Ray Dalio on Philanthropy

The Dalio family's philanthropy has an origin story that runs through China. In 1995 Ray and Barbara Dalio sent their eleven-year-old son Matt to spend a school year living in China; a visit to an orphanage there convinced him he could deliver lifesaving help to special-needs orphans. After Matt came home he founded the China Care Foundation, which raised nearly 15 million dollars and saved thousands of children with special needs. That journey with China Care inspired the establishment of the Dalio Foundation in 2003, which later became part of Dalio Philanthropies. The organization describes giving as a core Dalio family value and shared activity, notes their Giving Pledge commitment to give away the majority of their wealth, and explains its method: partner with closely aligned people and causes, focus on the leaders of the organizations it invests in because the who is more important than the what, and promote financial self-sufficiency across its focus areas so grantees achieve lasting impact. A board governs as a committee, and unsolicited proposals are not accepted.

Dalio's compensation and giving have both run at extraordinary scale. He reportedly earned 1.1 billion dollars in 2014, and Forbes estimated his net worth at 15.4 billion in 2015, making him the second-wealthiest hedge fund manager after George Soros; he was estimated to have received 2 billion dollars in 2018 after his fund posted a 14.6 percent return. Ray and Barbara Dalio created the Dalio Foundation in 2003, later part of Dalio Philanthropies; the family has donated more than 5 billion dollars to it, and it has granted out more than 1 billion. In April 2011 the couple joined the Giving Pledge. Grants have included 10 million dollars for China's coronavirus recovery in early 2020, 4 million for Connecticut healthcare and nutrition, 50 million to launch NewYork-Presbyterian's Dalio Center for Health Justice, a 100 million dollar pledge to Connecticut public schools, and 185 million committed with Bloomberg Philanthropies over four years to protect the oceans.

While other billionaires chase a new age space race, Dalio's heart belongs to a different frontier, one that has seen untold destruction over the past fifty years. His interest was sparked growing up watching Jacques Cousteau's films and documentaries, which made him curious about the underwater world, and he started diving in his early twenties, first chartering a boat and then buying one of his own. What he wanted was not a yacht but an exploration boat, and half a century later his converted lift ship has been central to high-profile aquatic missions: helping capture the first-ever footage of the elusive giant squid, aiding the search for Air France Flight 447, and taking Leonardo DiCaprio on a submersible dive for his documentary Before the Flood. Together with his youngest son Mark, who had been working at National Geographic, Dalio launched OceanX to spotlight the oceans through exploration, film, media, and science. The BBC's Blue Planet II was shot on their ship, and film director James Cameron, an ocean advocate and record-setting diver, became a partner.

The philanthropic push came from witnessing change. Dalio describes diving at places like the Great Barrier Reef and returning years later to find how much had changed: more pollution, more illegal fishing, locals trying to eke out a living against huge trawlers decimating underwater life. With the ocean, he says, there is a surface, and if you do not penetrate it what you experience is a reflection; when you dive you go beyond that reflection and see precisely what is going on, dying fish populations, the impact of plastic, a sea treated like a toilet. When his financial circumstances allowed him to get involved in a big way, he realized he could not only support explorations but start showing them to the wider world, so OceanX pairs the ship and its media capabilities with partners, taking content into museums and science centers and recruiting aligned philanthropists. The launch joined a 185 million dollar, four-year oceans commitment with Bloomberg Philanthropies. By then he had given away more than 760 million dollars and had called the U.S. wealth gap a national emergency.