The Bernard Osher Foundation

Welcome

The Bernard Osher Foundation, headquartered in San Francisco, was started in 1977 by Bernard Osher, a respected businessman and community leader. The Foundation seeks to improve quality of life through support for higher education and the arts.

The Foundation provides post-secondary scholarship funding to colleges and universities across the nation, with special attention to reentry students. It also supports a national lifelong learning network for seasoned adults. The Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes, operating on the campuses of 125 institutions of higher education from Maine to Hawaii and Alaska, have a National Resource Center at Northwestern University. In addition, the Foundation benefits programs in integrative medicine in the United States and Sweden, including centers at the University of California, San Francisco; Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston; the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; Northwestern University; Vanderbilt University; the University of Miami; the University of Washington; the University of Cincinnati; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Finally, an array of performing arts organizations, museums, and educational programs in Northern California and in Mr. Osher's native state of Maine receive Foundation grants.

The Foundation has a nine-member Board of Directors, chaired by the Honorable Barbro Osher, Honorary Consul General of Sweden in California.