38 | FORBES ASIA MAY 2017to start the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad In-
stitute of MIT & Harvard, a Cambridge biomedical research center
seeded by Giving Pledge signers Eli and Edythe Broad.
In 2014, having already given $175 million to Broad, Ted
pledged an additional $650 million—the largest-ever gift for
psychiatric research—with most of that to be funded, after his
death, out of his majority stake in MBI. “What Broad created
made sense to my dad, so he tagged his whole legacy into it,” Jon
says, adding that he sees the move as akin to Buffett’s decision to
leave the bulk of his fortune to the already up-and-running Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation.
As the son of a Reading Railroad brakeman, Ted Stanley was
not one to waste money. In addition to saving the expense of setting
up his own genome research group, Ted instructed that the private
Stanley Family Foundation—through which his donations are fun-
neled—would dissolve within a decade after his death. “Ted didn’t
want a foundation that perpetuated [itself ] and became fat and lazy,”
explains his longtime business partner, Julius Friese, who serves as a
trustee of the foundation along with Jon and a Stanley cousin.
Meanwhile, each trustee gets to recommend a slice of the foun-
dation’s annual giving; Jon directs $600,000 a year to the Treatment
Advocacy Center, where he worked as a lawyer and executive direc-
tor and is now a guiding force on the board. John Snook, the current
executive director, credits Jon with playing a pivotal role in TAC’sadvocacy, which has led 30 states to change their civil commitment
laws to allow for court-supervised community treatment for the
mentally ill, instead of just hospitalization and discharge. “No family
has done as much to advance the cause of mental illness treatment,’’
Snook says.
By the end of 2015, just before Ted’s death, the Stanley Fami-
ly Foundation had fulfilled the first $50 million of his $650 mil-
lion pledge and held a half-billion in assets, including a portion
of Ted’s MBI holdings valued at $214 million. Now the rest of his
MBI stake is going to the foundation, and while Jon won’t say
what it’s worth, it seems to be more than enough to make good
on the Broad pledge. Privately held MBI says on its website it
does $350 million a year in sales.
For now, like any kid handling a parent’s estate, Jon is busy talk-
ing to realtors about marketing the family’s house and figuring out
what to do with their stuff. Only in this case the house was designed
by Frank Lloyd Wright, sits on 15 acres in New Canaan, Connecti-
cut, beside a waterfall and pond, and is on the market for $8 million;
the “stuff ” includes an ashtray with a cigar butt supposedly left by
Wright himself (see box).
Jon is also trustee of various trusts his dad set up for family
members, including a stepbrother and stepsister from Vada’s first
marriage. “[The trusts] are more than enough to live your life, but
nobody’s getting on a private jet,” he says approvingly.Estate lawyer Peter Chadwick
recalls the day Ted Stanley
told him he wanted to make
charitable arrangements for
his stunning 7,000-square-
foot, hemicycle-shaped home
in New Canaan, Connecticut.
“Knowing it was a Frank Lloyd
Wright [designed] house,
and forgetting for a few min-
utes who I was dealing with,
I asked him, ‘Do you want it
to be an historic-house muse-
um?’” Nope, Stanley respond-
ed. After his death, he wanted
the house sold and the pro-
ceeds used, like the rest of
his assets, to fund mental ill-
ness research. So Chadwick
put together papers giving the
house to the Stanley Family
Foundation but allowing Ted
and his wife, Vada, to live in it for the rest of their lives. The usual appeal of this “life
estate” giving technique is that you get a current charitable income tax deduction,
even as you continue to live in the house. The Stanleys, for their part, probably al-
ready had more charity deductions than they could use but “derived personal satis-
faction knowing [the future of the house] was wrapped up,’’ Chadwick says. —A.E.
HOME SWEET CHARITABLE GIFT
FORBES ASIA
SECOND ACTF