Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation
ActivePhilanthropy & VoluntarismFunds Individuals
About Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation
The Zarrow Family Foundation concentrates its giving on a small number of large, mission-focused endowments and capital projects that reflect medical research, local cultural preservation, and Jewish campus life. They favor major institutions — medical centers and universities — and fund naming/endowment gifts and capital campaigns rather than many small operating grants. Grants are aimed at long-term impact (endowments, research funds, museum maintenance) and show a clear Tulsa/local geographic orientation alongside support for nationally recognized medical research.
Focus Areas
Endowed medical research funding (microbiome/individualized medicine)University-backed museum capital and endowment support (Gilcrease Museum maintenance/operations)Jewish campus life and Hillel capital/endowment campaignsMajor institutional endowments and naming gifts
Who They Fund
Jewish community organizations and constituentsrefugees and displaced persons (Ukraine, Israel-related relief)homeless youth and individuals experiencing housing instability
About Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation
A defining thread in Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation grantmaking is its repeated support for the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine. The foundation awarded $600,000 in 2023, 2024, and 2025 to establish, name, and endow the Maxine F. Zarrow Fund in microbiome research, showing a deliberate commitment to sustained medical research funding rather than one-time project support. That long-running pattern sits alongside large institutional gifts in Tulsa, including endowment campaign support for the University of Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum addition and capital support for Jewish campus life at the Hillel Jewish Student Center at OU. Their recent grants also show a mix of cultural, health, and community-safety priorities: museum operations, Jewish congregational life, long-term care, behavioral health, and emergency response. The foundation’s giving is mission-focused and often tied to endowments, capital campaigns, naming opportunities, and ongoing operating funds for organizations with major institutional reach. Across the recent grants list, the foundation’s work is concentrated in Tulsa and other strategically chosen national institutions, with the same themes appearing across multiple years and recipients.
What Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation Funds
Medical research is one of the clearest focus areas. The foundation gave $600,000 to Mayo Clinic in 2025 to establish, name, and endow the Maxine F. Zarrow Fund in microbiome research at the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine. Cultural infrastructure is another recurring theme: in 2025, it granted $500,000 to The University of Tulsa for the endowment campaign for maintenance and operations of the new addition to Gilcrease Museum. Jewish community support appears in both campus and congregational settings, including $250,000 to the Hillel Jewish Student Center at OU for a capital and endowment campaign and $200,000 to B'nai Emunah Congregation for a new parking lot. Behavioral health also appears through $50,000 to Family & Children's Services Inc for the Navigate first-break psychosis intervention program.
How Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation Gives
The foundation’s typical grant size is modest relative to its largest awards: p25 is $2,500, median is $5,000, and p75 is $16,000. That distribution sits alongside a small number of much larger institutional commitments, including repeated six-figure and half-million-dollar grants. The recent record shows recurrence across years for some recipients, most clearly with Mayo Clinic and The University of Tulsa, which each received the same major purpose-driven grant in multiple years. The foundation is a regular funder, not a DAF, and it does not make program-related investments. Several active grant programs are invitation-only, while the Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation programs accept unsolicited inquiries; the Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation itself uses invited operating and capital requests for select support.
Financial Snapshot
Annual Giving
$2.8M
Total Assets
$50.3M
Total Revenue
$3.1M
Total Expenses
$3.5M
Typical Grant Size
Most grants fall between $3K and $16K, with a median of $5K.
25th Percentile
$3K
Median
$5K
75th Percentile
$16K
Geographic Reach
National20 states funded
Funding intensity
LowHigh
Headquarters
Funding intensity
LowHigh
Where Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation Funds
Top 2 recipient countries by grant volume for Maxine and Jack Zarrow Family Foundation.
| Rank | Country | Grants | Total | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United StatesDomestic | 404 | $9M | 99.8% |
| 2 | Israel |
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