The wealth concentrated in the Hamptons doesn’t remain confined to coastal estates and summer galas. Through private foundations, locally based families and seasonal residents quietly sustain the institutions that serve the East End year-round, from the Parrish Art Museum and Sag Harbor Cinema to Southampton Hospital and the South Fork Natural History Museum.
Beyond the South Fork, their philanthropic footprint includes funding major universities, cancer research, iconic cultural centers and public parks. Here are seven notable private foundations with deep ties to the Hamptons, and a look at where their money actually goes.
Michael Bloomberg’s Bloomberg Philanthropies
Michael Bloomberg put down Hamptons roots in 2011, when the billionaire businessman and former New York City mayor bought Ballyshear, a 35-acre Southampton estate, for $20 million.
Raised in Massachusetts, Bloomberg worked his way through Johns Hopkins and Harvard Business School before co-founding the financial data and media empire that made him a household name.
These days, philanthropy is Bloomberg’s primary second act. Through Bloomberg Philanthropies, he gave away $4.3 billion in 2025 alone, pushing his lifetime giving past $25.4 billion. As an early signatory of the Giving Pledge, he’s committed nearly his entire fortune to charitable causes. “Making a difference in people’s lives—and seeing it with your own eyes—is perhaps the most satisfying thing you’ll ever do,” he wrote in his pledge letter. “If you want to fully enjoy life—give.”
That giving is funneled through the Bloomberg Family Foundation, which held $12.1 billion in net assets and disbursed nearly $1.5 billion in 2024, according to its latest available tax filing. Helmed by CEO Patricia Harris, New York City’s former deputy mayor, the foundation’s scope covers 75 global programs, such as its flagship Public Art Challenge, awarding U.S. cities up to $1 million for public art projects. Bloomberg’s daughters, Emma and Georgina, also play an active role on the board.
Out on the South Fork, the foundation’s footprint spans the area’s arts scene. It’s a key benefactor of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, helping fund Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s 2024 exhibition “Collider,” and previously co-sponsored Robert Longo’s 2021 show “A History of the Present” at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The foundation’s free Bloomberg Connects app also offers custom digital guides for the Parrish, the East Hampton Historical Society, and The Church, a creative hub set inside a restored 19th-century Methodist church in Sag Harbor.
The family’s local presence extends past museum walls. Georgina Bloomberg, an accomplished equestrian who serves as secretary of the Hampton Classic board, has spent over a decade sponsoring the Bridgehampton horse show’s annual Animal Adoption Day, helping rescue groups rehome dozens of dogs, cats and horses each summer.
Ronald Perelman’s Perelman Family Foundation
For a full decade, billionaire dealmaker Ronald Perelman turned his East Hampton estate into the ultimate summer bash. From 2010 through 2019, his 57-acre Georgica Pond property, The Creeks, served as the backdrop for Apollo in the Hamptons. Bringing in heavyweight performers like Paul McCartney, Sting and jon bon jovi, the star-studded benefit raised nearly $30 million for Harlem’s historic Apollo Theater, showing that Perelman could mobilize the East End’s celebrity star power for the arts.
“What the Apollo does in that community is just extraordinary. It gives these kids a musical education. It gives them a platform to perform. It gives them access to develop their talents in a place that is so beautiful,” Perelman told Observer back in 2013.
Perelman learned the fundamentals of dealmaking from his father, Raymond, who owned steel fabricator Belmont Industries. After leaving the family business in 1978, he moved to New York and, two years later, acquired MacAndrews & Forbes, then a licorice-and-chocolate company. He transformed it into the acquisition vehicle behind a sprawling portfolio that at various points included Revlon, Marvel Entertainment Group and Technicolor. His fortune reached roughly $19 billion in 2018, but mounting debt and the pandemic’s toll prompted widespread asset sales beginning in 2020.
A Giving Pledge signer, Perelman wrote in his 2010 pledge letter that “giving now and seeing the benefits first hand can be the single most rewarding thing any of us can do.” The Perelman Family Foundation focuses on women’s health, education and the arts, with Perelman as chairman and president, and daughters Debra, Samantha and Caleigh in leadership roles.
Tax filings show that the Perelman Family Foundation ended 2025 with $1.1 million in assets and nearly $6,000 in disbursements, a far leaner operation than during its peak grantmaking years in the 2010s. On the East End, Guild Hall donor records have listed both Perelman and the Perelman Family Foundation among its supporters. Perelman’s broader philanthropic legacy includes $1.8 million in early support for UCLA oncologist Dennis Slamon’s research, which helped pave the way for Herceptin, the first molecularly targeted therapy for breast cancer.
John Paulson’s Paulson Family Foundation
John Paulson’s latest mark on the Hamptons is right in the center of Southampton Village. In May, the Paulson Family Foundation gave $3.4 million to the Southampton Arts Center to overhaul its grounds, gardens and arboretum, complete with an endowment to fund its upkeep for the next five years. Unveiled over Memorial Day weekend, the new Paulson Family Gardens adds an outdoor performance space and lush landscaping. “This 2.7-acre site sits at the heart of our village and is a crucial part of its heritage,” Paulson said when the gift was announced.
The Queens-born financier founded Paulson & Co. in 1994 and became one of Wall Street’s best-known hedge fund managers after betting against the subprime mortgage market ahead of the 2008 Financial Crisis. He established the Paulson Family Foundation in 2009.
Headquartered in West Palm Beach with Paulson as its uncompensated president, the foundation held nearly $1.39 billion in net assets at the end of 2024. It reported close to $6.6 million in charitable disbursements that year, following a massive $66.6 million slate in 2023.
While Paulson is famous for writing checks to higher education—like his record $400 million gift to Harvard’s engineering school and $100 million for the NYU academic complex that now bears his name—his East End legacy spans health care, the arts and conservation, including support for the Peconic Land Trust, which conserves Long Island’s natural lands, farms and heritage. In 2009, he and his then-wife, Jenny, gave $5 million to Southampton Hospital, now Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. At the time its largest ever donation, the gift nearly doubled the size of the hospital’s emergency facilities.
Andrew Sabin Family Foundation
Andrew Sabin’s passion for East End philanthropy started in the dirt. A lifelong naturalist with a passion for reptiles and amphibians, Sabin co-founded the South Fork Natural History Museum and Nature Center (SOFO) in 1988 to protect the region’s fragile ecosystem. He’s been known to lead nature walks himself, and he even has a frog named after him—Aphantophryne sabini—discovered during a 1987 expedition to Papua New Guinea.
Sabin’s fortune originates from Sabin Metal Corporation, a family precious-metals refining firm he joined at age nine. He took over as president from his father in 1980 and currently serves as chairman. In 2008, he launched the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation to structure his giving and get the next generation involved.
Operating out of East Hampton with Sabin as its uncompensated director, the foundation held $9.7 million in net assets and issued nearly $6.9 million in grants in 2024.
Environmental causes are the foundation’s bread and butter. In 2009, Sabin helped launch Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law and followed with a $3.5 million endowment expansion in 2014. In 2023, his family foundation gave Wake Forest University $5 million to expand its existing Center for Environment, Energy and Sustainability. “The world needs so many more smart young people with the hearts, minds and skills to tackle the issues facing Earth’s life-supporting systems. Nothing can be more important, and the need is urgent,” Sabin said at the time.
Beyond green initiatives, Sabin is a massive funder of medical research, famously committing $30 million in 2015 to support research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Closer to home, his foundation continues to help keep the lights on for local institutions, giving $275,650 to the South Fork Natural History Society in 2024 alongside donations to the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons and East Hampton programs such as the food pantry, Meals on Wheels, the Lions Club and the local fire department. The foundation says it contributed $300,000 toward the Stony Brook East Hampton Emergency Department, a freestanding, 24-hour facility that opened in 2025.
Martin D. & Jean Shafiroff Foundation
They might keep their tax address in Manhattan, but Martin and Jean Shafiroff have built one of the most visible philanthropic profiles in the Hamptons. Jean is a constant fixture on the South Fork gala circuit, serving on the board of the Southampton Hospital Foundation and the honorary board of the Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation—two causes she regularly hosts and underwrites benefits for.
A physical therapist turned Columbia MBA, Jean worked briefly in investment banking before pivoting full-time into charity work. She literally wrote the book on giving, authoring Successful Philanthropy: How to Make a Life By What You Give, and has hosted a TV show of the same name, whose guests have included actor Tony Danza and human rights activist Kerry Kennedy.
Her husband, Martin, is a Wall Street veteran currently serving as vice chairman of global wealth management at Stifel. Established in 1987, the Shafiroff’s family foundation reported $2.35 million in net assets and about $694,000 in charitable giving for its 2025 fiscal year, with Martin and Jean serving as uncompensated trustees.
In the East End, the foundation’s latest grant run included $41,780 for the Southampton Hospital Foundation, $16,680 for the Southampton Animal Shelter, $11,000 for the Southampton History Museum and $10,000 for the Southampton African American Museum.
The urge to give back runs in the family. The couple’s daughter, Elizabeth, founded Southampton-based Global Strays in 2017 after witnessing animal suffering while traveling in Central America. In fiscal 2025, the family foundation gave the international animal welfare nonprofit $127,000.
Brian P. Friedman Family Foundation
Jefferies CEO Rich Handler once noted that his longtime business partner, Brian P. Friedman, “thinks in decades.” That long-horizon mindset is just as apparent in Friedman’s family foundation, which has been handing out grants since 1993.
Friedman kicked off his career as an attorney before spending 17 years in investment banking at Furman Selz and successor firms. He moved to Jefferies in 2001, where he now serves as president and director.
Headquartered right in East Hampton, his foundation held nearly $18.75 million in net assets and distributed $4.07 million in 2024. It now includes Friedman’s adult children, Julia and Daniel, among its officers. Friedman serves as president.
While the foundation writes major multimillion-dollar checks to city organizations, such as $1 million to the UJA-Federation of New York and more than $1.6 million to the Manhattan-based Jewish Communal Fund, its Hamptons giving is more targeted. In 2024, the foundation directed $1,800 to South Fork Bakery, which creates employment opportunities for adults with disabilities, and $5,000 to the Sag Harbor Song Festival, an annual three-day showcase for rising opera singers.
Stephanie and Fred Shuman Family Foundation
One of Stephanie and Fred Shuman’s philanthropic mark-makers started with a simple family routine. In the 1970s, while raising two children alone and balancing a demanding Wall Street career, Alfred J. “Fred” Shuman began running with them around the Central Park reservoir, using the time to talk and stay connected. Fast forward to 2014, and he and his wife, Stephanie, gave $5 million to the Central Park Conservancy to restore and maintain the 1.58-mile loop, which was renamed the Stephanie and Fred Shuman Running Track, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Shuman made his name as a managing director at Bear Stearns in 1978 before launching three event-driven hedge funds and co-founding fund-of-funds firm Archstone Partnerships in 1991. Stephanie is an equally heavy hitter in civic life, currently serving on the boards of Lincoln Center Theater and the Neighborhood Coalition for Shelter in New York.
Splitting their time between New York City, East Hampton and Santa Barbara, the couple set up their East Hampton foundation in 2005. Its 2025 tax filings show $1.85 million in net assets and nearly $521,000 in disbursements, with Fred as president and Stephanie as vice president (both uncompensated).
While top grants went to Lincoln Center Theater ($130,000), the Central Park Conservancy ($50,000) and NYU Langone Health ($50,000), the couple keeps a close eye on South Fork culture. Recent East End giving includes $10,000 for the Sag Harbor Cinema Arts Center and $5,000 for the Parrish Art Museum. The Shumans also support vital Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor (GIST) research at Manhattan’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
