$10 million new gift follows a recent $100 million commitment from the James M. Cox Foundation, led by the founders’ grandson Jim Kennedy, both aimed at protecting natural resources and strengthening the systems that support families

Jim Kennedy (James C. or James Cox Kennedy) is the billionaire chairman emeritus and major family owner of Cox Enterprises, where he led the company’s expansion from a regional media group into a major private communications and services conglomerate.

He is the grandson of James M. Cox, an Ohio newspaper publisher who founded what became Cox Enterprises, served twice as governor of Ohio, and was the 1920 Democratic presidential nominee; the James M. Cox Foundation that Kennedy chairs is named in his grandfather’s honor to extend the Cox family’s civic and philanthropic legacy.

Over recent decades, the Kennedy family—guided today largely by Jim Kennedy as chairman of the foundation—has steadily expanded its philanthropic reach across conservation, health, education, and community wellbeing, with the foundation serving as Cox’s primary charitable arm while remaining closely shaped by the family’s values and Kennedy’s personal priorities.

Nowhere has that influence been more visible than in conservation, where Kennedy’s long-standing leadership with organizations such as Ducks Unlimited and Wetlands America Trust has made him one of the most significant individual and foundation backers of wetlands and waterfowl conservation.

In late 2024, Cox Enterprises established a monumental $100 million fund in honor of Jim Kennedy for Ducks Unlimited’s land trust, Wetlands America Trust, a move that ranks among the largest corporate conservation gifts on record and is reshaping efforts to conserve prairie wetlands in the United States and Canada at a time of mounting environmental pressure on carbon‑rich ecosystems.

The following year, the James M. Cox Foundation announced a $10 million grant—explicitly linked to Kennedy’s leadership—to American Rivers to bolster its national “Life Depends on Rivers” initiative, the largest gift in that organization’s history, aimed at restoring floodplains, improving water quality, and strengthening climate resilience in communities across the country.

The family’s commitment to public health has unfolded alongside this conservation work. Over several decades, Kennedy and the foundation have become major supporters of Emory University, contributing more than $35 million for initiatives ranging from Alzheimer’s research and cancer programs to patient‑centered models of care, and in 2015 the foundation announced a $25 million grant to Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center focused on patient‑centered care and prostate cancer–related priorities.

More recently, a combined $2.5 million gift from Kennedy and the foundation helped create the James C. Kennedy Fitness Center at Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital, underscoring the family’s emphasis on wellness, rehabilitation, and preventive medicine as core pillars of modern healthcare.

Additional health‑focused contributions include multi‑million‑dollar support for organizations such as Banner Health and the Marcus Autism Center, particularly in pediatric and specialty care, reflecting a pattern of targeting unmet needs for vulnerable families and investing in solutions designed for lasting community impact.

Education and youth empowerment have formed another continuous thread: Kennedy created the $10 million Jim Kennedy Scholarship Fund, an endowment that provides substantial multi‑year scholarships for the children of Cox employees pursuing higher education, and he and the foundation have supported universities including the University of Denver, University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, and others through endowed chairs, institutes, and campus investments.

The foundation has also invested heavily in youth‑serving organizations such as Boys & Girls Clubs of America, including support for Cox Innovation Labs and other programs that expand digital access, technology skills, and career pathways for young people.

Together, these conservation, health, and education commitments—culminating most recently in the $100 million wetlands fund and the record $10 million grant to American Rivers—reveal a philanthropic identity that is large in scale yet consistent in spirit, with a family that rarely seeks the spotlight using its influence to protect the environment, strengthen community health, and open doors for the next generation while aiming to shape a more resilient future for the communities and landscapes central to its mission.