EDUCATION: HOW TO DRIVE THE LEARNING CURVE

In the mid-’90s, Patricia Gruber was a successful psychotherapist with a thriving practice in Berkeley, Calif. She made a real difference. “I had a great referral network and a lot of support from local people in the field.” But her husband Peter, an investment manager, was offered a job in St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. They decided to move. “It was a big transition,” says Gruber. “I felt like I was too far along in my career to start over.”

Then her father became ill and the next three years were devoted to his care. In 2000, after her father died, Gruber gradually got involved with the private foundation that her husband had been operating on his own—“he made all the money and the foundation was his idea,” she explains.

Life took a complete turn. “It developed a whole other side of me. I did not have an MBA or any nonprofit management experience and I never thought I’d be suited for it, or that it would make me feel so happy and capable,” she says.

To get up-to-speed, Gruber took an online course in grant making offered by the Council on Foundations, a nonprofit membership association. “I learned the basic protocols, which dovetailed with my background in social services.” She also set up learning sessions with other foundation owners, worked with consultants and tagged along on some field visits, including, says Gruber, an inspiring and enlightening trip with global financier and philanthropist George Soros to a remote part of Hungary where he was then funding a school for girls.

The couple always had in mind a mission of rewarding excellence and encouraging research. So rather than making grants, they award unrestricted cash prizes of $500,000 each to young scientists in fields such as cosmology, genetics and neuroscience — “areas the Nobels don’t fund,” says Gruber. To stay sharp, the foundation, with roughly $100 million in assets, partners with top-level scientific societies and relies on a panel of international advisers.

The Grubers also award prizes for social justice and women’s rights, sometimes combining their two interests. “There have been only about a dozen women who’ve won science Nobels,” says Gruber. Working to change that ratio, the foundation funds a career development award of $75,000 over three years to a young woman geneticist from anywhere in the world. “The perception of the scientific community is that there’s no big cadre of women marching forward in the sciences,” says Gruber. Yet judges at the American Society of Human Genetics, which administers the award, were floored by the response. “They received more than 200 applications from highly qualified young women for the one position. They had no idea there were so many gifted women out there.”

For Pat Gruber, life continues to change.

Reviewing requests

When applications for funding come in to her family foundation, Pat Gruber replies with a simple form that asks for:

• Evidence of tax-exempt status, such as 501(c)3 incorporation

• A copy of the organization’s most recent budget, including staff costs — with a promise that this will be kept confidential

• Specifics of how the donation will be spent, including how many individuals served and amounts needed for specific items