About Us

About Us

Rockwell Fund is a private foundation, founded in 1931, seeking to promote positive community change by supporting nonprofits located in the Greater Houston area. 

Newlyweds James M. Rockwell and Sarah Wade Rockwell moved to Texas from Indiana in the late 1800s. Living for a time in North Texas, where Mr. Rockwell started his career as a lumberman, by the second decade of the 1900s they had made Houston the headquarters of their chain of retail lumberyards located in West Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. On Mr. Rockwell’s death in 1931, a portion of his estate was set aside as a charitable trust. The trust, incorporated as a Texas nonprofit organization in 1949, was enhanced by the estates of the Rockwell children, the last of whom died in 1978, whereupon the remaining Rockwell lumberyards were sold. 

Until the early 2000s, we operated as a traditional family foundation, making responsive grants guided by intuition and pragmatism. As assets grew and professional staff was added, our grant philosophy was refined, and we reduced the number of grants in order to increase their average size. 

Over the past 10-15 years, grants have been awarded in specific areas, enabling Rockwell Fund to be more purposeful and effective in achieving clearly defined goals and supporting our grantees through grantmaking, capacity building, convening, and partnering. 

In 2025, Rockwell Fund will transition to support a new Community Development Docket. By 2026, we expect to only make grants to support that strategy.