Foundations can outlive their charitable missions – and that’s a problem

Bill Gates stands out for planning to close his foundation by twenty-forty-five — a rarity, per The Conversation, among today's tech billionaires and their predecessors. Most foundations are designed to last forever, which creates an awkward problem: society's needs shift, but a perpetual mission locked in time doesn't. Take the Milton Hershey School Foundation, established in nineteen-oh-nine to educate orphans. That mission made sense then, but by the nineteen-twenties, orphanages fell out of favor and foster care became standard. Yet the foundation endures with a twenty-three billion dollar endowment and an eight hundred fifty million dollar annual surplus it legally cannot redirect elsewhere, because legal doctrine requires faithfulness to Hershey's original intent. The La Verne Noyes Fund, created in nineteen-nineteen to support descendants of World War One soldiers, faces a subtler drift — immigration patterns have shifted so much that it now inadvertently excludes most recent American arrivals. Julius Rosenwald was the rare exception; he insisted his foundation expire twenty-five years after his death, arguing that philanthropic needs change and foundations should too. His foundation closed in nineteen-forty-eight.

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