Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
With approximately $1.5 billion in assets, the Starr Foundation is one of the larger philanthropic funders you don’t hear about every day. But any organization capable of making a $50 million donation — as Starr did recently — is going to remain relevant in the circles in which it operates. In Starr’s case, those circles include scientific and medical research, particularly cancer research.
Based in New York City, the Starr Foundation has been around quite a while — since 1955, when it was established by insurance entrepreneur Cornelius Vander Starr. In its 75 years in operation, the foundation says it has given more than $3.8 billion in program areas including education, medicine and healthcare, international relations, culture, human needs (like food, job training, literacy and emergency housing) and the environment. Starr has also supported basic scientific research at the New York Botanical Garden and at the Wildlife Conservation Society — both well-established organizations, similar to the medical institutions it supports.
Despite these broad historical interests, Starr has narrowed its focus a bit recently, said Florence A. Davis, the foundation’s director and president. “At the moment, we are quite focused on our longstanding medical research programs,” she said.
One sign of that narrower focus: a $50 million grant to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, announced this month. The funding establishes the Starr Foundation Program for Discovery Science. The Discovery Science program is all about basic science, and will support the scientists at Sloan Kettering Institute (SKI), the research arm of Memorial Sloan Kettering.
The Discovery program will conduct basic laboratory research, also known as bench science or research. Basic research may ultimately lead to cures and treatments, but it is often harder to fund than later-stage clinical research involving the testing of potential treatments and medicines. However, as scientists are often keen to point out, you can’t have later-stage studies of therapies without the basic science these potential treatments are based on.
For instance, several important, newer breakthroughs in cancer treatment, such as immunotherapy and targeted treatment, are built upon fundamental research that was conducted at Memorial Sloan Kettering. The new funding will enable the creation of a new endowed research position, and support the training and mentoring of new and early career scientists.
Typically, Starr’s grantmaking has favored established nonprofits with a long track record, and the foundation does, in fact, have a long and substantial relationship with Memorial Sloan Kettering. MSK is a partner in the Starr Cancer Consortium, which Starr established in 2006 with a $100 million grant, and with an aim to encourage and support multi-institutional research that digs into key questions of cancer and its treatment. The consortium includes five major cancer research institutions: Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University and Weill Cornell Medical College.
Over the years, Starr has supported medical research in areas other than cancer, including stem cells, cardiac disease, HIV-AIDS and others, Davis said. The Starr Foundation has also taken part in the growing movement to ease the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that medical students frequently incur during their training. In 2019, the foundation made the lead contribution to a $160 million scholarship program at Weill Cornell Medicine that aims to eliminate all medical education debt for its students who qualify for financial aid.
The new gift to Memorial Sloan Kettering is not the Starr Foundation’s first transformative grant for basic science research. Back in 2019, Starr made a donation on a similar scale — $50 million to Rockefeller University to establish the Maurice R. and Corinne P. Greenberg Center for the Study of Inflammation, Microbiome, and Metabolism and The Starr Center for Computational and Quantitative Science. (Maurice R. Greenberg is Starr’s longtime chairman.)
Take a look at Inside Philanthropy’s updated profile of Starr Foundation for more about the funder’s priorities and interests. The Starr Foundation’s website doesn’t necessarily call out for engagement — it looks like it was designed 20 years ago, without an update since. As we note in our profile, Starr isn’t the most prolific grantmaker out there, and will likely give fewer grants overall during the coming years than one might expect from a funder of this size. It also has a clear stance on unsolicited proposals: They’re unwelcome.
Evidently, as it pursues a narrower focus, the foundation is choosing to make a smaller number of large, transformative grants like this one to Memorial Sloan Kettering. So while the Starr Foundation’s giving will continue to make a splash in the world of medical research, it’s also another one of those cases where a funder with a surprisingly large treasure chest eschews publicity and sticks to a familiar grantmaking playbook.
Whether that constitutes dedication or complacency is a matter of interpretation. In Starr’s defense, cancer research isn’t exactly a niche cause when it comes to its potential impact on the population at large. And funding basic research, in our view, is usually a worthy investment.
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