Harold Grinspoon

Harold Grinspoon (born 1929) is an American real estate developer who founded Aspen Square Management and a philanthropist who founded the Harold Grinspoon Foundation as well as its flagship programs PJ Library, JCamp180, and LIFE & LEGACY. After purchasing a single two-family house in Western Massachusetts as an investment property in the 1960s, he built one of the largest real estate corporations in the United States. In 2015, Grinspoon and his wife Diane Troderman signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment to dedicate at least half of his wealth to philanthropy.

Born to a Jewish family in 1929 in Newton, Massachusetts, Grinspoon grew up alongside his three brothers and sister in a family that struggled economically during the Depression. As a young boy, he was harassed for being one of the few Jewish youths in town.

Grinspoon briefly attended Marlboro College after high school, but left to pursue various entrepreneurial pursuits, including a year selling ice cream. In the early 1960s, he purchased a dilapidated two-family home in Agawam, Massachusetts with money borrowed from an in-law. He repaired the house, rented it out, and launched a career in real estate that spanned six decades. His company, Aspen Square Management, eventually expanded nationally, and by the 1980s had become one of the 50 largest multi-family management companies in the United States.

Grinspoon established the Harold Grinspoon Charitable Foundation [Wikidata], a private family foundation, in 1986. In 1991, he established the Harold Grinspoon Foundation (HGF) in Springfield, Massachusetts.

In 1978, he met Diane Troderman, a former high school teacher who would become his third wife. Harold and Diane travel extensively around the world and have published articles on inter-generational philanthropy.