- We create accessible publications that guide funding in social justice areas and explore just, socially responsible philanthropic practice.
- We design and host free educational programming, webinars, strategy sessions and other gatherings for funders, their advisors and nonprofit leaders.
- We teach courses, fund fellowships, mentor students and host guest speakers for the Heller-Brandeis community.
- We collaborate with numerous community-based groups, university-based philanthropy centers, social justice funders and national networks to build strategy, co-sponsor events and long-term projects and to support and learn from each other’s work.
Philanthropy Massachusetts has created a Disaster and Emergency Relief Resource List due to the COVID-19 crisis. This list will be constantly updated and is extremely useful for funders and individuals looking to provide thoughtful resources to our communities. Please stay safe and take care of one another.
In memoriam
Robert F.X. Sillerman '69
1948-2019
We are greatly saddened by the death of Robert F.X. Sillerman. Mr. Sillerman died of a respiratory illness on November 24th. He was 71 years old. With his wife Laura, Mr. Sillerman founded the Sillerman Center for the Advancement of Philanthropy in 2008.
Most people beyond Brandeis University and the Heller School knew Bob as a highly successful media entrepreneur who built several media empires and reshaped the contemporary concert industry. On our campus and at the Sillerman Center, Mr. Sillerman was known mostly as an unflaggingly generous and loyal alum. It was as an undergraduate at Brandeis that Mr. Sillerman launched one of his first businesses, Youth Market Consultants, in 1966. The business offered fellow students discount magazine subscriptions and advised marketers how to reach youth and young adults. A famously gregarious and irreverent nonconformist, Mr. Sillerman was known, too, for his outsized generosity with friends and family and devotion to his wife Laura, who oversaw the family's extensive philanthropy. Over decades, the Sillermans have supported a wide variety of educational, cultural, medical and ecological causes.
Mr. Sillerman is survived by his wife Laura and a brother, Michael, who are both in our thoughts at this difficult time.
