Robert S. Kerr — Oklahoma businessman and the Sooner state’s first native-born governor, U.S. Senator, co-founder of Kerr-McGee, and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, had considered setting up a private foundation but declined to do so. He never expressed his reasons in detail, but family members believe he had serious misgivings about the future treatment of private foundations. Elected to Congress in 1948 — his freshman Senate class included Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert H. Humphrey — he likely cloakroom chatter about thow many of the private foundation abused their privileges and ignored their responsibilities. The federal government, he speculated, eventually would step in to tighten control of or abolish the tax-exempt foundations. The Senator was partly right. In 1969, after a 19-year spell during which foundations went largely unchecked, Congress passed the Tax Reform Act which subjected the private foundations to increased regulation.

It wasn’t until after the Senator’s unexpected death on January 1, 1963, that his widow, Grayce B. Kerr, and their four children set up the Kerr Foundation in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Initially rather small, it did provide substantial tax benefits for the Senator’s widow. Although the new family foundation embarked without a donor’s specific directive, it quickly sought to help fund programs supporting education, historical preservation, science, and agricultural research — all favorite causes of the late Senator — primarily in Oklahoma and in the Southwest.

In 1985 after considerable growth in the foundation assets, the Kerr Foundation trustees agreed to reorganize the family fund. A year later, four successor foundations of equal assets were established, including the Grayce B. Kerr Fund, whose namesake died March 3, 1965 in Oklahoma City following a brief illness. Under the direction of founding Trustees Breene M. and Sheryl V. Kerr, the Grayce B. Kerr Fund relocated to the Eastern Shore and was incorporated as a Maryland foundation in the spring of 1993. Not long after, the Fund’s efforts shifted from the southwest to the Mid-Atlantic, and, subsequently the New England regions.