Later in 2008, the Arnolds played a role in bringing in Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, a group that works to free people who were wrongly convicted, to Houston. Scheck pitched his organization to some of Houston’s wealthiest. In April 2009, the Arnolds $150,000. They have made additional donations and Laura Arnold now sits on the Innocence Project’s board. [8]
GOVERNMENT WORKER PENSIONS
In 2009, John Arnold began taking an interest in public employee pensions. He was motivated by headlines during the Great Recession that reported on massive losses in the stock markets by public employee pension funds. Those losses forced unfunded liabilities to shoot up. Cash strapped governments could no longer expect to cover those losses. [9]
Initially, Arnold started by donating relatively small grants to non-profits and think tanks, no more than $200,000 a piece to study the issue. Then Arnold sent $5 million to the Pew Charitable Trusts to supports its Public Sector Retirement Systems Project. The Arnolds have since increased their contributions to $9.7 million to Pew to research the issue through 2019. Their foundation has contributed nearly $28 million to fund pension research. [10]
