The William Volker Fund was a charitable foundation established in 1932 by Kansas City

Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...

, Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

, businessman and home-furnishings mogul William Volker

William Volker

William Volker was an entrepreneur who turned a picture frame business into a multimillion-dollar empire and who then gave away his fortune to shape much of Kansas City, Missouri, both through the William Volker Fund and anonymously earning him the nickname of "Mr...

. Volker founded the fund with the purposes of aiding the needy, reforming Kansas City’s health care and educational systems, and combating the influence of machine politics in municipal governance. Following Volker’s death in 1947, Volker’s nephew, Harold W. Luhnow

Harold Luhnow

Harold W. Luhnow was an American businessman, philanthropist, and political activist. He is most well known for his management of the influential William Volker Fund during the period between 1947 and 1964 in the United States...

 continued the fund’s previous mission, but also used the fund to promote and disseminate ideas on free-market economics.