The Scherman Foundation

The Scherman Foundation

Scherman's wealth came from a single invention: the subscription book club. Harry Scherman launched the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1926, turning mail-order curation into a cultural institution and a personal fortune. He established the foundation 15 years later with a mandate that has evolved across generations — his daughter Katharine Scherman Rosin later seeded the Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund, a related philanthropic vehicle. Today the board includes both family descendants, such as great-grandson Peter Sollins as Secretary, and independent leaders like Board Chair Marianna Schaffer, the first non-family member to hold that post. The foundation's investment posture is unusually direct for an endowment its size. Its internal research lists a strategy spanning buyout, distressed debt, seed through late-stage venture, fund-of-funds, and special situations — an approach that requires manager selection across the full capital stack. Programmatic grantmaking concentrates on five areas: Arts, Environmental and Climate Justice, Democracy, Reproductive Justice, and Strengthening New York Communities. Mitchell C. Pratt, President and CEO, sits at the intersection of these efforts, serving as past Chair of Philanthropy New York and past Chair and Treasurer of the Environmental Grantmakers Association; Schaffer co-chairs New York Grantmakers in the Arts and serves on an advisory group for Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. The foundation operates from a single office at 16 East 52nd Street in Manhattan, with no disclosed satellite locations. Its affiliated fund, the Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund, extends the family's philanthropic footprint but has not publicly separated its own investment activity from the foundation's pooled endowment. Unlike many legacy foundations that deploy capital through a limited roster of conventional long-only managers, Scherman discloses participation in a wide set of private-market structures — a posture that demands active oversight of liquidity, commitment pacing, and vintage-year diversification. Scherman's structural differentiator is its deliberate fusion of grantmaking and endowment management around a single racial-justice thesis. Most foundations silo investment staff from program staff; here the five program areas — covering climate, democracy, reproductive rights, arts, and New York communities — explicitly guide how the endowment is deployed and with whom. That alignment, paired with board-level participation in funder networks such as Funders for Reproductive Equity and the Environmental Grantmakers Association, makes Scherman less a passive allocator and more a networked institutional activist operating through both grants and investments.