The Tsais' Social Justice Fund: "Lasting Change" or Strategic Brand Management?
Their "family office–led philanthropy" can be innovative, but claims and spending fuzzy. The parent "Foundation" is a cipher.
This is part of a series on the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation’s Social Justice Fund, established in 2020 by the billionaire couple who own most of Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, which includes the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and the Barclays Center operating company.1
In the wake of the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and regular #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations at the Barclays Center plaza, while the arena was closed during the pandemic, Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, owners of the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and the arena operating company, issued a Social Justice Commitment Statement.
On Aug. 25, 2020, they promised “$50 million over 10 years for social justice initiatives and community investments that will benefit the BIPOC (especially Black) community, with a priority on Brooklyn.”
As I wrote, it was perhaps the most significant commitment announced by an NBA owner. (The league promised $30 million a year for social justice, via the new NBA Foundation: $1 million from each team, for ten years.)
Only in August 2019 had the Tsais gained full ownership of the Nets and the arena company, seven months after they’d acquired the Liberty.
More quietly, the Tsais pledged $50 million, a few months later, to fund the Wu Tsai Theater at Lincoln Center.
A media strategy
Early on, the Social Justice Fund (SJF) generated much publicity. “Brooklyn Nets owners score points with social justice fund,” proclaimed the New York Daily News on Dec. 16, 2020, heralding grants to five “Brooklyn-based Black leaders” before a formal announcement.
Tellingly, that press release, issued before the SJF had a website, came from the Brooklyn Nets, crediting “Clara Wu Tsai and Joe Tsai, owners of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, the WNBA’s New York Liberty, and Barclays Center.”
While the press release repeated the $50 million figure, it didn’t disclose the grant amounts.2
That signaled a pattern: publicity without transparency. Their philanthropy is notably opaque, avoiding the disclosures required of nonprofits, which raises questions about the SJF’s parent “foundation.”
A murky record
The SJF’s programs and initiatives have furthered periodic progress in Brooklyn, including a $2.5 million loan program that reached 98 BIPOC small business owners typically ineligible for bank loans; nine $50,000 grants to local creative businesses; the Just Brooklyn Prize, honoring five changemakers with $20,000 each over the last three years; and $25,000 grants to four nonprofits over the past three years.
Still, their numbers in their five-year Impact Summary don’t add up, as I wrote in my initial Feb. 4 critique, Has the Tsais’ Social Justice Fund Really Invested $25M “In Brooklyn” Since 2020?
The SJF has since answered some questions, but my updated annotation, below, still suggests gaps.
Their philanthropic spending surely has civic value. It also helps the Tsais build civic and political clout, bolstering their businesses, with little accountability.
Indeed, a key SJF employee says she works on “personal philanthropic initiatives that align with high-net-worth brand identity, values, and long-term strategy.”
Meanwhile, the publicity helps distract from their enormous gains. The Barclays Center has helped the Tsais turn a company they bought for some $3 billion into one worth perhaps double that,3 even as they benefit from a tax-free arena site.
They’re on the verge of getting the “temporary” arena plaza—a public/private space crucial to arena operations and valuable for advertising and promotion—made permanent, without payment, though New York State could require it.
Beyond this article, also see the overview linked below, which tries to catalog all their initiatives, both announced and not.
Lasting change?
In the website screen (below) promoting the Impact Summary, the SJF claims to have “driven economic mobility, community development, and lasting change across Brooklyn.” It’s surely helped with the first two.
“Lasting change” is hard to confirm, especially given the SJF’s opacity.
For example, we don’t know how much it’s given in “Grants to community organizations,” cited in the excerpt below. Moreover, the grants didn’t directly support “over 1,400 businesses” but rather the organizations helping them.
Has the SJF funded “pilots and programs that are scalable,” as promised? The record suggests caution, as my other coverage, linked below, suggests.
One key program has ended.
Another has evolved significantly.
Also, the claim that the SJF was “launched” by Wu Tsai distracts from the source of their wealth and controversies tied to her husband.
Even the Impact Summary’s claim that the Social Justice Fund aims “to support economic mobility within communities across the borough” shifts from an earlier focus on race.
Transforming Brooklyn?
The SJF no longer claims, as in the April 16, 2024, Instagram post below, that it’s “transforming Brooklyn, empowering 96+ businesses & partnering with 38+ local organizations & schools to build a diverse, inclusive community.”
Surely “transforming Brooklyn” would require far more spending.
“In a short time, SJF has become one of the top philanthropies in Brooklyn,” Liane Stegmaier, Chief of Staff at Brooklyn Org (formerly Brooklyn Community Foundation), stated after I asked for an assessment. (Brooklyn Org and the SJF partner on various projects.)
“This borough has always been underfunded, and they stepped up with a historic, example-setting $50M commitment,” she added. “They have since formed a broad range of partnerships and invested deeply in local nonprofits in their priority areas, which has been widely felt.”
Indeed, there’s a void to be filled. While the SJF has invested broadly, “deeply” is debatable, given, for example, annual allocations of $100,000 divided among nonprofits in various categories, such as Black Maternal Health or Re-Entry and Workforce Readiness.
The Social Justice Fund, for example, has avoided the crucial need for affordable housing, an Atlantic Yards promise supposed to combat racialized displacement, likely because $5 million a year can’t go too far.
The SJF’s take
A SJF representative from the public relations firm DKC has since answered some of my queries, but cut off responses after a certain point.
“[T]he Social Justice Fund was created in Brooklyn, for Brooklyn, in response to persistent inequities in wealth, health, and opportunity that were magnified during moments of crisis (pandemic and George Floyd murder),” the spokesman told me, in part reframing what the Social Justice Commitment Statement called “systemic imbalances and root causes that produce racial gaps in education, health and wealth.”
“The core belief: economic mobility is the most durable form of justice, and it requires coordinated investment across capital, careers, community safety, and culture,” the statement continued. “SJF operates with a place-based strategy, leveraging Brooklyn’s scale, institutions, and talent to demonstrate what equitable investment can look like in practice.”
“SJF is not a traditional philanthropic organization,” he added, noting that they’ve taken on risks and experimented with programs. Indeed, unlike, say, the NBA Foundation, the SJF doesn’t solely support established non-profit organizations.
Along with such traditional spending, Wu Tsai and SJF Executive Director Gregg Bishop have launched new programs. That earned praise from Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, who at the Just Brooklyn Prize ceremony last Nov. 14 hailed Wu Tsai for not simply giving money away but choosing “front-facing philanthropic work.”4
They’ve also revised arena hiring practices, as Bishop says, to remove “barriers for individuals who are justice-impacted.”
Despite the SJF’s focus on “innovative solutions to systemic inequities,” some initiatives, as noted below, have been quietly credited to the Social Justice Fund, though they primarily promote the Tsais’ businesses.
Nor does the SJF disclose its full spending, which I’ve learned includes at least $2.5 million in administrative costs so far.5
A p.r. push
Early SJF moves came with a public relations push.
On June 24, 2021, when the SJF launched its first major initiative, the EXCELerate loan fund, it garnered publicity from CNBC, Sportico, and the New York Daily News, which bannered its coverage across two pages in the Sports section. (A Sports reporter, reliant on access to the team, might be happy with a scoop.)
The announcement came with supportive quotes from blue-chip endorsers. Darren Walker, President of the Ford Foundation, “applaud[ed] my friend Clara Wu Tsai for her vision and leadership.”
Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, said, “With the BIPOC loan program, and Clara Wu Tsai and Gregg Bishop’s leadership, the Social Justice Fund is modeling what good citizenship looks like.”
The BK-XL initiative was heralded by a widely circulated Nov. 7, 2022, Associated Press article, “Brooklyn Nets owners start program for minority-led startups.”
A month later, the New York Times followed up with Why the Owners of the Nets Are Funding Tech Start-ups.
So it’s surprising that the five-year Impact Summary wasn’t accompanied by a supportive press release or a strategically placed news article featuring quotes from such supporters.
Are they wary of detailing their spending? Or disclosing that their most heralded programs were not necessarily scalable?
A branding exercise?
The SJF can serve as a branding exercise for the Tsais, a philanthropic gloss on what was once called “community relations,” such as backing established arts institutions or funding concerts on the arena plaza.
Basketball court renovations are festooned with the teams’ logos. The neon signage at the arena plaza stating “You belong here” and “We belong here,” I contend, suggests advertising as much as art.
The SJF might also be seen as a relatively small, though not insignificant, sum for reputation insurance and strategic brand management, just as that Lincoln Center pledge surely helped the Tsais win allies in New York and a 2022 award for being “extraordinary New Yorkers.”
Remember that photo op with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who’s ultimately their landlord? (The arena site is leased from the state, to avoid taxes and enable tax-exempt financing. A month before the Aug. 2, 2022, photo, Wu Tsai had given the maximum contribution to Hochul’s election fund, $69,700.)
The Social Justice Fund might be seen as an arm of the Tsais’ company, Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment.
The SJF emerges in 2020
The “major goal of our philanthropy has been in science,” as Wu Tsai told Inside Philanthropy in a July 12, 2021, article headlined The Brooklyn Way: How A Billionaire Couple’s Philanthropy Evolved to Support Social Justice.
That said, Wu Tsai, in 2019, helped found the REFORM Alliance, which aims to reform policies toward probation and parole.
She had a longtime interest in economic mobility, Wu Tsai told Forbes on Nov. 16, 2022. “When George Floyd happened,” she said, “that’s why we decided to focus on more levers.”
Birthed in the summer of protests and with a Nets roster that included some highly politicized players, notably the mercurial star Kyrie Irving, the Social Justice Fund might also be seen as the “cost of doing business.”
The SJF was announced shortly before the Nets hired Steve Nash as coach, a partial inoculation before hiring a white executive, albeit one favored by a Black star, Kevin Durant.
The SJF emerged with support from the notably politicized Net Garrett Temple. “They are people that are very adamant about their beliefs and have some of the same value systems that I share,” Temple told CNBC. “They’re definitely one of the more progressive, forward-thinking governors in the league.”
Economic mobility is a focus for the SJF’s Bishop, a Grenada-born Black Brooklyn Tech graduate and one-time college dropout who succeeded as an autodidact in tech. After earning two degrees, he later became the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Small Business Services, gaining valuable experience and connections.
“I grew up in East Flatbush, and there’s a number of Gregg Bishops in East Flatbush, in Brownsville, in Canarsie that are just waiting for that opportunity,” he said last April. Some SJF programs help further such economic mobility. Others do not.
The halo effect
The halo effect from both innovative initiatives and conventional community spending distracts from larger policy questions.
On Aug. 24, 2020, Brad Lander and Antonio Reynoso, among nine Council Members, signed a letter requesting that the city’s sports teams and arenas “finally pay some form of property taxes.”
They may not remember—in 2024, Comptroller Lander hailed the arena thanks to his New York Liberty fandom, and Borough President Reynoso helps choose the Just Brooklyn Prize winners—but that might be seen as social justice, too. 6
That letter was dated just a day before the Tsais issued the Social Justice Commitment Statement, though it wasn’t publicized for a week.7
Forgone property taxes for the tax-exempt arena site were most recently estimated at $122.7 million, or nearly 25 times the annual $5 million commitment.
As one unusually pointed commenter on NetsDaily put it in response to a December 2021 interview with Wu Tsai, she should donate time and money without publicity; sell their Alibaba shares and donate them; and “stop pretending like China isn’t a huge human rights problem and speak out against your husband.”
Not likely.
A later NetsDaily article about the SJF’s small business loan program provoked a more positive reader comment: “The Tsais are going above and beyond in their work for equity and social justice.”
SJF plans pivot
As noted above, the EXCELerate loan program has evolved to EXCELerate 2.0, which the SJF, oddly, doesn’t promote.
The BK-XL accelerator for start-up companies has, apparently, ended, though the website—which likely needs an update—still says, “Applications for 2024 are now closed. You may still apply here to be considered for our rolling application.”
“Regarding the future of BK-XL, based on our analysis of the business landscape in Brooklyn – especially businesses in underserved communities – we have determined that loans and grants have the most impact,” the SJF spokesman told me. “We have thus focused our resources towards strengthening local CDFIs [community development financial institutions] to lend more flexible capital to small businesses and invest more in grants to medium size businesses to be a catalyst for growth.”
Indeed, on March 10, the Social Justice Fund announced a partnership with The Asian American Foundation, Renaissance Economic Development Corporation (Renaissance), and New York State for the NYC Elevating Business Loan Program, a $5.5 million initiative—with $1 million from the Tsais and $4 million from the public—in small business loans, coupled with free financial counseling and multilingual training services.
The partnership included a presentation at a Nets game, providing additional publicity for the program and the Tsais.
This citywide program, in partnership with Asian-American groups, marks a departure from the “for Brooklyn” mantra and the focus on Black Brooklyn.
Also expect a boost in the less-publicized Revitalize Brooklyn grant program, which has so far directed $450,000 to help nine larger businesses grow. Given the funding of food and fashion businesses in Brooklyn’s gentrified zones, this also marked a partial departure from the SJF’s initial focus.
The business overlap
More overlap: the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and Barclays Center can serve as co-sponsors of SJF efforts, including the “Belong/Brooklyn” block party, basketball court renovations, and public celebrations.
In response to my query, the SJF spokesman told me, “The arena bills SJF for costs associated with using the facility for our events.”
So: the Tsais pay the Tsais for those plaza concerts, atrium events like the Just Brooklyn Prize and student art exhibits, and arena bowl use for BK-XL’s Demo Day.
Could the cost of hosting the Just Brooklyn Prize, plus the well-produced videos of the winners, exceed the actual prize money?
(Honorees, as noted in my separate round-up article, include an activist against stop displacement in East New York, a supporter of Haitian refugees, the founder of Domestic Workers United, and the Co-Founder of Family and Friends of the Wrongfully Convicted.)
Also, the Art at Barclays Center page credits LaToya Ruby Frazier’s installation last year on Ticketmaster Plaza, The Liberty Portraits: A Monument to the 2024 Champions, not just to the arena company but also to the Social Justice Fund, though SJF involvement wasn’t previously claimed.
That suggests the Tsais can count that project’s cost toward their “investment in Brooklyn.” Same with the upcoming “Brooklyn Art Encounters,” at least in part.
Is the foundation real?
Though the SJF announcement said it was funded by the Tsais’ “charitable foundation,” there’s no evidence of that. Nor is there any evidence that the Social Justice Fund is “a nonprofit started by Clara Wu Tsai,” as the New York Times stated on Oct. 16, 2024.8
The SJF and its parent, the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, are essentially opaque, despite crafted public announcements. Despite its name, the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation is apparently not a real foundation, at least under U.S. law, but rather a shell for something else.
Private foundations funded by a single source must annually report their grants, overall spending, and assets on Form 990-PF to the Internal Revenue Service and disclose the names of those who give at least $5,000. (See, for example, the Walentas Foundation, funded by developer David Walentas, and look for Schedule B.)
Similarly, public foundations funded by multiple sources, such as Brooklyn Org and the NBA Foundation, file annual Form 990s. Such foundations can publicly restrict the names of their contributors. (Again, see Schedule B.)
So I shouldn’t have to ask the Social Justice Fund about its grants, its administrative spending, or Bishop’s salary. But the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, nominally headquartered in the couple’s La Jolla neighborhood, discloses no spending beyond paying an accountant to complete the form, thereby keeping the name active. Unlike the SJF, it has no website.9
Why, I asked, is none of the SJF spending detailed in the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation’s public reports to the IRS? No answer.10
Brooklyn Org’s 2025 Impact Report lists the SJF among “Foundation Supporters.” I asked Brooklyn Org whether they were sure the SJF was a foundation, given that its parent had failed to list any grants. No answer.
The Social Justice Fund seems less a true nonprofit than, as SJF Manager Robyn Summers puts it on LinkedIn, “family office–led philanthropy.” She works on “personal philanthropic initiatives that align with high-net-worth brand identity, values, and long-term strategy.”
The Social Justice Fund seems less a true nonprofit than “family office–led philanthropy.”
Summers says she’s “Manager of the Joe and Clara Tsai Social Justice Fund at BSE Global,” which earlier this year reverted to Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment. That suggests the philanthropic effort is part of the family business. Indeed, the SJF and the parent company share a Brooklyn address.
Similarly, Timi Dayo-Kayode, who co-led the most recent BK-XL accelerator, says on his LinkedIn that he’d worked for the Brooklyn Nets. Co-lead Chris Martinez, on LinkedIn, says he works for BK-XL, but earlier worked for Blue Pool Capital, the Tsais’ family investment office.
Could BK-XL be an extension of the Tsais’ family office? When I asked what entity invested in the start-ups, I didn’t get an answer.
In 2024, at its Annual Meeting and Winter Gala, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce honored “our WNBA Champions the New York Liberty and BSE Global , their parent corporation,” wrote Brooklyn Chamber CEO Randy Peers on LinkedIn. “Thank you to Liberty CEO Keia Clarke and Gregg Bishop from the Social Justice Fund for joining us.
As shown in the photo above, Bishop was seen as a “corporate honoree,” an ambassador from the Liberty and its parent company.
Not quite a “standard foundation”
“It’s similar to working for a foundation, your standard foundation,” observed Bishop in a podcast interview last August. “They do similar work, but instead I work specifically for a family member.”
Business support, he suggested, was 60% to 70% of the SJF’s work, while the rest is working with nonprofits.
“I find organizations that are aligned with Clara’s priorities,” aiming to ensure their work is impactful, scalable, sustainable, and innovative, Bishop said. Then he presents them to Wu Tsai, “and most of the times we are in agreement.”
Bishop has made presentations at last April’s Smart City Expo USA 2025 at the Javits Center, where he presented the SJF’s work as Philanthropy Transforming Cities, and a March 2025 panel at SXSW in Austin, titled No Returns, No Problem: Philanthropy Gets Creative and Brave.
The latter suggested a contrast between “institutional philanthropy,” which requires extensive paperwork and deliberation, and creative models of private philanthropy, exemplified by the SJF’s “trust-based” EXCELerate loan program.
“The Fund is fortunate to be in the position that traditional capital markets cannot take: to absorb early risk, prove models before scale and de-risk pathways so other capital can follow,” the spokesman told me.
Transparency questions
Then again, SJF is also nontraditional because it’s opaque.11
About a year after Inside Philanthropy initially covered the Tsais, its Aug. 31, 2022, article, Two Years After Historic Uprisings, Where Does Philanthropy’s Commitment to Racial Justice Stand?, raised a potential red flag. After querying 14 high-profile funders, the publication found that only two, including the Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation, declined to share information about their progress.12
Was that to avoid disclosing their spending? Unclear.
“We are committed to listening and learning from community members, our players, and our employees as we design and implement this plan,” the Tsais said in the Aug. 25, 2020, Social Justice Commitment Statement.
Then again, while the SJF website has invited applications for programs and prizes and, for nearly a year, has offered a link to alert staff to “organizations in Brooklyn,” it lacks a general Contact form or email address.13 It lists no board.
Nor has the SJF held a public “listening tour,” as Brooklyn Org does.
A Harvard case study?
Harvard Business School has published two case studies focused on EXCELerate: Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation (March 2022, revised January 2023) and Clara Wu Tsai and Brooklyn Loan Innovation B (November 2024).
Neither the Social Justice Fund nor Harvard would make those copyrighted studies public. The portrayal seems positive, but it’s unclear whether the studies address whether the models are scalable.
Along with Bishop and Wu Tsai presenting at Harvard, referenced on LinkedIn as “Rich” by Prof. Archie Jones, seems to be Rich Tao, a member of Joe Tsai’s inner circle, according to Sportico, and a former Blue Pool executive. He now heads Udy Road Holdings, which helped mentor the second BK-XL cohort. (I queried Tao, but didn’t hear back.)
If so, that suggests another overlap between “philanthropic organization” and business.
The SJF partnerships
The Social Justice Fund’s partners have provided it with institutional legitimacy and program infrastructure. How much does it pay them?
I got a general answer: “We work with many partners – including Brooklyn Org, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, TruFund, etc. – who have unique expertise, as well as technical and programmatic capabilities, to maximize the impact of our programs. In all cases, these partners are compensated.”
Brooklyn Org’s (BKO) Stegmaier added, “BKO has also benefited from their philanthropy, with a $300K grant to create and support the Just Brooklyn Prize and an additional $30K for BKO to operate the prize (which was modeled on our Brooklyn Org Spark Prize, but to honor individuals instead of organizations).”
This year, the Just Brooklyn Prize will not only award $20,000 to each of five winners but also $5,000 to five finalists, while the Social Justice Fund has increased operating support for Brooklyn Org for administration.
Five nonprofits each receive Brooklyn Org’s annual $100,000 “no strings attached” Spark Prize and are celebrated at a gala breakfast. In 2022, the charity honored Wu Tsai. Starting last year and continuing last month, the Spark Prize breakfast has been held at the Barclays Center.
Brooklyn Org announced April 9, 2025: “Brooklyn Org and our partners at the Social Justice Fund founded by Clara Wu Tsai held a free training… at the Barclays Center to provide legal, communications, and fundraising expertise for Brooklyn nonprofits.”
Among key presenters were Bishop and Joe DePlasco of DKC News, a Social Justice Fund consultant.
“Brooklyn Org works directly with Barclays Center for their events,” not through the Social Justice Fund, the SJF spokesman told me, adding that the partnership was limited to the Just Brooklyn Prize, which the Fund had recently committed to supporting for three more years.14
Some suspect numbers
Am I too skeptical? Well, not only did I find that the “1,400 businesses supported” was a stretch, as noted above, but I also found another exaggeration.
The original Impact Summary claimed that Basquiat in Brooklyn Schools, a student arts curriculum inspired by Jean-Michel Basquiat, reached 70,000 students.
Questioning that professed total, I cited an Oct. 16, 2023, Social Justice Fund post stating the program “now supports 75 schools, benefiting 4,000+ students,” a far lower number. In response, the SJF revised it to 12,000 students, as shown below.
Sure, that’s just one program.15 Whether sloppiness or slipperiness, it suggests that self-reporting scants accountability.
What’s the plan?
What happens after ten years? Does the Social Justice Fund continue? Might they designate, as I’ve speculated, exit profits from a BK-XL investment to fund future initiatives?
“We are focused on building on our work over the remaining 5 years of the initial commitment,” I was told. “Our commitments beyond the 10-year period will be determined in the future.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if, thanks to—for example—rising team values and another minority share investment in Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, more funds might be available for philanthropic work, especially if it clearly overlaps with other projects, such as the parent company’s Planet Brooklyn festival, as shown in the poster above.
Arena ironies
The arena was once supposed to provide millions of dollars in civic value, costs avoided by the Tsais and their predecessors.
The much-hyped 2005 Atlantic Yards Community Benefits Agreement stipulated that community groups could use the arena for at least ten events a year, at “a reasonable rate,” furthering their fundraising.
That never launched. (Yes, the Tsais now provide the arena for community purposes, but on their own terms, with the costs now calculated as part of the SJF’s $5 million commitment.)
Also, fans were once promised 2,000 discounted Brooklyn Nets tickets at $15. That lasted just one season. Today, the cheapest season tickets, at least the ones I recently saw available, cost about $60/seat, over 41 games.
If they sold 2,000 seats at $20 (to allow for inflation), they’d “lose” $40/ticket, or $80,000 per game.16 At 41 regular-season home games, that adds up to $3.28 million, likely more, given the dropoff in food and souvenir spending.
Meaningful gestures, and their limits
The SJF’s 2023 “Belong/Brooklyn” campaign, for Black Maternal Health, emphasized “women’s health equity as an essential right.” Four organizations, including the Brooklyn Perinatal Network, got $25,000 each, for a total of $100,000.
The money surely helps, as does the exposure. As Bishop said in an Aug. 29, 2024, interview, “we’re using our assets, so we’ve had [Belong Brooklyn honorees] at Liberty games” and events on the plaza to help build awareness. Such funding, however, can’t support a full-time staffer.
Few remember that, in 2005, the original Atlantic Yards developer, Bruce Ratner, gave $50,000 to the Brooklyn Perinatal Network.
“There’s a difference between public relations,” the (late) Rev. Clinton Miller, pastor of Brown Memorial Baptist Church, told the New York Daily News at the time, and Ratner “really wanting to have a sincere impact on the infant mortality rate.”
Then-Council Member Letitia James called it “pocket change.” Today, the totals may be larger, but such spending still deserves perspective.
After all, “Personal philanthropic initiatives that align with high-net-worth brand identity, values, and long-term strategy” might come with multiple motives.
Consider, for example, the SJF’s non-publicized support for See NYC, a $1,450 “summer camp-style experience” for emerging leaders.
As shown in the screenshot above, Group 1 on Day 1 could tour the Tsais’ new Brooklyn Basketball Training Center. Then all five groups could meet for lunch at Barclays Center with the New York Liberty leadership.
Was that social justice, or bolstering the brand?
MLK’s heir?
At the Barclays Center on Feb. 13, 2024, Wu Tsai was presented with the (recently unveiled) Dreamer Award by Martin Luther King III and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, in front of Brooklyn Nets fans.
“This award,” the Nets stated, “is given to a select number of extraordinary individuals across the country who have done inspiring work to create a more just and equitable world.”
The new award was part of a “Call to Action encouraging individuals to participate in local service opportunities,” as the Nets wrote. The Kings aimed to unite “brands and communities” to spread the message of service, under the banner of their organization, Realize the Dream.
So they promote virtuous, if hardly risk-taking, action while gaining partnerships from sports leagues, companies, and wealthy individuals.
Was that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision?
“Dr. King’s dream was as much about economic justice as it was about social justice,” wrote Bob Lord for Inequality.org in 2014. “Today’s distribution of wealth in America represents his nightmare come true.”17
That observation, which today might support a wealth tax on billionaires, was not part of the Dreamer Award.
The hyperlink includes all articles tagged with the Social Justice Fund, including an initial one Feb. 4, 2026, headlined Has the Tsais’ Social Justice Fund Really Invested $25M “In Brooklyn” Since 2020? The series only includes those with the logo “Eye on Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation Social Justice Fund.”
The grants ranged between $20,000 and $50,000, BK Reader reported, without crediting a source. That was later confirmed in the Black Voices for Black Justice Fund’s three- year report.
The major leap came when the Koch family bought a 15% share, at a $5.8 billion valuation.
Reynoso is a member of the prize selection committee.
I had to ask about such costs. Of the funding, 10% goes to “administrative and operational costs, which is standard for philanthropic organizations,” I was told.
I wonder if even 10%, or $500,000 a year, is too little. SJF Executive Director Gregg Bishop, in a podcast interview last August, observed that his former position, as the New York City Commissioner of Small Business Services, pays around $235,000, while philanthropy has a “wide range… so it could start at like 250 [$250,000] and you could end up, you know, at $1.5 million.” He surely earns well above that $250,000 baseline, but we shouldn’t have to guess. Foundations are required to report the compensation of their five highest-paid employees who earn over $50,000.
Inviting Reynoso to help choose a winner of the annual Just Brooklyn Prize—$20,000 each for five grassroots changemakers—helps imbue the choice with authenticity, draws a key stakeholder closer, and makes it less likely that Reynoso might demand accountability from the arena operators, like payments to make the “temporary” arena plaza permanent.
Did the Tsais know that letter was coming? Unclear. But the philanthropic commitment was surely made with the recognition that it could help build ties with elected officials.
Recent coverage of the Social Justice Fund’s role in the new “Brooklyn Art Encounters,” in Artforum and The Art Newspaper, also referred to the SJF as a nonprofit.
Strangely, as I’ll write separately in greater detail, the separate Brooklyn Nets & New York Liberty Foundation has reported raising $2 million, in two tranches, from the “Joe [&] Clara Tsai Foundation,” said to be headquartered at the Industry City offices of the Tsai holdings.
The Joe and Clara Tsai Foundation is based in La Jolla, not Brooklyn, and has never reported any contributions. That Industry City address of the recipient address was apparently (mis)used as the location of all the contributors to the Brooklyn Nets & New York Liberty Foundation.
That also suggests the Tsais don’t get a tax break for their spending.
My reporting nearly four years ago, when I asked the SJF’s Bishop how it had spent the $5 million it had pledged during its first full year. He wouldn’t share an accounting, but said “the Social Justice Fund’s major program initiatives are detailed in its bi-annual newsletters”—none are public—“and can also be found on its website.”
It’s unclear why they didn’t respond to Inside Philanthropy. The Social Justice Fund had launched high-profile initiatives. But its public profile is carefully managed.
So there’s no way to question the SJF nomination form’s list of 35 neighborhoods, which omits Red Hook and Gowanus, offering only South Brooklyn, a term out of vogue. Moreover, while the list includes ritzy Mill Basin, it omits Brooklyn’s most bruised neighborhood, Brownsville. (The SJF has made grants to groups and individuals from Brownsville.)
I asked Brooklyn Org about whether the space was donated or rented, but didn’t get an answer.
The Basquiat program has been succeeded by a music program honoring another Black Brooklynite: jazz musician and civil rights activist Max Roach.
They may have fewer than 2,000 seats at the lowest rate, but this is an approximation.
Here are some of his statements about the skewed distribution of wealth.