Фонд Роллса связывает благотворительность с развитием сообществ в Южной Флориде

Stephen M. Ross has been giving away money for decades. Worth $17 billion as of this writing, the New York real estate mogul and founder of Related Companies is the University of Michigan’s largest individual donor, with lifetime giving to the university approaching $500 million. His philanthropy has stretched across education, healthcare, the arts, racial equality and sustainable urban development, and in 2013, he pledged to give more than half of his estate to charity through the Giving Pledge. But the approach of his company’s new philanthropic vehicle is somewhat different. The Related Ross Foundation, officially launched last fall as a nonprofit grantmaking arm of his South Florida development company Related Ross, is designed to tie philanthropy directly to the growth of the communities where the firm does business. And that business is substantial: Ross is pouring around $10 billion into West Palm Beach County across a wide swath of real estate investments, an influx that has not come without some disruption. Ross is not a Florida newcomer, though: He’s the longtime owner of the Miami Dolphins and one of a number of billionaires stepping up their giving in and around what some have dubbed “Wall Street South.” The foundation says it is focused on education, wellness, opportunity and culture in Palm Beach County, while also bringing the company’s corporate and retail tenants into the giving model. That model is already taking shape. Through what the foundation calls its Build Together initiative, Related Ross office tenants contribute $1 per square foot annually to foundation grantmaking, with the foundation expecting those contributions to grow as Related Ross’ own footprint expands. The foundation says more than 40 businesses had committed over $400,000 in ongoing annual support as of fall 2025, with contributions expected to surpass $2 million annually over the next decade. Leading the effort is the foundation’s executive director Jeremy Morse, a longtime nonprofit leader who previously worked in fundraising at the American Cancer Society, served as vice president of social enterprise at the Lord’s Place, a Palm Beach County homeless services organization, and was CEO of the Mental Health Association of the Palm Beaches. I recently caught up with Morse to talk about Ross’ philanthropy, the foundation’s unusual corporate-tenant model, what residents are saying about development in West Palm Beach and why Morse believes “social infrastructure” could be the key to making the region’s rapid growth work for existing residents. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. You’ve spent your career in the nonprofit world. Tell me a little bit about your background and how you came to this work. You know, just from an early age, I was really interested in lots of different kinds of things related to creativity, spirituality and music. And so I got super interested in jazz at a young age, and was a jazz musician up until college. One of the things that I enjoyed about jazz was the spontaneity, right? And the deep connection that you experience with other musicians and with the audience. I went to University of Miami and I was in their jazz program, and I felt like, I just don’t want to make that my life. And so I got super interested in community development, and really, my whole career has been in the nonprofit world. I started off at the American Cancer Society and really did a deep dive in fundraising. One of the cool things I learned at the American Cancer Society is how important human relationships are to fundraising and to community development. This is really the heart of philanthropy, right? It literally means love of humanity, and it’s not just the act itself, but it’s the relationship that’s initiated. And that relational piece really kind of connected to my sense about what music, what jazz is all about. What struck you about this opportunity, and what did Stephen Ross want to build through the foundation? Well, in the nonprofit world, I was always frustrated with the commitment that the corporate sector brought to philanthropy. Every year, you really would have the private sector representing between 5% and 10% of total giving, and yet it dominates our economy, right? In terms of GDP, in terms of jobs, really, the way we speak about life and the vocabulary we use. We would have fundraising workshops and things like that, and people would say, “How can I connect with corporations, banks and things like that?” And the standard advice was, don’t waste your time. If 85%-plus comes from individuals, and you’re just getting started in your nonprofit work, then don’t waste your time with those folks. Focus on building relationships that are going to really connect with your cause. But there’s a sense that there’s a missed opportunity. And that’s really what I sensed when I was approached with this opportunity to be a part of the Related Ross Foundation. It’s not just that Stephen Ross has this incredibly big vision for West Palm Beach and for Palm Beach County, and that he himself is making a $10 billion investment in Palm Beach County, which is an unbelievable impact. It really is an opportunity on basically a countywide scale to test whether the impact that we’re creating on the corporate side can be matched in the philanthropic world. One piece that excited me the most about that was this partnership that we have with our corporate office and our retail tenants. Sure, there’s the annual contribution that Related Ross is making to the foundation [Related Ross has given $15 million to the foundation to date and expects that to grow year over year], which is substantial, but it was this idea that all of our office tenants and all of our retail tenants are going to be in partnership with us. Through their leases with us, they pledge $1 per square foot per year as a part of what we’re calling our Build Together initiative, and over time, that dollar per square foot per year really translates into significant impact. I can give you an example. One of our largest tenants here in West Palm Beach — and we have another large tenant in Boca who’s going to do the same — represents between 200,000 and 250,000 square feet of office space. So I can imagine back in the day when I was in the nonprofit world, and we would hear that a global corporation was coming to West Palm Beach, my boss would likely tell me, “Hey, you need to get in front of the decision maker and let them know about our cause. Let them know about what we’re doing.” Number one, I probably would never have gotten in front of that decision maker, right? That was just never going to happen. But if by some miracle I did, if that person told me, “Listen, I’m going to give you $250,000 a year for the next 15 years, and it’s going to appreciate by 3% every year.” That would be the largest corporate gift that probably any nonprofit had ever received in West Palm Beach in history. But for us, we’re doing that as a part of doing business, we’re doing that just as a part of signing a lease, and to date, we’ve got 100% participation. Why do you think there’s been such buy-in from the business community? I think that’s going to be a good case study in the next few years. A lot of it is the warm relationships established before the charitable piece is even brought up. If you’re a global corporation and you’re either extending a business to a new place, or starting a business from scratch in a new city, all of the relationship-building and all of the decisions that have to be made in order to make that kind of move possible are of much greater magnitude than a philanthropic decision. So when they make the commitment to move to a new city, then, when we add the philanthropic piece, it really is a value add. People talk about corporate social responsibility as if it’s something that is kind of a burden, but it really is these folks that are coming to the community, just like I did 17 years ago. They are going to become the long-term residents of West Palm Beach, so they want to be connected and be introduced to meaningful relationships, and philanthropy allows us to do that. You’ve focused early on education, wellness, opportunity and culture. Why those areas, and what are you hearing from residents about their needs? All that is in process. I think that we’re making a pretty decisive shift now, based on the feedback that we’ve received from residents. The big thing about development is that residents need to feel like there’s value for them. So we’ve gone out to neighborhood association meetings and other settings where we’re talking to residents. The number-one thing is physical infrastructure. They want to make sure that the community is prepared for growth. People will point to neglected physical infrastructure, especially related to traffic and other types of things. The second thing they talk about, which has really been in decline probably for the past five decades, is the social infrastructure needs that they have. So when they think about development, they’ll say, “Where are our kids going to play?” You’re building all this parking. It’s gonna be hot. You’re just gonna have asphalt here. [Sociologist] Eric Klinenberg wrote a book a few years back called “Palaces for the People,” where he talks about the decline of social infrastructure. We need to have places where people can connect that are not highly controlled, preprogrammed spaces, but open spaces where people can meet up, and where spontaneous things can happen. The foundation is also scaling quickly. What’s driving that growth, and how does the square-footage model fit into it? It absolutely is. When we talk about things like social return on investment and impact, we focus on trust-based philanthropy, part of that pendulum swing toward unrestricted, multi-year gifts. The strength of our model is that if we know that we have escalating income coming into the foundation year after year, that stability is basically the opposite of the income dependence that nonprofit folks deal with. Which I did my whole life, right? So this idea of bringing on new tenants, engaging in new developments, whether it’s through acquisition or through building, means that we can count on it. For the next 10 or 15 years, with this philanthropic income increasing, it’s predictable. And so we can engage with people who are doing good work in the community, and we can commit to them long term. South Florida’s philanthropic landscape is changing quickly, with new funders arriving alongside established ones. How should nonprofits think about this moment? So I saw a post on LinkedIn the other day that was saying we don’t know what the world is going to look like in 2030. It’s absolutely true. And we’ve heard predictions over the last couple decades about huge transfers in wealth. I can tell you that the landscape here in West Palm Beach is changing. The whole focus of this area in Palm Beach County, as far as philanthropy has been concerned, has been Palm Beach, and now all of a sudden, West Palm Beach is really becoming a major focal point for philanthropy. So it’s not just Miami, it’s not just Fort Lauderdale. There are the traditional kinds of disparities in this county that separate the east part from the west part. When we think about the influx of financial and technology firms coming into this region, the opportunities are going to be staggering for residents here in Palm Beach County, and so I feel like as a convener, we’ve got to prepare our residents for that world of 2030. I think that that’s the kind of partnership that we’re talking about when we say “build together.” We’re saying listen, everyone needs to benefit. How can we create an environment of connection and opportunity where people feel they have a place, a role, and a voice? Related Inside Philanthropy Resources: For Subscribers Only