Gill Foundation

Gill Foundation

Tim Gill founded the Denver-based Gill Foundation in 1994 after exiting Quark, Inc., the desktop publishing software company he built and which generated the underlying wealth. His husband, former U.S. Ambassador Scott Miller, serves on the board. The foundation operates with a dual mandate: advancing LGBTQ legal and social equality nationally while supporting a prosperous civic infrastructure in Colorado. The foundation deploys endowment capital across a deliberately broad investment strategy spanning buyout, venture capital, growth equity, mezzanine, and secondaries. It commits to external funds and engages in direct co-investments. The grantmaking portfolio focuses on litigation, policy advocacy, and public education through organizations that advance nondiscrimination protections. The foundation was an early architect of the OutGiving network, a donor collaborative it established to increase philanthropic firepower behind LGBTQ causes. In May 2025, longtime civil rights attorney Kate Kendell was appointed CEO, succeeding Brad Clark, who had led the foundation since 2012. The foundation operates from a commercial office at 1550 Wewatta Street in Denver and maintains its institutional archive at History Colorado Center. Tim Gill and Scott Miller are also known participants in Colorado political giving circles, including the so-called 'Gang of Four' donor group that includes Governor Jared Polis. The Gill Foundation functions as both a charitable endowment and an activist philanthropic enterprise, with investment returns directly funding advocacy. By combining a diversified multi-asset portfolio with high-touch donor organizing through vehicles like OutGiving, the foundation converts financial capital into policy influence — a structural hybrid rare among single-donor foundations where grantmaking and investment arms typically remain operationally separate.