History of The Bolger Foundation
The Bolger Foundation’s roots run deep. Invested since childhood in the importance of giving back to his community, David F. Bolger made doing so a lifelong priority. At the age of 16, he donated to Watson Crippled Children’s Home the pocket money he made by shoveling coal and delivering newspapers. He went on to give away more than $100 million during his lifetime.
From the very beginning of his successful career as an investment banker, David F. Bolger’s financial acumen and philanthropic interests intersected early and often. A brilliant businessman, he found that he could do a world of good by channeling his deal-making prowess into charitable endeavors. In 1965, he headed up the fundraising drive for his high school alma mater, Mount Hermon Preparatory School (now Northfield Mount Hermon School) in Massachusetts.
hat same year, the ambitious young executive was named chairman of the 1965-1966 Community Chest Campaign in Midland Park, NJ. Under his leadership, Midland Park was the first Community Chest town to recruit a full roster of campaign personnel. The campaign itself was an over-the-top success.
By the time he founded real estate and investment firm Bolger & Co., Inc., in 1966, David Bolger’s penchant for giving back had already led him to create The Bolger Foundation. He also began honing his personal philanthropic preferences and philosophy. “Brick and mortar are my favorite gifts,” he explained, adding, “I want to help the organization with its infrastructure, so that it can do what it does well.”
Over the years, many organizations benefited from DFB’s unique brand of “help with their infrastructure”. Projects of which he was most proud included the award-winning transformation of the Lester Stable in his hometown of Ridgewood, NJ, from a dilapidated century-old horse barn to a thriving community center known simply as The Stable.
In 1985, The Stable won the New Jersey Recreation and Park Association’s Kinsey Award for excellence in design and utilization. Nearly four decades later, it continues to be a vital venue for village gatherings.
Following the 2012 dedication of NMH’s Bolger House, the Bolger siblings enjoyed rocking out together on the front porch. L-R: Betty, David, Bill, twin sister Barbara, and Daniel.
As Bolger & Co., Inc. and David’s other ventures grew and flourished, so did The Bolger Foundation. Common threads soon emerged that continue to inform The Bolger Foundation’s focus today: conservation and preservation; health, including mental health; community; education; and children or senior citizens. All of The Bolger Foundation’s disparate donations are driven by a single mandate, which is to enhance quality of life without regard to race, religion, gender, or social standing.
The self-made millionaire did not always wait to be asked for money. When he saw a need, he sought to find a way to fill it. For years, The Bolger Foundation quietly underwrote repairs and maintenance needed by the Women’s Club of Ridgewood’s 1928 Dutch Colonial headquarters, including a major revamping of the facility just in time for the organization’s centennial celebration in 2009. His late mother, Coby Bunge Bolger, was a dedicated longtime member of the club, so her son kept a dutiful and caring eye on the state of its premises even after her death.
David F. Bolger became well known for his proactive and literally hands-on philanthropy. During the mid-1990s, when he donated a street-cleaning machine to The Village of Ridgewood, NJ, he gleefully took the industrial vehicle for its inaugural test drive.
During the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st, The Bolger Foundation’s roster of beneficiaries grew to encompass a wide range of nonprofit organizations in locales ranging from his own hometown to half a world away, including charitable projects in Haiti and British Virgin Gorda.
For David F. Bolger, a highlight of 2003 was visiting Proje Espwa (Project Hope), an orphanage in Les Caye, Haiti. There, he met the young residents and saw firsthand their enjoyment of the school bus that a Bolger Foundation donation had helped purchase a couple of years earlier.
Oftentimes, The Bolger Foundation’s funding was given in the form of a challenge grant. The idea was to motivate others to give as well — and more often than not, it worked. By dint of having to match dollar for dollar or two-for-one the amount offered by the foundation as incentive, nonprofit organizations were able to raise twice or even three times the funds they would have gotten as a straight-up donation.
The Children’s Therapy Center, Northfield Mount Hermon School, YMCA of Ridgewood, and the Ridgewood Public Library all have benefited from Bolger Foundation challenge grants both past and present. In 2019, The Bolger Foundation issued a challenge grant to Reimagine RPL, the Ridgewood Public Library’s current capital campaign.
In fact, thanks to David F. Bolger’s extraordinary and ongoing support of public libraries in Ridgewood, Glen Rock, and Midland Park, the New Jersey Library Association (NJLA) chose The Bolger Foundation as its 2010 Library Champion. This award is presented annually to an organization that has made an exceptional contribution to New Jersey public libraries.
At the time, part of The Bolger Foundation’s exceptional contribution was its funding of the George L. Pease Memorial Library’s restoration. In 2002, the stately Palladian structure — which from 1923-1962 housed Ridgewood’s public library — had fallen into such disrepair that Preservation New Jersey placed it on their list of the state’s 10 Most Endangered Historic Sites.
It became the subject of fierce debate as various factions sought to find a way to preserve, restore, and/or re-purpose the Italian Renaissance-style landmark.
The Bolger Foundation took on this challenge in 2008. Brought back to useful life under the watchful eye of JT Bolger (David F. Bolger’s youngest son, a trustee of the foundation, and by then the president of Bolger & Co., Inc.), the newly rehabilitated Pease Memorial Library reopened in 2009 as professional office space. The rental income, 10% of which is earmarked for the building’s maintenance and upkeep, helps fund library programs.
In 2009, with the help of his youngest son, JT (who oversaw The Bolger Foundation’s reclamation of the shuttered and decaying property), David F. Bolger cut the ribbon to officially reopen Ridgewood’s George L. Pease Memorial Library for business. The following year, the Bergen County Division of Cultural and Historic Affairs awarded the venerable building one of their annual Preservation Commendations.
As the years turned into decades, David Bolger began to derive as much joy from giving away the money he made as he did from making it. He loved to make a splash: The Bolger Foundation’s gift to the Village of Ridgewood’s Valley Hospital in 2013 was the largest donation of its kind at that time.
Later, the foundation made a second gift to the hospital towards its goal of becoming the region’s premier state-of-the-art medical facility. In addition, the Bolger Medical Arts Center now stands where a blood bank used to be.
From the turn of the 21st century until the end of his life, David F. Bolger gradually devoted more and more time to philanthropy. By then he was splitting the year between his residence in Ridgewood and his condominium on Florida’s Longboat Key, near Sarasota.
He soon found common cause with charitable opportunities in his newly adopted city. The John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art caught his fancy first, followed by the Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, Mote Marina, and other local nonprofit entities. InStride, an equine therapy program in nearby Nokomis, also appealed to his generous instincts.
The Bolger Foundation’s contributions to The Ringling include the Bolger Campiello, a dance floor and alfresco event space adjacent to Ca’ d’Zan, the Ringlings’ 1920s Mediterranean Revival mansion; David F. Bolger PlaySpace, on the grounds of The Ringling; and Bolger Promenade, a palm-lined bay-front walkway extending from Ca’ d’Zan to the property’s far edge. It’s furnished with benches and wicker chairs, providing, as the dedication plaque puts it, “A place of tranquility where visitors can enjoy the beauty of the landscape and the bay...”.
“When I make a gift,” David F. Bolger frequently declared, “I like to be a starter or a finisher.” In that spirit, his three children teamed up to complete the restoration of The Ringling’s Ca’ d’Zan with one more Bolger Foundation project: The estate’s onetime swimming pool was reborn as the Bolger Family Reflecting Pool, honoring longtime curator Ron McCarty’s service to Ca’ d’Zan. The blue-tiled pool was completed in August 2018, just in time for McCarty’s retirement party.
Thus stewarded with heartfelt care by those who knew him longest and best, David F. Bolger’s legacy lives on via The Bolger Foundation.
The Bolger Family Reflecting Pool at John and Mabel Ringling’s Ca’ d’Zan in Sarasota, FL, won the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation’s 2019 Florida Preservation Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Historic Landscape.
A few months later, on December 29, 2018, David F. Bolger passed away peacefully with his family at his bedside. In his estate, he left substantial funds so that his namesake foundation could continue on indefinitely, providing a role for his children and heirs in continuing to give back to their community and the world.
Today, all three Bolger children — Betsie, John, and JT — serve as trustees of The Bolger Foundation. The eldest member of the next generation, JT’s son AJ Bolger, is an Associate Trustee, as is his sister, Kaylee Bolger, David Bolger’s eldest granddaughter. Other board members are Kathryn Byrne, Patrick Crowe, Michael Tozzoli, and Thomas M. Wells.