In fact, the Blue Shield of California Foundation, if it were simply the foundation by itself, would merit the award as much as any in the country for its unparalleled commitment to domestic violence issues. A keyword search on the Foundation Directory Online of grants involving domestic violence issues puts Blue Shield of California Foundation at the top in terms of number of grants (1009), more than twice as many as the Avon Foundation for Women, which also does impressive DV grantmaking. That seemed to evolve and deepen into a foundation commitment to veterans’ health issues more broadly, as we wrote in 2013 about a Council on Foundations panel on veterans funding issues and in 2014 about the Blue Shield Foundation’s leadership role in helping get $174 million in foundation commitments to the Joining Forces initiative of Michelle Obama and Jill Biden.

After a long, in-depth audit of the Blue Shield of California conducted by the California Franchise Tax Board, the state pulled Blue Shield’s tax-exempt status late last summer The audit had been in the works for a long time, with plenty of coverage of weaknesses in Blue Shield’s track record as a health insurer, but the state made its decision to nix Blue Shield as a nonprofit last August, though the news of the decision only eked out this spring. He is leading a campaign to compel Blue Shield to turn over the value of its formerly tax-exempt assets, which he says runs to $10 billion, to public healthcare programs, potentially even to and through the Blue Shield of California Foundation itself. The implication of Johnson’s charge is that the Blue Shield of California Foundation, which in calendar year 2013 received $37.5 million from the parent company and paid out $38.5 million in grants, some of which involving grants committed in previous years, and approved another $4.9 million in future grant spending, is hardly an adequate philanthropic counterbalance to Blue Shield of California’s immense assets and inadequate social welfare benefits.