DJB Foundation

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The DJB Foundation, a progressive social change philanthropy, was founded in 1948 by Daniel J. Bernstein to hold the portion of his inheritance intended for donation to charities. With his death in 1970 almost five-million dollars came to the foundation. Its most active period began in 1971 when the Board of Directors decided that all assets would be given away within ten years. The grants concentrated on groups and programs generally ignored by conventional foundations because they were "controversial" -- the poor, GIs, deserters and draft resisters, ethnic groups, convicts and ex-convicts. The DJB Foundation exhausted its funds by the end of 1974.

The DJB Foundation has supported a variety of groups including SourceWatch and the Center for Media and Democracy


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[edit] Daniel J. Bernstein

Daniel J. Bernstein was born in New York City in 1918, the youngest of three brothers. Graduating from Cornell University in 1940, he went to Harvard Business School for a year before going to work for the Land Conservation Corps. A few months later he entered the Navy and served for five years. After leaving the military, Dan searched for a job that he felt would have some meaning and Jim Robinson, a progressive minister in Harlem, guided him to the National Scholarship Fund and Service for Negro Students. He and Felice Schwartz, the young woman who had invented the organization, built it into a great success, connecting qualified black students, available funding, and interested colleges. After a few years he entered the business world and eventually began working for Loeb Rhoades, a Wall Street investment firm. Although he disapproved of the market mechanism and the faith people had in it to reflect and enhance the U.S. economy, he found it intellectually fascinating and became very successful. In 1953, he married Carol Underwood with whom he had two children. In 1956, while recuperating from knee surgery, Dan decided to work at home as an independent stockbroker.

The Bernsteins always considered themselves to be liberal, but their thoughts and beliefs crystallized during a visit to Cuba in 1960, shortly after the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro became the President. Carol was hesitant about taking a trip there with two small children because of how the American press portrayed Cuba under a dictatorship. She expected to see bearded thugs roaming the streets with their guns. Instead, from their viewpoint, they saw a wonderful country in which many things that make people suffer had been eliminated. Carol and Dan came back to the United States anxious to tell their friends and acquaintances about their trip but nobody would listen. From then on the Bernsteins’ political and social lives moved leftward.

After their Cuba trip, and when Castro became friendly with the Arab states, Dan lost many of his Jewish clients and he almost lost his entire business. He built up another trade and continued to voice his beliefs. In the 1960s, Carol and Dan supported the causes of civil rights, the end of apartheid in South Africa, and the anti-Vietnam War movement. The movement against the United States involvement in Vietnam became a major focus of Dan’s attention in the early 1960s. Dan would purchase full-page advertisements in newspapers such as The New York Times. His advertising campaign encouraged students to resist the draft, and others to stand up against the war in any way they could. The Bernsteins additionally supported this cause by participating in demonstrations and continually writing their Congressmen. The anti-Vietnam War cause strengthened Dan’s belief that if you fought long and hard and concentrated your time, effort, and money on an issue it could be resolved. That resolution had not come by the time of Dan’s death in 1970 at the age of 51.

[edit] Wilbur Hugh Ferry

Ferry was born on born 17 December 1910. He was the son of Hugh Joseph Ferry, President and Chairman of the Board of the Packard Motor Company, and Fay Ferry.

Ferry graduated from Dartmouth College in 1932. After his graduation from Dartmouth in 1932, Ferry landed a job teaching English and Latin at Choate Rosemary Hall.

From 1933-1941, he entered in to a career in journalism, though, in 1936, he briefly held the position of Director of Publicity for Eastern Airlines. Between 1942-1945 Ferry held a series of positions including consultant for the International Labour Organisation (1940-1944), Chief Investigator in New Hampshire for the Office of Price Administration (1942-1944), Director of Public Relations for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (1944), and member of the U. S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Southwest Pacific Area (1945). From 1945-1954, Ferry was a partner in the New York public relations firm of Earl Newsom and Company. The Ford Foundation used this public relations agency, and Ferry was responsible for writing speeches for Henry Ford.

In 1951, while still working for Earl Newsom, Ferry became a public relations adviser for the Ford Foundation. Ferry was also a personal friend of Robert M. Hutchins who became the president of the Fund for the Republic. The Fund for the Republic was a non-profit organization whose basic objectives were to research and analyze civil liberties and civil rights. Ferry became Vice President of the Fund in 1954 and was responsible for its administration and public relations. He continued to work for the Fund after it moved from New York to Santa Barbara, California in 1959, when it changed its name to The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI). Ferry published a number of essays while at CSDI including:

  • The Corporation and the Economy (1959)
  • The Economy Under Law (1961)
  • Caught in the Horn of Plenty (1962)
  • What Price Peace (1963)
  • Masscom as Educator (1966)
  • Farewell to Integration (1967)
  • Tonic and Toxic Technology (1967)
  • The Police State is Here (1969)

On August 7, 1962, Ferry delivered a speech titled "Myths, Cliches and Stereotypes" to the Western States Democratic Conference in Seattle, Washington where he was very critical of the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. This led to criticism across the political divide including from Attorney General Robert Kennedy and attacks by the press across the country. However, Ferry's critical view of Hoover came to be shared amongst many in later years.

Ferry stayed at the CDSI until 1969, when he was sacked after an internal feud. He then created his own job, hiring himself out for $6,000 a year to ten California philanthropists. One of the ten was Carol Bernstein, whose late husband was part of the Loews Inc. communications empire.

Ferry’s marriage to Jolyne Marie Gillier in 1937 ended in divorce in 1972. He married Carol Underwood Bernstein in 1973. Ferry ran Carol Underwood Bernstein’s DJB Foundation, which spent out its $18 million endowment on a variety of left-wing causes.

Ferry and his second wife made grants and personal contributions through the DJB Foundation to finance "things that no one else would fund because they were too radical for conventional foundations." He died in 1995 from Parkinson’s disease in Scarsdale, New York.

[edit] Criticism

In the Philanthropy Roundtable, drawing on a recent biography, an article about Ferry stated that:

  • Among his students was future President John F. Kennedy, who thought Ferry spent so much time sneaking around the student dorms that he called Ferry “creeping Wilbur.” After Choate sacked him for drinking on the job, Ferry spent the next 13 years in a number of different jobs.
  • If you were in trouble with the law in the 1970s and 1980s, knew who Ferry was, and told him you were a political prisoner, he would provide bail. As a peace activist, Ferry also spent the 1980s on a grand tour of America’s enemies, including trips to Havana and Moscow. [1]

[edit] Funding Projects

The Website Activist.Cash lists some of the groups that receive funding and support from the DJB Foundation which includes the Center for Media & Democracy which is behind SourceWatch.

The DJB Foundation, began donating less from 2000 due to limited resources. In the Spring of 2004, according to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the DJB Foundation stated that “Our observation has been that preservation of capital becomes the main concern of too many foundations, causing them to worry more about investments than about programs.” [2]

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[edit] External links