The Tully and Elise Friedman Fund is a foundation created by Tully M. Friedman, a San Francisco-based investment banker. Friedman is a trustee of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute and has endowed a chair at the Hoover Institution, a right-leaning think tank housed at Stanford University.
Tully M. Friedman
Tully M. Friedman is an investment banker based in San Francisco. In 1970 he joined Salomon Brothers and in 1971 moved to San Francisco, where his expanded the office to become the largest regional office of a national investment banking firm. In 1981 he quit Salomon and started his own firm in partnership with Warren Hellman. He told Forbes in 1991 that the goal of Hellman and Friedman was to offer valuable advice to his clients rather than simply charge them large fees: “In the 1980s, Wall Street became like a doctor whose cure for every problem was the most expensive treatment available.” Friedman further explained that his firm preferred giving value to clients. [1]
In 1998, Friedman broke his partnership with Warren Hellman and started his own firm. In, 2011 In 2012, he sold his Woodside, California home for $117.5 million, the record for a single-family home at the time. [2]
Involvement with Right-of-Center Advocacy
The Tully and Elise Friedman Fund contributes to several center-right nonprofits. In 2011, the fund’s largest donations were $655,000 to the American Enterprise Institute and $400,000 grants to Donors Trust and Americans for Prosperity. [3]
In 2007 former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) said, “When you see a good cause, one of the things we believe in so fundamentally, you’ll probably see Tully Friedman connected with it.” [4]
American Enterprise Institute
As of May 2022, Friedman is a trustee of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and has previously served as chairman. [5] In 2018, Arthur Brooks wrote that when he was considering taking the job as president of AEI, he had breakfast with Friedman. “I worried about what would happen if I failed in this job and imperiled this 75-year-old think tank. ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he [Friedman] said. ‘If you can’t raise money or motivate the scholars, we’ll fire you within the year, and AEI will be just fine.’” Brooks would work as AEI’s president until 2019. [6]
Hoover Institution
Friedman has endowed the chair of Michael Boskin, a Stanford economist and senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the George H.W. Bush Administration. [7]
Other Affiliations and Grantmaking
Friedman is vice-chair of the Telluride Foundation. [8] He has served as president of the San Francisco Opera Association [9] and the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. [10]
The largest grant made by the Tully and Elise Friedman Fund in 2019 was $100,000 to Harvard University. [11]