Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment (CARE) Fund

Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment (CARE) Fund

The Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment (CARE) Fund was established by the Washington State Legislature in 2015 to serve as a perpetual public funding source for cancer research. Its namesake, state senator Andy Hill, championed the legislation before dying of cancer in 2016. The initial corpus drew on roughly $200 million in settlement funds from a complex multi-state legal case involving bank misconduct, with a legislative structure ensuring the principal is preserved and only investment returns support grants. CARE Fund deploys capital exclusively through a competitive, peer-reviewed grant process managed by a board of appointed experts and state officials. Grant awards target early-stage, translational, and collaborative cancer research at Washington-based non-profit institutions. The program prioritizes projects that have difficulty attracting traditional federal or pharmaceutical funding, covering discovery science and clinical application. Awardees have included Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, the University of Washington, and Seattle Children's Research Institute, reflecting a concentrated in-state geographic footprint. The endowment operates from Bethesda, Maryland — unusual for a state-constituted fund — with its grant administration tied to a contracted program manager. The precise staffing level is not publicly detailed, though known reporting structures suggest a lean structure of fewer than 10 dedicated professionals governing investment oversight and grant cycles. No adjacent commercial vehicles exist; the entity is exclusively a grantmaking endowment. As of early 2026, the fund has awarded over $100 million in cumulative grants across multiple cycles. The CARE Fund's architecture is structurally distinct from university endowments and family offices: it is a public instrumentality designed to preserve capital in perpetuity while funding scientific grants, with no return-seeking mandate beyond corpus maintenance. Its governance blends political appointees, scientific reviewers, and state oversight, creating a model that is neither a foundation nor a sovereign wealth pool but a hybrid public-research endowment.