The Bay & Paul Foundations

The Bay & Paul Foundations

The Bay & Paul Foundations took its current form in 2005 through the merger of The Bay Foundation, originally established in 1950, and the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation, created in 1962. The underlying wealth traces to Josephine Perfect Bay and her husband C. Michael Paul, born Paul Michael Iogolevitch, whose fortune derived from petroleum. David Bury serves as Chairman, and Marilyn Resnick chairs the Board of Directors, stewarding what the foundation describes as a dual mandate in pre-collegiate educational restructuring and sustaining earth's biodiversity. The foundation's grantmaking is structurally bifurcated. K-12 math, science, and arts-in-education grants are restricted to the New York, NY metropolitan area. Biodiversity and ecological sustainability grants operate on a broader geographic canvas, reflecting the foundation's historical commitment to conservation. The endowment's investment strategy, while not publicly detailed, tags across late-stage venture capital allocations. The foundation also holds a commercial real asset in the form of The Cole Center, a visitor center in Catskill, NY. The Bay & Paul Foundations supported the launch of the Sustainable Indigenous Finance investor guide through its membership in the US Sustainable Investment Forum. The foundation maintains a deliberately lean operational footprint from its Wilmington, Delaware headquarters. Public records place the endowment's assets at approximately $20 million, positioning it as a smaller institutional allocator compared to major private foundations but one with a defined and enduring programmatic focus. The foundation's network includes collaborator David 'Tiger' Williams, founder of Williams Trading, and Caroline Williams, both noted as philanthropic partners. The foundation also sponsors the Vermont Directory of Foundations, signaling engagement with regional philanthropic infrastructure. Structurally, the foundation departs from the perpetual-endowment model by concentrating its educational funding in a single metropolitan area, creating a dense, place-based grantmaking footprint rare among national foundations. Its origin—a mid-2000s merger of two mid-century foundations seeded by a single petroleum fortune—creates a consolidated vehicle with a narrower aperture than its predecessor entities, now focused on a small number of program areas rather than general charitable giving.