Billionaire Ray Dalio has already built the world’s biggest hedge fund firm, Bridgewater Associates, which manages some $160 billion. He is now also building a large philanthropic foundation.
According to the most recent public tax filing made by the Dalio Foundation, Dalio contributed $400 million to his foundation in 2013, pushing its total assets to $842 million. The foundation ended 2012 with $590 million in assets.
With an estimated net worth of $15.4 billion, Dalio is the second-wealthiest hedge fund manager. George Soros is the only hedge fund manager with a higher net worth.
In 2011, Dalio signed the Giving Pledge, a campaign led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to get the world’s richest people to give a majority of their wealth to philanthropy. “We were lucky enough to have experienced the whole range of financial circumstances, from not having any money to having a lot. Fortunately that happened in the best order,” Dalio and his wife, Barbara, wrote in their Giving Pledge letter.
In general, the hedge fund industry has embraced philanthropy in a big way that exceeds the charitable efforts of other rich pockets of the financial services industry, like private equity. Paul Tudor Jones started the Robin Hood Foundation to fight New York City poverty, which has raised nearly $2 billion over its history, and the Sohn Investment Conference has for years been backed by hedge fund managers to raise money for pediatric cancer research. Soros, James Simons, John Arnold, and Stanley Druckenmiller, are hedge fund managers who have set up foundations that are in the range of a billion dollars or much more, according to Foundation Center.
Dalio’s Foundation is the next largest foundation started by a billionaire hedge fund manager, according to Foundation Center’s data. Dalio’s foundation is not really mission focused, but Dalio has expressed interest in areas like microfinance, inner-city education, promoting meditation to groups under stress and nature conservation and research.
Dalio is particularly interested in backing research and preservation efforts directed at the world’s oceans by supporting scientific exploration and the production of media focused on oceans. His research yacht and submarine have appeared on the Discovery Channel during Shark Week and hunting for a giant squid. Dalio has also backed the Volcker Alliance, the public policy group headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.
The Dalio Foundation made more than $109 million of contributions in 2013, including $25 million to the National Philanthropic Trust to support polio eradication projects and $30 million to New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Dalio and his wife gave another $119 million in 2014, bringing their lifetime total to $400 million, the Dalio Foundation said in a statement. The Dalio Foundation declined to comment on its current asset size.
“The Dalios' rate of giving has been increasing at a rate that is consistent with their rate of learning and their building up of their team,” the Dalio Foundation said in a statement. “They expect this to continue.”
