Where Have Daniel and Jane Och Been Giving Lately? Here's an Overview
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The Ochs have been major supporters of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Photo: Leonard Zhukovsky/shutterstock
Billionaire Daniel Och’s name recently came up in our dive into the latest moves by the Robin Hood Foundation, a leading institution for New York City antipoverty giving, which is now exactly the same age as this writer: 35. Over the years, Robin Hood has racked up support and board leadership from a who’s who of Wall Street’s biggest titans, including founder Paul Tudor Jones, Glenn Dubin and Ken Tropin. Daniel Och, worth $3.7 billion, has also been a long-running supporter, along with his wife Jane, and sits on Robin Hood’s board of directors, as well.
Through their Jane and Daniel Och Family Foundation, established in 2008, the Ochs gave Robin Hood $3.75 million combined in the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years. Daniel Och, 62, is a Wharton graduate who founded Och-Ziff Capital Management, a hedge fund firm, in 1994. In 2019, Och departed the firm, now known as Sculptor Capital Management, following a bribery scheme for which the company was fined $413 million. He now runs a family office, Willoughby Capital, through which he invests in a portfolio including Coinbase and, coincidentally, stock trading and investment app Robinhood.
Jane Och is also a finance veteran. The Michigan Wolverine started her investment career at Goldman Sachs and in 2012 founded Guac-Lock LLC, a consumer goods company. But besides their support for Robin Hood, what are the Ochs up to these days with their giving and through their foundation? And what can we expect from the couple down the line? Here’s a quick rundown.
The Ochs continue to focus on Jewish causes
The Och family name is now stamped upon the New Jersey Jewish day school Golda Och Academy, formerly known as Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union. The family’s history with the academy goes way back — Och’s parents were among its founding families in the 1960s and Och himself attended the school. Following his mother Golda’s death in 2010, the Jane and Daniel Och Family Foundation pledged a $15 million challenge gift to the school, which was renamed the Golda Och Academy. The Ochs have steadily supported the school. In 2021, they pledged $10 million to the academy to establish the Dr. Michael Och Fund for Faculty Excellence, named for his father.
The Ochs have also extended significant support to other Jewish organizations including Birthright Israel Foundation, whose board Och once chaired, American Jewish Committee, Greater Miami Jewish Federation, Jewish Communal Fund, Westchester Reform Temple, and UJA Federation, which received some $6.7 million in the 2020 fiscal year alone. Jane Och, meanwhile, has been involved with Facing History and Ourselves, and Hebrew Free Loan Society.
Health and human services is another interest
Besides the family’s continued support for the Robin Hood Foundation, which is well-known around the Big Apple for its health and human services funding, the Ochs also strongly support NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where Daniel Och has been on the board of trustees since 2005. This long-running board membership has also translated to big gifts, including a $25 million gift in 2017 for the hospital’s spine care facility, which was then renamed the Daniel and Jane Och Spine Hospital, and another $50 million gift in 2022 to further the spine hospital’s work.
Daniel Och first got involved with this issue back in 2016 when Lawrence Lenke, one of the three surgeons who established the spine hospital, gave him a tour. Och was immediately impressed with the size of an operating room, large enough to accommodate equipment that runs electricity through the spine as a treatment. In addition to their giving for NewYork-Presbyterian, the Ochs have also supported Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Continued focuses and new potential focuses
The Och Foundation’s grantmaking also touches cultural and educational institutions including MoMA, Och’s alma mater UPenn, Harlem Village Academies, and Friends of School in the Square. The latter two are charter school organizations, both operating in New York. Recently, a seven-figure matching gift supported School in the Square’s newly opened elementary school Dos Amigos in Washington Heights.
The foundation also recently made a six-figure gift to New Venture Fund, an organization that hasn’t shown up on any previous recent 990s. The Washington, D.C.-based fiscal sponsorship nonprofit, one of several such entities associated with progressive-leaning consultancy Arabella Advisors, provides a home for projects that fall into five top issues: environment, youth development and education, civil rights, social action and advocacy, global development and health, and capacity building. Some of this work potentially overlaps with the couple’s long-running work with Robin Hood, but it’ll be interesting to see if this was a one-off or a sign of something more.
The Ochs, longtime New Yorkers, now reside in Miami Beach, Florida. Recent Florida grants have gone to places like Health in the Hood and Greater Miami Jewish Federation. While the Ochs’ Florida giving is still fairly low compared to their New York support, so far, it appears South Florida grantmaking remains comfortably within the family’s long-running philanthropic interest areas.
