Address: 90 New Montgomery St, #1100
Phone: 415.655.4420
Web: www.stupski.org
Email: dan@stupski.org
Larry and Joyce Stupski were committed to advancing opportunity and giving back to the communities they called home in Hawaiʻi and the San Francisco Bay Area. They drew inspiration from their experiences building successful operations in business and education to their unique approach to grantmaking and large-scale systems change. Together, they donated $723 million to individual nonprofits and the Stupski Foundation. Stupski Foundation converted to a spend-down foundation in 2014, after Mr. Stupski’s battle with advanced-stage cancer.
The foundation is based on the belief in a society of solidarity, centered in justice and equity, that holds itself accountable for ensuring everyone in its communities can flourish. It is working toward the day when health, food, and postsecondary systems collectively promote well-being and abundance for everyone. To realize that future, Stupski Foundation is returning all of its resources to the communities it calls home by 2029.
Everyone has a fundamental right to health and holistic care that supports their physical, spiritual, and mental well-being. In the Bay Area, the foundation focuses on racial health equity for young children and people with serious illness; in Hawaiʻi, it advances health equity on Neighbor Islands.
Program Information:
Stupski Foundation works at the bookends of life. It works with partners who strengthen bonds between children and their families during the early years of life and funds family-informed efforts to improve access to care that supports childhood development and lifelong health. It also partners with community-based organizations and health systems to ensure people living with serious illness have agency and access to the care they want and need to experience health and comfort through the end of life.
Financial Information:
Total Assets: $261 million (FY22)
Amount Dedicated to Health-Related Grants: $17.5 million (FY22)
Special Initiatives and/or Representative Health and Human Services Grants
Ready! Resilient! Rising! via the UCSF Center on Child & Community Health—R!3 is raising the standards of care for children and families insured by Medicaid. It supports tiered, trauma-informed models in two major safety net sites, plus navigation, payment, and broader system transformation. ($1,000,000)
Hawaiʻi Community Health Center Portfolio—Multiyear general operating support to a set of community health centers advancing health equity, primarily on Neighbor Islands, plus ongoing networking and support. ($14,000,000)
AC Care Alliance—A multiyear expansion of their faith-based, person-centered, lay care navigation intervention serving individuals with advanced illness and their caregivers, focused particularly on communities of color. ($1,100,000)
Freedom CC—No-term general operating support for the organization that uplifts the wisdom of Ancestral Medicine with the strengths of Western medicine to provide revolutionary, community-centered Whole-Person Healing, prioritizing Black, Brown, Native, and immigrant communities. ($600,000)
Hawaiʻi Community-Centered Partnership with Early Childhood Action Strategies—A multifunder, multiyear partnership supporting Neighbor Islands’ youngest keiki’s health, safety, and learning. The grant proposal development and selection will be driven by each local community, with ECAS support. ($2,000,000)
Stupski Foundation and GIH
As a regional funder in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaiʻi, Stupski Foundation values having a network of nationwide health funders to share dialogue. For example, at last year’s GIH conference, Sulma Gandhi, the Hawaiʻi Health Program Officer at Stupski Foundation, presented lessons learned from the foundation’s work in Hawaiʻi. The team was grateful to be able to share their grantee-partners’ concept for a new community-based palliative care benefit developed with Hawaiʻi’s state Med-QUEST Division. Engaging with peers to hear which parts of the foundation’s work connected with theirs gave us a greater understanding of how this place-based work resonates with a national audience.
The Role of Philanthropy in Meeting Pressing Needs
“Our approach to grantmaking in health has been deeply shaped by our choice to spend down, and all for the better. I welcome the chance to connect with others considering how having an end date can transform their work and that of their partners. For us, spending down has liberated us to drastically increase the amount we can spend to advance health equity in Hawai’i and the San Francisco Bay Area.”
–Dan Tuttle, Director of Health