The 'O' in our name is for Osher
June 27, 2022
by Joan Kleinman
Bernard Osher is passionate about education. “My four siblings and I had the benefit of a college education—an opportunity unavailable to our parents who emigrated from Russia and Lithuania to America,” he explains. “I decided early on to support scholarships for people who desired education but had severely limited financial resources. I know what a big difference higher education makes in a person’s life—enhancing career choices, earning power, and self-esteem—and I would like to help as many people as possible to have that chance.”
Founded in 1977, the Bernard Osher Foundation facilitates this goal through gifts to colleges and universities with a special emphasis on reentering students. Since 2000, the Foundation’s assistance to programs for mature students has sustained 119 lifelong learning programs and a National Resource Center. BOLLI received three $100,000 grants between 2004 and 2006 and, in 2007, a $1 million endowment gift with a $50,000 bridge grant. The Foundation also supports three programs in integrative medicine and benefits many cultural institutions.
Osher attributes his success in business to his parents’ example of hard work and commercial acumen. His father, Samuel, inspired his ongoing philanthropy. “His warm manner put people at ease, and he always assisted those in need. I like to think that I am continuing a family tradition that he set in motion many years ago.”
Osher says, “It is not my manner to press others into giving to charitable causes, but I do hope that my philanthropic activity has a multiplier effect. All of us learn by example. When we see someone doing something constructive, we often think, ‘I should be doing this myself.’”
Osher has four siblings but no heirs. By design, his Foundation will spend down its resources rather than exist in perpetuity. Osher serves as the Foundation’s treasurer and is fully involved in its grant-making decisions. In 2007, Business Week cited Osher for lifetime giving of over $800 million.
Born in 1927 in Biddeford, Maine, Osher graduated from Bowdoin College and ran his family’s hardware and plumbing supply store. He began his career in banking and investing at Oppenheimer and then became a founding director of World Savings, the second-largest savings institution in the U.S. after it merged with Wachovia. Osher purchased the auction house, Butterfield & Butterfield, managed its growth to the fourth largest in the world, and sold it to eBay in 1999.
Osher is a collector of mid-19th to mid-20th century American paintings, a serious student of opera, and an ardent fly fisherman. He hikes and skis, surfs when in Hawaii, and started piano lessons at the age of 80. Judaism is important in Osher’s life; particularly, he is guided by the ideals of tzedakah (charity) and tikkun olam (repair of the world). In San Francisco, where he lives, he belongs to a conservative temple and is active in the Jewish Community Federation. The Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation contributes to Jewish programs in the San Francisco Bay area and in Maine, and it funds significant scholarships at most of the universities in Israel. Osher is married to Barbro Osher, Consul General for Sweden in California and Chair of the Bernard Osher Foundation’s board of directors.
This article originally appeared in October 2010. Bernard Osher remains an active member of the Osher Foundation Board of Directors.