Tides Foundation

Tides Foundation is an American public charity and fiscal sponsor working to advance progressive causes and policy initiatives in areas such as the environment, health care, labor issues, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights and human rights. It was founded in San Francisco in 1976. Through donor advised funds, Tides distributes money from anonymous donors to other organizations, which are often politically progressive. It manages two centers in San Francisco and New York that offer collaborative spaces for social ventures and other nonprofits. Since 1996, Tides has overseen the Tides Center, which is an incubator for smaller progressive organizations. In 2004, Tides formed the Tides Shared Spaces offshoot which specializes in renting office space to nonprofit tenants. As of 2008, the umbrella organization for these entities was the Tides Network. History Tides was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, who worked with Jane Bagley Lehman, heir to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company fortune. In the chapter entitled "The Givers" in his 2017 publication by the same name, The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, which is a more recent edition of his 2010 book, Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America, David Callahan wrote that Pike was an "entrepreneurial activist" and that Pike and his "wealthy friends" teamed up" to create Tides which "used donor-advised funds to direct resources to progressive causes." Callahan, who is the co-founder of the think tank Demos, contrasted this with a similar approach taken by Donors Trust, an American non-profit donor-advised fund that was founded in 1999 to safeguard the "intent of libertarian and conservative donors". Lehman served as the chair of the organization from its founding to her death in 1988. Tides was conceived as a nationally oriented community foundation, and founded out of Pike's frustration with established philanthropy's perceived neglect of progressive issues. He envisioned using fiscal sponsorship for progressive political activism. Fiscal sponsorship uses a tax-exempt charity to provide financial support to a non-exempt project or organization, therefore lending it tax exemption as long as the charity retains control of the way its funds are spent. He served as its CEO until he was replaced by Melissa L. Bradley in 2010.