Being honest about our history means dismantling patterns that shape how we confront injustice.
Philanthropy stands at a critical juncture. The current administration is consolidating political and economic power while dismantling the systems meant to protect health and civil liberties, in ways that especially harm communities facing the deepest inequities. While everyday people have long mobilized against these forces, many powerful institutions—from the media to higher education—have instead complied in advance or capitulated.
Philanthropy risks taking this same path. We are a sector born from wealth amassed through extreme economic inequality, if not harm and extraction. The social missions we pursue have been based on what we prioritize, without accountability to the public. Historically, and currently, despite good intentions and good works, we continue to align with powerful elite interests instead of those facing the greatest injustices.
That’s why, at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), we’ve led a Truth, Repair and Transformation (TRT) process within our organization. We aim to confront our own role in the injustices that shape the current moment, to model and facilitate the repair of past and ongoing harms. In doing so, we are transforming how we work so we can more effectively fulfill our mission.
We commissioned an external historian of philanthropy, Dr. Maribel Morey, who partnered with a staff taskforce to conduct an extensive, rigorous review of historical documents over the course of two years, with input from our trustees and partners.
What We Learned
Understanding RWJF’s origin story is the first fundamental step in our work. The origins of our wealth and our founder’s priorities determined who influenced our decisions, who benefitted from our work, and what issues we were willing—or unwilling—to take on.
Three core truths about our origin story paint a more accurate picture of our impact as a grantmaker, investor, employer, and partner to communities facing the biggest barriers to health.
Truth #1: We have long shared an inaccurate, heroic story about our founder as an altruistic philanthropist. Robert Wood Johnson II (RWJ II), former president and chairman of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), founded RWJF. Archival evidence shows that he envisioned the Foundation as a modest, local charity, and gifted J&J shares to the Foundation throughout his life. His final bequest of 10.4 million shares made RWJF the company’s largest shareholder. His primary preoccupation with this act was to shape the Foundation to maintain his dominant shareholder influence over J&J. Foundation Board Minutes and his final will from 1968 revealed his expectation that his trusted group of J&J executives, appointed to the Foundation’s Board, would maintain this dominant J&J shareholder position indefinitely. For decades afterward, J&J leaders continued to hold significant Board influence at RWJF. In archival records, former RWJF President Leighton E. Cluff recalled RWJF Board members suggesting in their conversations that: “The Foundation not only had a primary charitable function, but it also had a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the company.”
Truth #2: RWJF’s public narratives have inaccurately minimized the Foundation’s intertwined relationship to J&J. From its inception in 1936 as a local charity in New Brunswick, NJ, providing emergency support for surrounding communities, the Foundation operated in close connection with J&J. At the time, the Foundation's principal office was located at the J&J world headquarters in New Brunswick. During RWJ II’s lifetime, J&J executives who comprised the RWJF Board of Trustees ran the Foundation. For decades, RWJF and J&J remained deeply connected financially, culturally, and through governance, even as the company faced major public health controversies.
J&J executives played a central role in shaping the Foundation’s identity and priorities. After RWJ II passed in 1968, Trustees who inherited Foundation stewardship prioritized input from elite academic and medical institutions to determine RWJF's role in advancing health. These powerful voices influenced decisions by Foundation leadership about the organization’s endowment, grantmaking, and operations over time. As a result, RWJF’s funding tended to support powerful interests in medicine, government, corporations, and academia, and avoided issues that could challenge them. While there were some efforts to support community-based organizations over the years, many Foundation choices did not prioritize or engage communities facing the greatest barriers to health.
Truth #3: Contrary to our public narrative, our origin story began in 1936 rather than 1972, when federal regulation shaped our expansion into a national philanthropy. The Foundation began as a local charity before expanding nationally in 1972. We have often inaccurately described this national expansion as a part of a renewed mission and vision and as the launch of the Foundation as we know it, focused on health and healthcare in America. However, historical documents indicate that regulatory pressures from the Tax Reform Act of 1969 (TRA69) played a primary role in the timing and decision to expand the Foundation’s role as a grantmaker. TRA69 required all private foundations to distribute a minimum percentage of funds for charitable purposes and limited Foundation ownership of corporate stock. As a result, the RWJF Board decided to reduce its concentrated J&J holdings and significantly increase its annual charitable spending. During this period, RWJF also sought to distance itself publicly from J&J while privately remaining deeply connected.
These truths matter because they created decision-making patterns that reinforced existing systems of power. We buried those patterns beneath heroic narratives of our origins, motivations, and identity as a philanthropy. These truths matter now, because they still shape how boldly we do or do not confront historical injustices and how hard we work to improve conditions for those most marginalized.
Acting on What We’ve Learned
We are acknowledging the past in service to the future. We are using what we have learned to commit to taking the next vital steps: repairing harm and identifying better ways to operate in alignment with our values, mission, and goals.
Here’s what we’re already doing:
- Digging Deeper: Our TRT Taskforce is examining past funding approaches and interests that shaped our work both nationally and in our home state of New Jersey to more deeply understand the impacts on communities facing health inequities.
- Listening and Learning: Beginning in the third quarter of 2026, we will host listening sessions with affected communities to guide our next steps. We will convene a small group of individuals to share stories and analysis that illuminate how RWJF’s choices have impacted communities, institutions, and systems. We will also continue to engage the TRT Wisdom Council in informing repair. In this way, expert guidance and perspective will inform our path forward, and we will hold ourselves accountable to community interests.
- Public Transparency: We’ve updated Our History page, internal communications resources, and media statements to more accurately reflect how RWJF gained its wealth and maintained influence. We will continue to share truths we are learning about the Foundation’s missteps, culminating in a more comprehensive public report later this year.
- Changing How We Fund and Grant: We are building better systems of accountability and measurement to track how much of our funding supports health justice and community power-building, which we have historically under-resourced. Many of these legacies remain—but we are committed to deepening our work in these areas. To avoid unintentionally reinforcing existing harmful structures, we are critically reviewing our grantmaking to ensure we are transforming healthcare and public health systems, including early efforts to address commercial drivers of the health insurance industry and other harmful for-profit interests in healthcare.
- Evolving Leadership: We have diversified our Board of Trustees to include leaders and communities with expertise in actively dismantling structural racism and other barriers to health.
This work is ongoing. Reckoning with our past is uncomfortable, but it is also liberating. It gives us the clarity and resolve to dismantle remaining harmful patterns in our work and build something stronger, more just, and more aligned with our mission.
We have contributed to upholding and maintaining systems that keep health out of reach for too many people. And we are committed to repairing the harms we have caused, informed by a more complete truth about our past. Only through this process can we truly realize a future where health is no longer a privilege for some but a right for all.
Learn more about how the TRT process is informing our work and how it can influence philanthropy’s path to accountability.
About the Authors
Fiona Kanagasingam is vice president, chief Equity and Culture officer.
Maisha Simmons is associate vice president, Equity and Culture.