Michelson Found Animals Foundation

Michelson Found Animals Foundation

Founded in 2005, Michelson Found Animals is the animal-welfare arm of Michelson Philanthropies, the giving vehicle that Gary and Alya Michelson established after Dr. Michelson sold his spinal-device patent portfolio to Medtronic for $1.35 billion. The foundation operates from a headquarters at 5060 West Jefferson Boulevard in Los Angeles, and Brett Yates leads its day-to-day work as CEO under the governance of the Michelsons and Executive Director Phillip Kim. The foundation runs three interconnected programs: a no-cost spay/neuter initiative that has underwritten over 50,000 surgeries since launch, the Pet-Inclusive Housing program that publishes market research on rental-property and insurance carriers’ pet policies, and the Leap Venture Studio in partnership with Mars Petcare. Leap functions as a startup accelerator for early-stage animal-health and pet-tech companies, putting the foundation into direct venture-style exposure alongside a corporate co-investor. The foundation also holds a commercial real estate portfolio that includes its Culver City Adoption Center and office space at the former IBM campus in Austin, Texas, reflecting an asset mix that blends programmatic grantmaking with property assets. The foundation’s parent entity, Michelson Philanthropies, began building out the West Los Angeles biomedical cluster in 2023 when it committed $120 million to launch the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy at the 700,000-square-foot former Westside Pavilion mall, a project anchored by a $200 million state grant. Philanthropic accounts list roughly $15 million in foundation assets, though that figure excludes the real property held for operational use and future biotech partnerships. The foundation maintains an additional financial presence through its Dallas residential property and sees the majority of its leveraged activity flow through the Mars Petcare co-investment vehicle rather than a standalone fund structure. The foundation declines to operate a traditional grantmaking cycle, instead self-administering its programs and partnering with academic institutions, landlords, and corporate collaborators on a deal-by-deal basis. This architecture—explicitly structured to avoid the payout requirements of a private foundation by designating certain activities as charitable programs rather than grants—gives the Michelsons tighter control over multi-year initiatives such as the Texas life-science campus than a conventional donor-advised fund or family trust would allow.