What’s New With Barbra Streisand’s Philanthropy?

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Hollywood legend Barbara Streisand, 80, boasts a career that spans six decades. She broke out at just 19, when she debuted on Broadway in the 1962 musical comedy “I Can Get It For You Wholesale.” Since then, she’s been in a slew of roles in theater and film. She’s won two Academy Awards, 10 Grammy Awards and five Emmy Awards.

Over the years, she’s also amassed quite a chunk of change, some $340 million by one estimate, much of it through real estate investments. Streisand is yet another example of the kind of wealth that can be accrued at the upper echelons of the entertainment industry.

Her Streisand Foundation also had an early breakout. She launched the foundation all the way back in 1986 and as of 2013, the foundation had granted $25 million to more than 800 nonprofit organizations around the world. More recently, the foundation has given away in the mid-six-figure range annually.

For example, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is the site of Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center. She’s a longtime donor to the Environmental Defense Fund, including making a $250,000 grant way back in 1989 to allow Michael Oppenheimer to study climate change. The foundation’s other grantees have been a hodgepodge of institutions that touch areas like the environment, women’s equity, Jewish causes and civil liberties. Grantees have included ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, Environmental Working Group, Mother Jones and USC Shoah Foundation.

Unfortunately, the most recent tax filing available from the foundation is from 2019, so the full picture of its grantmaking is obscured, but there are some recent big gifts on our radar. Here’s what we know about Barbra Streisand’s more recent philanthropy:

She continues to support research at L.A.-area universities

Streisand established the Streisand Chair in Cardiology at UCLA in 1984. In 2014, she established the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Health Program at the institution. More recently, in 2021, she created the Barbra Streisand Institute at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW), which aims to fund faculty and students and support research and programming to address critical issues facing people of all genders. Streisand also launched the Barbra Streisand Fellowships, which will give grants up to $20,000 for faculty working on the topic of truth in the public sphere.

Racial justice looms large, too

“Who is incompetent here? This reality show president or this inspiring mayor @murielbowser? Love what she did on the street to the White House!” wrote Streisand on her Instagram during the summer of Black Lives Matter protests around the world in 2020. That summer, Streisand also gifted Disney stock to George Floyd’s daughter, Gianna.

In the Spring of 2022, the Streisand Foundation donated money to Cold Case Coalition, a volunteer organization that helps with unresolved deaths and disappearances, to assist in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Identification Project. The funding will provide some of the testing kits for DNA submitted by volunteers to help identify victims of the Tulsa race massacre in Oklahoma.

Keep an eye on the next generation

The Streisand Foundation is a lean operation with minimal web presence. Its treasurer is Margery Tabankin, a longtime philanthropic consultant and activist whose clients have also included Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation. Francis Smith, meanwhile, a veteran political advisor to Democracy Alliance, has been the executive director of the foundation since 2013.

Streisand also has one child, Jason Gould, 56, who is on the Streisand Foundation board and involved in its work Following in the footsteps of his mother, he is an actor and a singer. Gould keeps a low profile, but also like his mother, is strongly progressive. We’re keeping a close eye out for his potential philanthropy in the coming years.