Benjamin R. Shute, Jr., is Secretary of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and program director for the Fund’s Democratic Practice grantmaking program in the United States. He joined the Fund in 1980, was appointed Secretary in 1982, and from 1992 until 1999 he also served as treasurer. For several years in the 1980s he was responsible for the Fund’s New York City program, and he directed the Fund’s program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector until that program was phased out in 2003.

Mr. Shute is a trustee of The Interchurch Center and of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund; a director of PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement); and an emeritus trustee of Trinity School (New York), where from 2003 until 2006 he was president of the board. From 1994 until 2006 he chaired the Governing Council of the Rockefeller Archive Center. He has previously served as a director of Independent Sector, the National Council of Nonprofit Associations, and the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers; and as a member of the board of advisors of New York University Law School’s National Center on Philanthropy and the Law.

Prior to joining the Fund, he was a teacher and administrator in independent schools. Mr. Shute holds a master of arts in teaching degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a bachelor of arts degree from Harvard College.