Why a Foundation Quadrupled Its Grant Making

Carmen Rojas is president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation, which quadrupled its grant making in 2025 to $130 million and pledged to give another $500 million over the next decade. Rojas told the Chronicle about why her foundation is giving more.

What inspired such a huge increase in grant making?

In 2025, we increased our payout to nearly 13 percent. Our endowment outperformed the benchmark, and we made back the majority of the money that we gave out within a year. We also started thinking about a foundation’s fiduciary duty as duty to mission. We are experiencing the largest transfer of wealth from the poorest people in our country to the richest people in the country. In that context, we really saw increased grant making as the necessary expression of what true fiduciary duty meant.

How do you manage your time?

I’m a pretty regimented person. I wake up before 5:00 to meditate, journal, and exercise. I spend an hour reading in the morning. And then I work. I try to have a clear end to my workday. I do my best not to look at my phone at night. I do my best to have time to dream.

Is there a niche topic that you could talk about for hours?

Fitness. I do this sport activity called Hyrox. It combines running with eight different workout stations. I compete about three times a year and have a lot of fun.

Do you have any advice you would give to your 20-year-old self?

There is something so powerful about the imagined life and what happens when we surrender to possibility, as opposed to suffer under what is.

I wish I would have spent more time nurturing that.

— Edited by Emily Haynes