Cousins Foundation Inc.

Cousins Foundation Inc.

The Cousins Foundation was established in 1963 by real-estate developer Tom Cousins and his wife Ann, channeling the wealth generated from Cousins Properties — the publicly traded firm behind iconic Atlanta towers like 191 Peachtree and Bank of America Plaza. Tom Cousins built one of the largest development platforms in the Southeast, and the foundation emerged early in that trajectory, embedding philanthropy into the family's operating cadence decades before strategic giving became a standard adjunct to wealth management. Lillian C. Giornelli, the couple's daughter, now leads the foundation as President and CEO. The foundation operates with a venture-philanthropy posture, blending traditional grantmaking with targeted, program-related investments. Its signature effort is the East Lake model — a holistic neighborhood redevelopment in Atlanta that paired mixed-income housing with a charter school, a YMCA, and workforce development, anchored by the for-profit East Lake Golf Club, which hosts the PGA Tour's season-ending Tour Championship. Warren Buffett co-founded Purpose Built Communities with Cousins in 2009 to replicate this template across other US cities (per the Purpose Built Communities charter). The foundation's commitment pipeline also includes venture-capital allocations, reflecting a strategy that treats social enterprises as investable vehicles rather than pure grantees. Cousins Foundation Inc. remains lean and closely held, with Giornelli steering day-to-day operations from Atlanta. The foundation's asset base includes direct real-estate holdings such as Nonami Plantation in Albany, Georgia, and residual equity in Cousins Properties, alongside what public disclosures suggest is a modest endowment. Tom Cousins and Giornelli have been involved in YPO institutes and Lillian Giornelli serves as a trustee of the Atlanta History Center — formal affiliations that reinforce a network spanning Southeastern business, politics, and nonprofit leadership. May 2024: The foundation sustained its multi-year funding commitment to East Lake Foundation programs in a grant cycle that continued the organization's 30-year redevelopment arc (per the East Lake Foundation's public disclosures). The foundation's structural distinction is its origin as an extension of an operating business rather than a post-exit liquidity event. Because Cousins Properties remained public and Tom Cousins retained intimate ties to the company through his foundation's equity position, the entity functions as a hybrid — part active grantmaker, part patient shareholder in a REIT, part real-asset holder. This architecture gives Giornelli a balance sheet that mixes liquid public equity with illiquid land, enabling both multi-decade community investments and opportunistic venture-style commitments without the spending-rule rigidity of a conventional endowment.