Peter & Martha Karoff

Peter Karoff is chairman and founder of The Philanthropic Initiative (TPI), a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that promotes philanthropy.  TPI designs, manages, and evaluates philanthropic programs for individuals, families, corporations, and foundations.  TPI’s goal is to help donors to invest in their own values, communities and societies for maximum impact.  In addition, TPI conducts research and publishes reports, articles, monographs and curricula, designed to add value to the field, both domestically and around the world.  Since inception, TPI’s clients have invested more than one billion dollars in a wide range of philanthropic programs and social initiatives.

Peter was President of TPI from 1989 to 2002 and is a Senior Fellow at the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. For 25 years, prior to founding TPI, Peter was in the insurance and real estate businesses.  He has been on the board of more than 30 nonprofit organizations, including Blackside Productions, producer of the PBS series, The Eyes on the Prize, The Synergos Institute, Massachusetts Association of Mental Health, Roxbury Development Corporation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Massachusetts Business Roundtable and Business Executives for National Security.  Current board affiliations in addition to TPI include: Management Sciences for Health, Gerald and Henrietta Rauenhorst Foundation, Robina Foundation, Elm Foundation, WGBH Educational Foundation, and the National Leadership Council of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

Peter frequently speaks and writes, on philanthropic and social issues and is the author of The World We Want – new dimensions in philanthropy and social change, (AltaMira Press - 2007) and editor of Just Money – A Critique of Contemporary American Philanthropy, (TPI Editions - 2004.)   Peter’s poetry has been published and anthologized.  A graduate of Brandeis University (1959), Peter earned an MFA from Columbia University (1988), and received an Honorary Degree Doctor of Humane Letters from Lesley University (2002).  He was made a Fellow of the McDowell Colony in 1989 and in 2006 became a Purpose Prize Fellow. Peter is teaching a graduate seminar in the 2009 winter term in the UCSB Global and International Studies Program on The Moral Dimension of Philanthropy and Social Action.

Peter and his wife Martha moved to Santa Barbara in the spring of 2008. Part of the Santa Barbara attraction was that daughter Deborah lives here with her family, which includes two of the Karoff’s seven grandchildren!