In this interview, Grantmakers In Health’s Maya Schane spoke with Dan Tuttle and Sulma Gandhi of the Stupski Foundation about the foundation’s spend-down grantmaking strategy and acceleration in 2025 in response to federal policy changes. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell us about the Stupski Foundation’s history and mission.

Dan Tuttle: Larry and Joyce Stupski endowed the foundation decades ago, and for years they worked as an operating foundation on K-12 education reform nationwide. Unfortunately, Larry was diagnosed with prostate cancer, so for that reason and others, they chose to close the foundation at the time. A few years after Larry passed, Joyce decided to reopen the foundation with the remaining assets, partly in Larry’s legacy. One of the three goals she outlined was serious illness care and end of life care, because she recognized how challenging Larry’s battle was, despite their resources. She knew that if it was still tremendously challenging when you were very wealthy, it would be extraordinarily challenging for everybody. In addition to our end-of-life care funding, the foundation also supports prenatal and early childhood health initiatives.

When Joyce relaunched the foundation as chair of the board, she wanted to give back to the communities that the Stupskis call home, and she knew from the start that it was going to be through spend-down grantmaking, because she wanted to see impact during her lifetime. Now, our overall mission is working towards the day when our health, food, and postsecondary systems collectively promote well-being and abundance for everyone. To realize that future, we’re returning all our resources to the communities that we collectively call home in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawai’i by 2029.

Sulma Gandhi: Joyce and Larry had a home in Hawai’i, so they felt a sense of responsibility for the places where they lived. Even though the Stupski Foundation has been providing different types of support to Hawai’i for decades, they had done it differently—there were no staff with lived experiences on the ground—so one of the transitions in 2021 was to hire staff in Hawai’i with deep local knowledge and relationships.

Read the full article about spend-down grantmaking for health philanthropy by Maya Schane, Dan Tuttle, and Sulma Gandhi at Grantmakers In Health.