Columbia University's Historical Russell Sage Foundation Connection Revisited (Part 2)

The Russell Sage Foundation--whose board of trustees former Columbia University Provost and Columbia World Politics Deputy Director in 2024, Ira Katznelson, chaired between 1999 and 2002--claimed, historically, to be a “non-profit” institution (despite it having, historically, an endowment of over $350 million in assets in 2019).


But, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2018, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019, the Russell Sage Foundation collected over $15.5 million in total revenues, including over $11.5 million from its net investment income; and also including over $1.3 million from a “charitable” contribution it received from Bill Gates’s Gates Foundation (which—besides including former Columbia U. President Shafik on its board in recent years—in 2022 invested $9 million in an Israeli biotechnology company, Eleven Therapeutics, whose COO and Co-Founder is a “mission commander in active reserve duty” in the IAF and a former “F-16 co-pilot” and “IAF Major”, according to the Eleven Therapeutics website.) during this same time period.


In addition, according to a financial statement that was posted on its website, historically, in 2020 the Russell Sage Foundation had total revenues exceeding $52.5 million. Yet “the Foundation is exempt from federal taxes,” “is classified as a private foundation” and “the Foundation is further classified as an exempt operating foundation, and is therefore exempt from federal excise taxes;” although “the Foundation is subject to income taxes…on income derived from private equity partnership investments.”


According to the same 2020 financial statement, less than $27 million, of the over $350 million that the Russell Sage Foundation endowment had, historically, then invested in stocks and bonds of for-profit corporations that exploit workers and consumers around the globe, was then, historically, invested in “private equity partnership investments.”


But over $328 million of the Russell Sage Foundation endowment was, historically, then invested in either a domestic equities fund, an international equities fund, a commingled international equities trust fund or mutual funds--which produced dividends and interest income for the foundation, yet was apparently not then, historically, subject to federal income or federal excise taxes.


So, for example, the “philanthropic” Columbia University-linked Russell Sage Foundation paid, historically, its then-president, Sheldon Danziger, a total annual compensation of between $594,000 and $623,000, and gave him an expense account of over $84,000, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019; and, during the same period, it then paid, historically, over $686,000 to firms like BlackRock and Silchester International Investors for “investment management services.” Yet the main tax that the “non-profit” Russell Sage Foundation (whose headquarters building is located at 112 East 64th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side) paid, historically, between Sept. 1, 2018 and Aug. 31, 2019 was just a real estate tax of less than $30,000.


The Russell Sage Foundation, incidentally, “was started with a $10 million [equal to around $280 million in 2021] bequest by Mrs. Sage in 1907,” as G. William Domhoff recalled in his 1970 book, "The Higher Circles: The Governing Class In America". But “philanthropist” Mrs. Sage was the second wife and widow of a long-time business partner of 19th-century U.S. Robber Baron Jay Gould: Russell Sage. And, according to Gustavus Myers’s "A History of the Great American Fortunes", Russell Sage “had the reputation among the knowing of being an old hand at political and financial corruption.”