About

The Once Upon a Time Foundation (“OUAT”) is a private foundation based in Fort Worth, Texas. OUAT currently has about $225 million in assets and has made contributions and commitments exceeding $90 million since 1998 in support of numerous entities and projects.

OUAT has had a long term focus on health and medicine and a particularly strong and enduring partnership with UT Southwestern Medical Center (“UTSW”).  In 2016, OUAT provided a $5 million gift towards the establishment of the Once Upon a Time Foundation Human Genomics Center aimed at advancing the power of genomics and deliver personalized therapies for cancer patients. The Foundation also funded $10 million dollars in research grants at UTSW to fund cutting edge research in areas ranging from studying how disease-causing bacteria manipulate host cells for their own benefit and survival to studying how cellular and molecular mechanisms that regulate stem and cancer cell function in the nervous and hematopoietic systems to understanding and managing the mysteries involved in multiple sclerosis. OUAT has also made seven figure contributions to other leading medical institutions including Texas Health Resources and Baylor All Saints in north Texas, Mount Sinai in New York City, and MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.  

One of the Foundation’s largest and most public initiatives is to support the creation of classes on Philanthropy at leading universities around the country including Stanford, Harvard, Texas, Notre Dame, etc. Each class is awarded up to $110,000 for the students themselves to give away to 501c(3)s as they see fit. Since our first Philanthropy Lab class in 2011, over 4,100 students from 160 classes have directed grants totaling $13.1 million through this program.  If you are interested, more information about this initiative is available at our website at www.thephilanthropylab.org.

OUAT’s EDMH Research platform funded three million-dollar research grants at the University of Pennsylvania, Johns Hopkins University, and McLean/Harvard to study the use of patients’ electronic communications in psychiatric evaluation and treatment. While each grant funded a fully independent research study, the grant agreements provided for a unique structure that enables and in fact requires that the three teams collaborate to share insights, approaches and findings, with the belief that such collaboration will leader to greater overall impact and learning. Patients enrolled in each study opt to share a variety of electronic data with their clinician, including but not limited to: text messages, emails, search history, social media data and phone activity.

OUAT works to help families of children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) by educating parents and speech-language pathologists (SLPs) about evidence-based treatment practices and funding research aimed at identifying and evaluating best therapeutic practices. These initiatives include: free workshops and online courses, sharing information about CAS through the Child Apraxia Treatment website and social media, and answering questions from parents, therapists, and educators, and funding multiple research grants with leading global CAS experts.

Additionally, grants totaling nearly $2 million have been awarded to study the effects of various treatment conditions, including parent training, length of therapy session, and masking, on outcome measures for children with moderate to severe childhood apraxia of speech (CAS), using Dynamic Temporal and Tactile Cueing (DTTC), an evidence-based treatment method.

OUAT plans to actively maintain and expand funding in our current focus areas of health and medicine, Philanthropy Lab, EDMH and CAS, and plans to add exciting additional initiatives in a thoughtful, deliberate manner as compelling new opportunities are identified and evaluated.