg, co-founder of the Kabbalah Center, Madonna founded Raising Malawi, a charity that funds orphanages, schools, and clinics in the East African country. ^[14]

Ray of Light Foundation is a frequent contributor to Raising Malawi, including a $1.3 million grant in 2016. ^[15] In 2011, the board of Raising Malawi was terminated and the organization abandoned plans to build a girls’ school when auditors discovered “outlandish expenditures on salaries, cars, office space and a golf course membership, free housing and a car and driver for the school’s director.” ^[16] Of the $3.8 million spent on the project, only $850,000 was paid out in Malawi—the rest being spent in Los Angeles by Berg and the Kabbalah Center—and no construction ever occurred. ^[17]

People

The foundation’s only director is Madonna’s sister, Melanie Ciccone. ^[18]