Sweet Charity

It was in the 1980s that trumpeter Herb Alpert—creator of a ’60s pop phenomenon, the Tijuana Brass, and cofounder of A&M Records—began to ponder what to do with “some extra money” he’d accumulated. “I didn’t want to buy a Monet or a Van Gogh and hang it on my wall,” he says. “I thought I could better use it by trying to help others.”

The Herb Alpert Foundation was incorporated in 1988. To date, it has given $175 million to the arts. Last year it bestowed 99