Our Mission
The Rex Foundation aims to help secure a healthy environment, promote individuality in the arts, provide support to critical and necessary social services, assist others less fortunate than ourselves, protect the rights of indigenous people and ensure their cultural survival, help build stronger communities, and educate children and adults everywhere.
Our History
From their earliest days, the Grateful Dead received countless requests for help from community organizations, and became known for their generosity and their numerous benefit concerts. In the fall of 1983, members of the band, with family and friends, established the Rex Foundation — named after Rex Jackson, a Grateful Dead roadie and later road manager until his untimely death in 1976 — as a non-profit charitable organization, allowing the band to proactively support creative endeavors in the arts, sciences, and education. The band played the first of many Rex Foundation benefit concerts in the spring of 1984.
Following Grateful Dead lead guitarist Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995 and the subsequent dissolution of the band, the Rex Foundation has continued to make grants funded by the very elements that hold our community together: music, connection, fun, creativity and community spirit. Since 1984 the Rex Foundation has granted $10,232,707 to over 1,447 recipients.
Our Guiding Principles:
In pursuit of its Mission, the Rex Foundation Board established the following Guiding Principles and Values:
- Support organizations committed to grassroots action.
- Identify entities doing good work that might otherwise be overlooked.
- Help people who are helping others and are trying to make a difference.
- Benefit the broader community and the broader good.
- Respect individual rights and differences.
- Respect traditional wisdom cultures.
- Be a catalyst for change where our involvement helps leverage greater impact.
- Provide support beyond direct funding by boosting the visibility of the recipient’s work.
- Help people develop bold new solutions to problems.
- Exercise appropriate risk-taking while practicing trust, inclusiveness and open-mindedness.
- Promote an active, informed citizenry.
- Remain non-partisan.
Board Of Directors
Brad Gregory Serling
Cliff Palefsky
Maggie O’Donnell
Marc Morgenstern
Nick Morgan
Roger McNamee
Martin Knott
Mickey Hart
Freddy Hahne
Trixie Garcia
Carolyn Garcia
Andy Gadiel
Tim Duncan
Stefanie Coyote
Barry Caplan
Matt Butler
Diane Blagman
Jay Caauwe
Deborah Solomon
In Memoriam
Bill Graham (1984-d.1991)
Jerry Garcia (1984-d.1995)
Hal Kant (1984-d.2008)
Jon McIntire (1984-d.2012)
John Perry Barlow (1984-d.2018)
Bill Walton (1984-d.2024)
Bob Weir (1984-d.2026)
Advisory Board
Sandy Sohcot
Sage Scully
John Leopold
Bernie Bildman
Jenna Lebowitz
Scott Shapiro
Executive Director
Cameron Sears
