Moving mountains: Tad Taube, 86, is generous, strong-willed and determined to make his mark

DAN PINE

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Taube stands with his hand resting against the wall

For a man with an office already ringed with awards, Tad Taube insists that winning the 2017 Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award for Lifetime Achievement from Jewish Family and Children’s Services is “very meaningful” to him.

But Taube’s lifetime of achieving is not over.

The Bay Area businessman and philanthropist will be honored at JFCS’ annual Fammy Awards gala to be held, coincidentally, on Taube’s 86th birthday, Saturday, April 1, at the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco.

“JFCS is an outstanding organization,” Taube said. “I’ve worked with them in almost every one of their professional endeavors: their emergency [services], their Russian émigré group, the Holocaust Center. I’ve been involved with [JFCS executive director] Anita Friedman for at least 25 years. I have a huge amount of respect for her.”

Friedman returned the compliment, saying, “We’ve given this award out maybe three or four times. We only give it occasionally, when we think someone especially deserves recognition for their contributions. We felt Tad was especially deserving because of his contributions locally, nationally and internationally. He’s one of the individuals in the Jewish world uniquely focused on the future of the Jewish people.”

On the same day as the gala, Taube will step down from the board of the Koret Foundation, for which he has served as president and board member for more than 30 years, and will assume the title of president emeritus (Friedman today serves as co-president of the foundation). He will also step down from the boards of several other nonprofits.

But that’s as close to retirement as he gets.

Taube will continue to oversee his real estate investment business, Belmont-based Woodmont Companies, and his personal philanthropic endeavors, bundled under the umbrella Taube Philanthropies.

“People ask me about retirement,” he mused. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. I have too many things I’m responsible for.”

Taube Philanthropies includes the Taube Family Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture. Major grantees include the Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto, the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University, scores of Bay Area Jewish agencies and institutions and, perhaps closest to the heart of the Krakow-born Taube, the Jewish Heritage Initiative in Poland, which has helped boost the revitalization of Jewish life in a country that lost 90 percent of its Jews in the Holocaust.

Taube has also given millions to such non-Jewish recipients as the United Way, the Commonwealth Club of California, Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, Ronald McDonald House and the San Francisco Opera. And while at Koret, he oversaw the disbursement of tens of millions of dollars to grantees in the Jewish world, arts and education and Bay Area civic life, as well as to food banks.

All told, the Taube Philanthropies have granted some $200 million over the years.

“I accumulated enough in the way of wealth” — a term Taube notes dryly is “a dirty word” — “and decided to start my own philanthropic activities, which I’ve been fortunate to build on.”

Friends and colleagues, such as Zack Bodner, CEO of the Oshman Family JCC, located in Palo Alto on the Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life, attest to Taube’s dedication to philanthropy. “What I most admire about Tad is his ability to take something he cares about and make an impact,” Bodner said. “There are very few people these days who can move mountains. Tad Taube moves mountains.”

The strong-willed, hard-driving Taube has not been immune to criticism. He has drawn heat for, among other things, his hard-right conservative politics, particularly as they might influence funding decisions. During his tenure as president, the ostensibly non-ideological Koret Foundation gave to conservative organizations such as the Federalist Society and the Pacific Research Institute — $180,000 and $10,000, respectively, in 2015, a fraction of the nearly $30 million Koret disbursed that year.

And through his Taube Family Foundation, he has given to the American Enterprise Institute and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a pair of conservative think tanks, and the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Mixing conservative politics with philanthropy was one of the objections raised in a civil case brought in San Francisco court last year, in which the Koret Foundation’s then-chair Susan Koret, widow of Joseph Koret, the foundation’s creator and a close friend of Taube’s, sued Taube and members of the Koret board for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and other offenses.

Her legal complaint included a declaration that Taube “autocratically controlled the Koret Foundation as a personal piggy bank” to funnel millions of dollars to causes which were “politically and socially at odds with the core mission of the Foundation.”

Taube and the board counter-sued, launching an ugly, nearly two-year legal battle that was finally settled last September. Under the terms of that settlement, both Susan Koret and Tad Taube agreed to step down from the Koret board.

Having signed a confidentiality agreement, Taube will not comment on the settlement, other than to say he is glad to have the trial behind him.

Even at 86, he is inclined to look to the future.

read more: Tad Taube

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