Los Angeles-based philanthropist Jim Greenbaum has a long track record of funding nonprofits addressing both human and animal suffering, but over the past handful of years, he has shifted nearly all his giving to expanding veganism and ending factory farming. He is now one of the nation’s top funders in the animal rights and plant-based food space, according to his own calculations, giving about $6 million a year to this work through both the Greenbaum Foundation and his personal checkbook.
Veganism may sound like a somewhat narrow obsession for a full-time philanthropist like Greenbaum, but he insists that pretty much all of the world’s problems could be solved by switching to a more humane, healthier, plant-based diet. That includes decreasing the rates of heart disease and diabetes caused by meat and dairy consumption, combating climate change by closing the 2 million factory farms polluting the earth and then rewilding those acres, and reducing food scarcity by feeding the earth’s grain production to humans rather than livestock.
Greenbaum has definitely caught the veganism bug, or plant-based bug substitute, I suppose. A relatively small portion of society practices full-time veganism — vegans currently make up about 1 to 2% of the world’s population, and about 6% of Americans, according to the World Animal Foundation. But eating less meat is definitely trending, as consumers and philanthropies alike recognize the connections between factory farming and meat and dairy consumption and their other concerns: disease and public health, climate change and conservation, land and oceans, animals and wildlife, and food scarcity.
Greenbaum is certainly correct that reducing or eliminating meat production and consumption could have profound global impacts. Even so, it’s rare for a donor to focus so sharply and to maintain the discipline to stick with it, even given the potential to make a bigger impact in a specific realm by doing so. We reached out to Greenbaum to learn more about this iconoclastic, passionate philanthropist’s giving journey.
Eating vegan in L.A.
I met Greenbaum for lunch on Sunday at Crossroads Kitchen, L.A.’s most famous gourmet vegan restaurant. When you imagine a glamorous vegan place, to the extent that you do, you’re thinking of Crossroads on Melrose Avenue — padded booths, white tablecloths and beautifully plated cuisine being enjoyed by beautifully turned-out people.
Greenbaum had his cellphone out. He apologized for the intrusion of tech, but needed to check his home camera to see if the rescue dog he was hosting had slipped out of the yard again and hit the streets. We looked in on the house and saw a medium-sized black dog standing on the dining room table. Relieved, Greenbaum put away the phone and we ordered lunch. He struck me as easy to get along with and easygoing enough to welcome a second wily rescue dog to hang out with his current rescue beagle. But he’s also very focused, driven, and committed to his vision of what needs to be done to make the world a better place.
He’ll also change his mind if you make a good argument, said Meghan O’Brien Lowery, who works with him as a director and partner in the foundation. Lowery was recruited in 2016 in what struck me as typical Greenbaum fashion. He met her while touring the Kibera slum in Nairobi and was so impressed with her knowledge, dedication and efficiency that he offered her a job on the spot.
Greenbaum seems to make decisions quickly and to move fast on his philanthropic mission. His goal is to give away 85% of his assets during his lifetime to charitable projects, the rest after his death. He’s awarded more than $60 million so far across all of his issues, with his lifetime giving on track to exceed $250 million. His combined foundation and personal grantmaking for 2023 should hit just over $6 million, going out to about 80 grantee organizations, with about $600,000 of that directed to human-rights groups still on the books.
His focus on veganism is broader than I first assumed. Vegan giving can involve a lot of things, including funding for advocacy, education and outreach across a variety of sub-issues, such as improving human health through a whole-food, plant-based diet, ending factory farming and related causes such as stopping the use of animals in experiments, entertainment and in clothing.
The foundation’s 2023 vegan-related giving includes significant grants to Physicians Association for Nutrition, Sinergia Animal and Animal Outlook. It also will give nearly $1 million this year to several umbrella organizations that regrant the money to some 60 smaller global nonprofits. Working with regranting organizations was an idea for which O’Brien Lowery advocated, and she’s very involved with the groups. These grants include more than $400,000 to Thrive Philanthropy, an animal rights group focusing on equity in the vegan space and on connecting donors to more than 300 vegan food justice groups in 70 countries. Another regranting partner this year is the Humane League’s Open Wing Alliance, a coalition of 95 member organizations focused specifically on improving conditions for chickens being farmed for food.
Most of the foundation’s grants are in the $25,000 – $100,000 range, and support is usually ongoing. “It’s very rare that we give a one-off grant. If we’ve vetted you, we are partners,” said O’Brien Lowery, who is known by funders in the sector for her exceedingly thorough vetting process. The foundation does not have a formal grant application process, but rather finds grantees through its network. O’Brien Lowery also spends a lot of time on community-building and networking activities. “It’s a pretty small movement,” she said. “Everyone has my cell phone number.”
Planning to give from the get-go
Greenbaum, 65, grew up in Monroe, Louisiana, where his parents donated to somewhat traditional causes such as the Jewish Federation and the Betty Ford Center. He decided early on that he would do even more.
“As a kid, I was always frustrated by injustice and inefficiency. For years, I figured maybe I was so empathetic because of growing up asthmatic and seeing images of the Holocaust,” he said. “Maybe that drove me? But there are other asthmatic Jews, so I think I was born this way.”
His first plan to save the world was to become a lawyer and fight injustice that way. But when his top three law school choices turned him down, rather than attending a different school, he concocted a Plan B: go into business, make a bunch of money, then use it to change the world in some way. It’s laudable, though not uncommon, for a person to grow wealth in industry, then turn toward giving back. Greenbaum, however, set out on this plan without any particular business in mind, before he’d actually made a fortune. This strategy is sometimes referred to as “earning to give,” one of the tenets of effective altruism, the utilitarian, evidence-based approach to giving that Greenbaum follows and endorses, at least in part. It’s also one of the tenets of EA that has faced backlash with the downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried, who infamously made his fraudulent crypto fortune with the stated intent to direct it toward EA-driven philanthropy.
The earning phase of Greenbaum’s career was more traditional (and scandal-free). After a few failed entrepreneurial attempts — “I fell flat on my face,” as he put it — Greenbaum stepped in to take a look at a flailing telecom company in Nevada that his family had invested in, then acquired. Through that process, he figured out what it would take for a telecom company to succeed. At 27, he started his own in Salt Lake City using inherited money. Soon after, his family asked him to take over their telecom business in Nevada. By 29, he had both enterprises thriving.
When he was 33, he saw a news story on TV about a do-gooder from Ohio helping rescue kids from horrible orphanage conditions in Romania. It was the nudge he needed to get moving on his philanthropic vision. “I realized I needed to set a time table. When am I actually going to start using my money to make a difference? I decided that at age 40, I’m out of here,” he said.
At 40, he was looking for a buyer for his business while also researching the world of philanthropy. He sold his company right after he turned 41. His net worth was then $133 million. He’d already established the Greenbaum Foundation, and in 1999, turned to philanthropy full time.
A mission to reduce suffering
From the start, he wanted to give to nonprofits focused on alleviating the most extreme suffering and saving the most lives, the primary goal of effective altruism. His website today has the tagline: “Being a bystander to suffering is not an option.”
But who was suffering the most, and where? Inspired by the example in Romania, he decided to start with orphans. He gave to KidSave, which focuses on helping find homes for older orphans in the U.S., Ukraine, Colombia and Sierra Leone. He also worked to start a mentoring program for kids in Moscow after traveling to Russia and being moved by the plight of orphans there.
Appalled by human trafficking in Russia, he joined the fight to stop it. At a conference on human trafficking, he wrote a one-pager offering grants of $5,000 to $50,000 to groups working on the cause, printed out about 100 copies, placed them on a table at the conference hotel, and found his first grantees in this area.
Then, at the 2006 Global Philanthropy Forum conference, he heard President Bill Clinton speak about HIV/AIDS, the children affected, and the outrageously high cost of medication. The Clinton Foundation was involved in efforts toward collective bargaining by African countries to pressure pharmaceutical companies to lower medication prices. It worked. “I was blown away by that. I went up to him and said, ‘I’d like to give you $1 million.’”
“He said, ‘Thank you very much,’” recalled Greenbaum, slipping into a Clinton impression.
Greenbaum went home and wired the money. Then he learned about female genital cutting and traveled to Ethiopia, where some of the most severe examples were happening. At the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, he asked if anyone knew who worked on this issue, and was directed toward Molly Melching of the Senegal-based nonprofit Tostan. He was so impressed with her inclusive, community-led change model that he became a huge sponsor, eventually giving more than $6 million to Tostan in annual grants.
“Tostan is the most effective organization I’ve encountered,” he told me. “She will hopefully get the Nobel Peace Prize one day for social norms transformation. The philosophy I learned from her is the approach I bring to all the nonprofits we get involved with.”
The path to veganism
One thing that struck me about Greenbaum’s funding is that it is ignited by a connection to the people and problems he encounters. While he told me that he’s long been a “thinker” on the Myers-Briggs personality test — as opposed to a “feeler” — when it comes to the causes he cares about, he seems all-in both professionally and emotionally.
He brought up Myers-Briggs in relation to effective altruism. He’s a huge fan of the philosophy, but said that viewing the world through a strict, reason- and metrics-based EA lens is limiting. “It’s hard for me to do, even being a thinker on the Myers-Briggs. A feeler won’t be able to do that.”
His solution to this tug-of-war between valuable emotion and strict reason: encouraging philanthropists to practice EA with at least half of their money, and taking a “holistic effective altruism” approach himself. This approach leaves room for funding things that are not as clearly measurable but can still make a huge difference, such as documentary films. He is the executive producer on the films “The Game Changers,” “Seaspiracy,” “Cowspiracy,” “What the Health,” “Slay” and “Not My Life.”
By 2010, he had followed his own method of effective altruism to fund work on human trafficking, pediatric AIDS and female genital cutting.
So how did he get to veganism?
“I was always bothered by the ethics of eating animals,” Greenbaum said. He also was bothered by some personal health issues — high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and a family history of heart disease and heart attacks. In January 2010, a friend at the gym recommended “The China Study,” which outlines the health consequences of eating meat and the health benefits of a whole-foods, plant-based diet. Greenbaum tried it. Within a couple months, his heart issues cleared up. He was sold, not just for himself but also for the planet.
“I realized that if everyone went vegan, it would solve 70% of the world’s major problems and leave enough money to address the rest,” he said.
Really, all the world’s ills? Yes, said Greenbaum. Ending factory farming of animals could cut greenhouse gases by a huge amount. Eliminating meat from our diet could reverse or stop heart disease and diabetes, saving lives and lowering healthcare costs. It could eliminate food scarcity by reaping more calories per ounce of grain by feeding it to humans rather than livestock, saving water in the process. It could decrease antibiotic resistance caused by ingesting the antibiotic load fed to animals, end deforestation happening in the race for farmland, and revitalize dead zones in the ocean caused, in part, by overfishing. It could even reduce human trafficking since some slaughterhouses are staffed by those who have been trafficked and/or are working in horrible conditions.
“Hence, I’m obsessed,” he said.
OK this sounded like a bit of hyperbole to (non-vegan) me, but even a quick internet search can turn up plenty of corroborating evidence. We’ve all read about the connection between high cholesterol and red meat; this 2021 meta study showed that processed meat intake was associated with an 18% higher risk of IHD (ischemic heart disease). According to the ASPCA, animals on factory farms in the U.S. alone produce an estimated 885 billion pounds of manure and “globally, animal agriculture represents 14.5% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.” And a recent news story exposed a Nebraska company employing more than 100 children in dangerous slaughterhouse-cleaning jobs, an action that resulted in a federal investigation into how the children got there, and whether they were victims of labor trafficking.
Farmed Animal Funders, a funding collaborative of which Greenbaum is a member, agrees with his assessment of the importance of eliminating factory farms. As the organization’s website puts it: “Factory farming causes over 100 billion animals to suffer deprivation, fear and pain every year. Factory farming is a chief cause of environmental degradation and climate change…. And so much more, including worsening human hunger, the decline of rural community, and species extinction.”
Bringing on help
For his first nearly two decades of working as a full-time philanthropist, Greenbaum had a staff of one — Jim Greenbaum. In 2016, he was visiting informal settlements in Nairobi that lack sanitation services to get a first-hand understanding of how people lived in these conditions, “particularly what happens to poop,” said O’Brien Lowery. Greenbaum spent three days with O’Brien Lowery, who was working at Shining Hope for Communities, who showed him about 40 nonworking toilets funded by well-meaning international groups. Greenbaum asked how long she’d been there. When he discovered she was a new employee, he offered her a job, if she was ever looking.
She started on a trial basis sometime later, “and we haven’t left each other’s side ever since,” she said. “I will always work for him. I will die doing this job, hopefully. One of us will.” Her passion for her position is more about Greenbaum than about animal rights, per se. She was not a vegan when she took the job, though she is now. “I am not an animal rights person. I’m a human rights person. But the way we house, grow, feed and slaughter them is going to kill our existence as a human race,” she said.
O’Brien Lowery brings an eye for organizational health to the vetting of potential grantees. “Does it have great policies, exceptional governance, a wonderful board that is engaged, an investment in culture — PTO, maternity and paternity leave? We need the people to save the animals. So an investment into the people working at those organizations is just as important as how many chickens you saved last year.”
Keeping an eye on the people part is also a key way to expand diversity in the animal rights movement, something people are increasingly talking about in the field.
She said that Greenbaum’s decision to hire her is both an example of his open-mindedness and also an important model for those in the plant-based foods movement to follow. While vegetarianism and veganism are growing — one estimate has 60% of the world’s population going meat-free by 2040 — extremist, uncompromising activism turns some people off.
“The way that Jim took a chance on me and helped educate me is something I talk about in terms of how to be more inclusive to grow our vegan movement,” said O’Brien Lowery, who is now well known herself in the animal rights world and a sought-after speaker.
“Inclusivity is the only way we’re going to grow. I continue telling my story as a way to say the PETA days are over. Pushing people away does not work. Throwing blood on people is not effective communication. I talk a lot about living with people you disagree with and still being kind and understanding them.”
Toward a farmed-animal-free future
Being welcoming to meat eaters can lead to more vegetarian and vegan eating, but so can having good meat substitutes. According to Statista, the meat substitute market is $1.9 billion in the U.S., and the milk substitute market is $3.1 billion. To me, a recent convert-turned-addict of oat milk in coffee, the best way to end factory farming is to invest in the development of really delicious milk and meat substitutes. Why not do that?
Greenbaum agreed that if business can “crack the code” of producing lab-grown meat at scale and for the same cost as farmed animals, the world will shift to lab-only meat. He predicted that within 10 to 15 years of that eventuality, we’ll be eating mostly lab-grown meat. Then in another 15 years or so, we’ll criminalize farming animals for food and look back, aghast, at our history of mass animal slaughter.
Still, his money is not on the lab meat start-ups. “It’s a better use of my time to focus on the nonprofit world. I don’t have time to do the due diligence researching the potential investments too,” he said. “I’m full-time losing my money efficiently in the nonprofit world already.”
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