If you’ve lived in Houston for a minute, you’ve likely stumbled across landmarks containing the name “Kinder” somewhere in their monikers, from art-filled buildings and greenery-topped land bridges to bayou-side footpaths. Although Houston is awash in monoliths named after wealthy families, it’s hard to find one whose name is as ubiquitous as that of the Kinders.

Rich and Nancy Kinder, the couple behind these projects, are worth an estimated
$8.1 billion, making them the third-richest family in the city. But please, whatever you do, don’t refer to them as billionaires. Unless you want to see them retreat into their shells faster than even the most bashful of Buffalo Bayou’s turtles.

“I hate it,” sighs Nancy, 72, who appears to deflate at the mere mention of the word.

“You want to call me that, it’s OK,” says Rich, 79, noting that it’s factually true (it is). “But let’s not hang our hat on, every time you say something [about us], billionaire has to be the adjective.”

Despite their staggering net worth, Houston’s most reluctant b…um…couple have tried their best to not let their wealth affect them in negative ways, such as overly spoiling their family or developing the overinflated egos that sometimes beset those with deep pockets. You know, the kind of personality dysfunction that causes some people to start launching rockets into space and gobbling up entire social media networks.

“Being rich doesn’t make you smart, you know, and a lot of rich people should be hit over the head with that idea. Some of them are here in Texas, too,” Rich says with a chuckle.

Oil Riches

In true Houston fashion, Rich and Nancy ended up here via the oil and gas industry. Rich was raised in a small town about 100 miles south of St. Louis, Missouri, by an insurance salesman and a teacher. He made his way to Houston by way of Florida, when the pipeline company he worked for was bought by the entity that eventually became Enron (yes, that Enron). From 1989 to 1996, Rich was the president at the company, where he met Nancy (then McNeil), the Louisiana-raised daughter of an oil field businessman. Nancy also worked at Enron at the time, alongside founder and CEO Kenneth Lay.

Rich left to cofound Kinder Morgan in 1997, four years before Enron infamously imploded, but ended up with a key piece of it: he and his business partner William Morgan acquired part of the company’s pipeline assets for $40 million. Kinder Morgan is now the largest natural gas pipeline operator in the country. That same year, Rich and Nancy wed and created the Kinder Foundation, their philanthropic arm. Over the past 27 years, their financial success has been a key driver of Houston’s growth, funding beautification projects, educational programs, cultural institutions, and much more.

When they got married, they decided they would give away most of their fortune, later signing Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates’s Giving Pledge, a nonbinding agreement launched in 2010 in which people commit to contributing the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. While “majority” can vary from pledge to pledge, the Kinders have opted for the sky-high amount of 95 percent. We’re bad at math, but we think that comes out to somewhere around $7.7 billion—enough money for less-generous billionaire Jeff Bezos to expand his megayacht fleet by 15.

Since the establishment of the Kinder Foundation, more than $562.7 million of its over $700 million in committed grants have been distributed, primarily in Houston. Major gifts thus far have included $81.7 million to the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, $75 million for a campus redevelopment at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), $70 million for the Memorial Park Conservancy, and over $180 million for bayou beautification projects.

Gary Tinterow, the director of MFAH, worked closely with Rich, who is chairman of the museum’s board of trustees, on the museum’s $450 million redevelopment plan, a record-setting expansion that culminated with the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building in 2020. Tinterow admires the Kinders for their ability to foster collaboration and the fact that they are always in step with each other. He sees them as the quintessential Houston philanthropists.

“I believe that they will be viewed by future historians as the key philanthropists working in Houston in terms of civic improvement at the end of the twentieth and the first quarter of the twenty-first century,” he says. “I look at them in the same way that I look at the Rockefellers in the New York region 100 years ago.”

Philosophy of Giving

The Kinders made a few decisions that were key to their success. The foundation has a team of experts on staff—from architects to community specialists—who are able to provide valuable perspectives on projects. But the very first decision they made was to center mostly on Houston. Rich says many philanthropists have a national scope and national or international issues they want to work on, and that’s all fine. “But Houston’s been good to us, and we [wanted to] put our money and our efforts in Houston,” he says. Their second decision was to concentrate on areas of Houston that they felt were underserved, which is how they landed on three focus areas for their philanthropy: urban green space, education, and quality of life.

“We [didn’t] want to be a shotgun foundation that gives money here and every place,” Rich says. “We wanted to be a rifle shot, which we defined as being transformational. Our goal was and is, if a project wouldn’t get done if we didn’t step in, then that’s transformational. That’s the kind of thing we like to be involved in.”

One such project is Buffalo Bayou East, a massive, $310 million endeavor that will transform Fifth Ward and the Greater East End by 2032 through the creation of new bayou parks and trails. The 10-year plan, which is being overseen by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, was kick-started by a $100 million grant from the Kinder Foundation.

“When we heard the story about connecting the African American community to the Hispanic community, by a bridged neighborhood, it just [seemed] so right,” Nancy says.

Like the majority of their projects, this one is a public-private partnership involving a range of entities, from other nonprofits to the City of Houston. When the foundation gives out large grants like this, it’s important they have confidence in the people who are managing them. Rich says an advantage of concentrating on one geographic area is getting to know the players. “Like in business or anything else in life, it’s really kind of a bet on people. And I think that’s probably been the single most important part of our operation—picking the right people,” he adds.

But the power of a philanthropist only goes so far, and a lot of thought is put into a project at the beginning, long before any money has been given out. For the green spaces, for example, longevity is crucial. Rich says it’s a “sexy thing” to donate money to build a park, but if it’s not maintained, the project ultimately can’t be successful.

Before the foundation commits, the team cuts deals on maintenance, so everyone is clear on what’s going to happen moving forward. These are complicated documents that stipulate everything from how often the grass needs to be cut to how many times flowers have to be planted. The agreements usually last for 30 to 40 years. In most situations, the city or county guarantees the maintenance funds on an annual basis, which are then passed to the nonprofit.

These kinds of agreements are important in Houston, a city that has historically underfunded its parks and green spaces. According to a 2023 study from the Kinder Institute, Houston ranks near the bottom of major US cities in terms of public spending for its parks and green spaces, at $69 per resident. Dallas, Houston’s longtime rival, spends $121. Fortunately, Houston is second in the nation in private dollars going into parks (only New York City beats us), which works out to an extra $25 per resident, bringing our total spending up to around $94.

This discrepancy ties into what the Kinders say is one of the biggest problems facing Houston today, the fact that the city is so underfunded. The end result? Crumbling infrastructure and unmaintained parks, both problems exacerbated by transitions in mayorship. The Kinders say that parks and recreation budgets are often at risk to be cut first.

“To us, that’s the most important thing,” Nancy adds. “Because if you’re going to want people to come and move from other states, they’re going to want parks.”

Ultimately, the Kinders have spent so much of their own money increasing Houston’s livability simply because they love the city. They love the entrepreneurial nature of its people, how down to earth and friendly they are, and they also love the city for its diversity. In this time of increased political division, they see Houston’s healthy amalgamation of cultures as the future the rest of the country should work toward.

“This is a very diverse city, and we need to build off the strengths of the city,” Rich says. “If we can’t get along and make this metropolitan area work, it ain’t gonna work anyplace, you know, because this is what the future is going to be like.”

Big Pockets, Big Gifts

The Kinder Foundation has donated more than $560 million to projects across Houston in the organization’s focus areas of green space, education, and quality of life. Here’s a look at Rich and Nancy Kinder’s biggest gifts.

1. Buffalo Bayou East ($100 million)
2. Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University ($82 million)
3. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston ($75 million)
4. Memorial Park Conservancy ($70 million)
5. Bayou Greenways ($50 million)
6. Buffalo Bayou Park ($30 million)
7. MacGregor Park ($27 million)
8. Discovery Green ($20 million)
9. Third Ward organizations ($20 million) including the Eldorado Ballroom, Project Row Houses, Emancipation Economic Development Council, Law Harrington Senior Living Center, Blue Triangle, Lucille’s 1913, and more.
10. Good Reason Houston ($19 million)
11. United Way of Greater Houston ($9 million)
12. SPARK Parks ($8.5 million)
13. Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts ($7.5 million)
14. Houston Landing ($7.5 million)
15. DePelchin Children’s Center ($5 million)
16. Emancipation Park ($4.8 million)
17. Houston Food Bank ($4 million)
18. MD Anderson Cancer Center ($4 million)
19. Buffalo Soldiers National Museum ($2 million)
20. Hermann Park Conservancy ($2 million)

Other big gifts (not pictured)

The Kinder Foundation has donated to Willow Waterhole Greenway ($4 million), Archbishop Fiorenza Plaza ($1 million), and Houston Botanic Garden ($1 million). The Kinder Excellence in Teaching Awards has granted $4.8 million to 300 teachers across five school networks, and the foundation has donated another $2.75 million to postsecondary education programs. The BANF BIPOC Arts Network & Fund received $1 million and multiple groups benefited from a total of $3 million in Hurricane Harvey recovery funds.