Homeland Foundation

Homeland Foundation

Founded in 1938 by Chauncey Devereux Stillman, the Homeland Foundation emerged from one of the oldest banking fortunes in the United States. Stillman was the great-grandson of James Stillman, who chaired National City Bank, the predecessor to Citibank. Rather than creating a traditional grantmaking foundation, Stillman directed his inheritance into an operating foundation centered on the Wethersfield estate in Amenia, New York — a 1,200-acre property that houses a Georgian-style mansion, formal gardens, an art collection, and a vast array of antique carriages. The foundation today functions primarily as a cultural and agricultural institution rather than an active allocator. Its holdings are dominated by hard assets: the Wethersfield estate, its art and frescoes by Pietro Annigoni, its carriage collection maintained under the standards of the Carriage Association of America, and a working farm. In 2019, the organization officially rebranded the entity managing the property as the Wethersfield Foundation, signaling a sharper focus on land stewardship and public programming. The foundation partners with the Lower Hudson PRISM to manage invasive species across its grounds, reflecting an operating mandate that is ecologically hands-on. The board includes Stillman's descendants, with granddaughter Tara Shafer serving as a trustee, and Hillary Henderson as chief operating officer. But the most notable figure in its governance is Vice Chairman Soo Kim. Kim is the founding partner of Standard General, the hedge fund known for activist campaigns and for taking Bally's Corporation public. His role at a small, asset-heavy foundation is structurally unusual and suggests either a personal connection to the Stillman family or a deliberate governance decision to bring sophisticated financial oversight to a charity that lacks a liquid public-market portfolio. The foundation does not publicly report an endowment figure or an investment asset allocation. The Homeland Foundation is an outlier in the institutional investment landscape. It controls a valuable real estate portfolio and a collection of art and historical objects whose worth is hard to quantify but likely substantial. Yet it has no known manager-of-managers, no disclosed direct investment program, and no public record of fund commitments. Its structural differentiator is its opacity and physical concentration: a family legacy locked in land, buildings, and objects rather than in the diversified portfolios typical of modern endowments. Understanding whether Soo Kim's presence signals an impending liquidity event or monetization of the estate is the central question the foundation's posture raises.