Tag: Featured

Philanthropy

Louisville’s Community Foundation left a piece of its heart in San Francisco

Just because the Community Foundation of Louisville bears the city’s name doesn’t mean all its biggest grants go to local charities.

The foundation’s newest IRS tax return shows it gave $6.3 million to the Schwab Charitable Fund in San Francisco during the year ended June 3o, 2015 — its single-biggest gift during the period, and one far larger than its top gifts in the previous two years.

schwab-charitable-fund-logoThe Schwab Fund — which is affiliated with the discount brokerage of the same name — is an enormous donor-advised charity that gives money to other non-profits across the country at the direction of its individual donors. Indeed, some of those nonprofits are back here in Louisville.

The Schwab grant accounted for more than 22% of the total $28 million in grants made by the Community Foundation during the year. Here were the top 10:

community-foundation-2014

In its 2013 and 2012 years, the Community Foundation also made large contributions to San Francisco charities — in both cases, the San Francisco Foundation — but nowhere near as large as the one to Schwab.

In both those years, the Community Foundation’s single-biggest grants went to 21st Century Parks, the non-profit that developed and maintains the sprawling Parklands of Floyds Fork, a group of four parks on 3,700 acres in eastern Jefferson County. Here were the top 10 those years:

community-foundation-2013

community-foundation-2012

Although the Louisville Community Foundation supports many local charities, it doesn’t limit its grants to the city. In fiscal 2014, only about $600,000 of the $28 million in grants came from the foundation’s unrestricted funds. The rest was made according to the terms of about 230 individual donor-advised funds it manages.

In its tax returns, the foundation doesn’t identify how much each of those donor-advised funds contribute, so there’s no way to know why so much money went to the Schwab Charitable Fund.

The Schwab Fund’s own tax return doesn’t offer a definitive answer, either. In its 2014 year, the fund made $1.1 billion in grants to more than 17,000 different non-profits — including nearly 30 back here in Louisville; indeed, one of those was 21st Century Parks, which got $105,000.

Photo, top: The Golden Gate Bridge, with the San Francisco skyline in the distance.

The A-list

Documents reveal a legal latticework shielding the Brown family’s $6 billion whiskey fortune

By Jim Hopkins
Boulevard Publisher

When Brown-Forman stockholders gathered in July at the whiskey giant’s Georgian Revival headquarters west of downtown, the outcome of a crucial vote — re-electing 12 directors to the governing board — was anything but a surprise.

This has been the founding Brown family’s company for nearly 150 years. Six of the directors were Browns, including board Chairman George Garvin Brown IV — a great-great grandson of the founder — and the rest were unquestionably family loyalists.

Stockholders outside the family knew what Brown-Forman has disclosed for years in an annual statement soliciting their votes: 13 individual Browns and family groups hold 67% of all the voting shares in “a variety of family trusts and entities, with multiple family members often sharing voting control and investment power.”

Much less has been known about the scope of those entities, leaving more than 5,600 other stockholders in the dark about exactly how the Browns divvy up nearly $6 billion in shares among a core group of relatives.

George Garvin Brown
Founder Brown.

But now, documents filed by the Browns with the Securities and Exchange Commission detail how complex their ownership has grown since the pharmaceuticals salesman George Garvin Brown founded the company in 1870. They shed light on how the Browns have deployed extensive trust accounts, business partnerships, and other legal vehicles to pass down Brown-Forman stock through six generations. That’s an exceptional legacy in American business: Just 12% of family-owned companies survive into the third generation, and a slim 3% survive to the fourth and beyond.

The documents also point to a network of boutique consulting firms and other white-shoe professionals advising the city’s wealthiest families on everything from investments to taxes and charitable giving, hiring housekeepers and gardeners — even organizing vacation travel and family gatherings. Paid tens of thousands of dollars a year in fees, the firms are the backbone of a larger, multibillion-dollar economy serving the area’s uber-rich.

george-garvin-brown-to-laura-frazier-contact-sheet-450
Clockwise from top left: Garvin Brown IV, Campbell Brown, Christy Brown, Laura Frazier, Sandra Frazier and Mac Brown.

The documents were filed over the past 18 months by Continue reading “Documents reveal a legal latticework shielding the Brown family’s $6 billion whiskey fortune” →

Travel

Crazy-crooked houses, picturesque canals — it’s Louisville to Amsterdam for a $51,000 week-long visit

An occasional look at premium travel from Louisville.

Boulevard loves Amsterdam: whimsical, cockeyed houses lining romantic canals; the recently reopened Rijksmuseum of Dutch Masters after an extensive renovation, and friendly, liberal-minded residents. And that’s not to mention all those coffee shops selling fine marijuana. Indeed, there’s even more to savor in a recent New York Times story about the city: Amsterdam, Revisited. (And don’t miss its fresh update on “36 Hours in” Holland’s capital. Now, consider the following five-star itinerary.

When: Oct. 12-19. Airline: Delta. Route: Louisville to Detroit to Amsterdam, 10 hours and 17 minutes travel time, including a one-hour layover in Detroit. How much: $7,479, economy to Minneapolis and business class to Amsterdam. Delta reservations.

TripAdvisor recommends the five-star Waldorf Astoria Amsterdam. The Brentano Suite is available during these travel dates for $4,721 per night; that’s the lovely sitting area, below. Reservations. And of course, don’t forget Airbnb Amsterdam apartments.

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The bottom line

For two travelers: airfare, hotel, plus $400 a day for meals, museum tickets and other incidentals: $51,000.

Latest Headlines

KFC kicks off a new Colonel Sanders, and a pro football team to boot

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:02 a.m.

KFC: The newest in the TV commercials starring a resurrected Colonel Harland Sanders  imagines him launching a professional football team, the chicken-fueled Kentucky Buckets, in a 30-second spot that starts airing today to promote $20 buckets. The chain posted the commercial to its YouTube page yesterday, where it’s already been viewed more than 153,000 times. Check it out:

The commercial stars “Saturday Night Live” cast member Rob Riggle, the latest actor to portray the KFC founder. Earlier ones were played by Darrell Hammond, Norm MacDonald, Jim Gaffigan and, most recently, perpetually tanned actor George Hamilton, as the “Extra Crispy” colonel. The campaign featuring resurrected KFC founders started in May 2015.

When the Yum unit unveiled the campaign last year, many customers were skeptical or disgusted that the chain would revive its founder — a real person — from the dead, according to Business Insider. But the controversial move has paid off for the chain; in July, Yum announced the fried chicken chain had its eighth consecutive quarter of same-store sales growth, after a period of slumping sales (Business Insider).

KINDRED‘s Gentiva Health Services unit successfully advocated for a Medicaid rule change that could extend care to 18,000 people in Mississippi. Eligible patients in the state will now be able to receive home and community-based services — “waiver services” — at the same time as hospice services. “The old program was unintentionally keeping patents away from hospice care,” Mullins told Home Health Care News. “Patients would be forced to choose between their waiver services, like Meals on Wheels, or hospice care” (Home Health Care News).

Philanthropy

David Jones Sr., his alma mater UofL, and the politics of money and power in Louisville

By Jim Hopkins
Boulevard Publisher

David Jones Sr
Jones

If there’s anything surprising about David A. Jones Sr. formally entering the high-stakes fray over the University of Louisville yesterday, it’s the fact it took this long to become public.

Nearly three months ago, when Gov. Matt Bevin shocked the community by seizing control of the school and dismissing the 20-member governing board he declared “dysfunctional,” the first person I thought of was Jones, the Louisville native, co-founder of Humana, and one of the state’s leading philanthropists.

That June 17, Bevin said his decision was the “culmination of all the conversations I’ve had with everybody on all fronts.” He didn’t reveal the names of those he’d spoken with, but it certainly would have included alumni whose opinion mattered. And few among that select group matters more than Jones.

“One of the university’s most influential and wealthiest graduates,” I wrote the day Bevin moved against the 22,000-student school, “is Humana co-founder David A. Jones Sr., who received a bachelor’s degree in business there in 1954.”

Jones and his wife, Betty Ashbury Jones, have long and extensive ties to UofL. She received a bachelor’s degree from the school in 1955, and the two went on to graduate school: David to Yale Law; and Betty, much later, to the French School at Vermont’s Middlebury College. (More on those two schools in a moment). Back in Louisville, Jones and a law partner, Wendell Cherry, launched the health-care company in 1961 that would become the Humana empire, starting with a single nursing home; they became millionaires after it went public in 1968.

david-and-betty-jones
Betty and David Jones.
A Depression-poor childhood

David served on the board of trustees for a time, and Betty taught French Conversation in the Continuing Education Department from 1993 to 2003. For their service to the school, the couple were among the first to be made members of the Arts and Sciences Hall of Honors, in 2007.

David didn’t come from money, and UofL — which he attended on a ROTC scholarship Continue reading “David Jones Sr., his alma mater UofL, and the politics of money and power in Louisville” →

The Jennifer Lawrence Diary™

Pop quiz: Here are three of Louisville’s most profitable exports. Quick, name a fourth
  1. Autos and trucks (Ford)
  2. Home appliances (GE)
  3. Whiskey (Brown-Forman)
  4. __________________

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock . . . ding!

The obvious answer, of course, is Jennifer Lawrence! The Louisville native earned $46 million this year, making her the world’s highest-paid actress and one of Louisville’s most famous exports.

Imagine Jennifer County, Ky.

If Lawrence, 26, were a Kentucky county based on annual income, she’d be a brand new one — nudging back Owsley ($37 million total) and making Robertson ($24.6 million) a No. 121, according to the latest available Census data. Owsley (pop. 4,755) and Robertson (2,282) are in historically impoverished eastern Kentucky.

Jennifer Lawrence
Lawrence

Here in Jefferson County, the actress’s $46 million paycheck is strikingly big from a different perspective.

Imagine everyone got paid once a year, and stood in line at the bank to deposit their paychecks at one of two teller windows. Lawrence could stand in a line all by herself to deposit one huge, oversized check, like you see in Publishers Clearing House TV commercials. And 1,738 other people earning the county average $26,473 a year would stand in one very long line for the other teller. It would take their combined earnings to equal Lawrence’s $46 million.

See for yourself, with Boulevard’s new Jennifer Lawrence Income Gauge™. (With obligatory ™ symbol!)