About Us

The Bay and Paul Foundations, Inc. was formed in January 2005 by the merger of two foundations, The Bay Foundation and the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation. For over twenty years they operated as sister organizations with evolving, common interests yet – as you will note in the brief recapitulation below – distinctly differing program areas, overlapping mostly in elementary and secondary school initiatives. For the decade preceding the merger, the two foundations collaborated in creating and solely funding the Biodiversity Leadership Awards program, which is ongoing and about which you may learn more at: www.biodiversityleadershipawards.org.

Charles Ulrick Bay

Charles Ulrick Bay was born in 1888 in Albany, New York of immigrant Norwegian parents. By 1915 Mr. Bay had founded a corporation manufacturing surgical bandages, which early in the Depression he sold to Parke, Davis & Co. Over the next three decades he pursued a broad range of entrepreneurial interests, establishing the Bay Petroleum Corporation and gaining controlling interests in A.M. Kidder & Co, then a major Wall Street brokerage house, and American Export Lines, a transatlantic passenger and cargo shipping firm. In 1946 President Harry Truman appointed Mr. Bay United States Ambassador to Norway, a post he held for seven years. Charles Ulrick Bay died on New Year's Eve 1955.

Josephine Bay Paul

The Bay Foundation was established in 1950 by Charles Ulrick Bay and his wife Josephine. Most of The Bay Foundation’s early support went to colleges, hospitals and churches, with major grants ranging from support for the design and construction of a chapel at the then new InterFaith Center in New York City to the purchase of an offshore rescue vessel for the Norwegian Lifeboat Association. In 1959 the Foundation’s grants began to center on support for art museums, culminating in the 1970s with a series of grants to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City for the purchase of 18th century French sculptures. In the mid-1980s, responding to multiple reports on the crisis in the stewardship of our cultural heritage, the Foundation’s grants for museums began to focus on collections care training. Other grant areas included children’s education, species preservation and economic development projects of Native Americans.

C. Michael Paul

The Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundation was founded in 1962 shortly before Mrs. Paul’s death. The former Mrs. Bay, Josephine Bay Paul, as President of A. M. Kidder & Co. was the first woman to head a corporate member firm of the New York Stock Exchange. She was also chairman of the board and C.E.O. of American Export Lines.

For fifteen years after her death, the Foundation was administered by her husband, C. Michael Paul. During this period significant grants were awarded to a few major educational and cultural institutions, most notably The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center in New York City. In 1978 the Foundation began to direct its grants exclusively to the field of music, particularly to the professional development of chamber music ensembles. In this regard, the Foundation collaborated with Chamber Music America, the national service organization, in the establishment of the Paul Ensemble Residency Program.

In 1990 the Board mandated a shift in the primary focus of the Paul Foundation’s grantmaking to pre-collegiate school improvement.