It may help some of the grantees get more private funding or volunteer support.
(About 93% of the grantees are women; the men die younger).
"The grantees have other lives outside of their field trip to the Antarctic for three months," Mr. Smith said.
Even the land supposed to be returned was actually handed down for generations because the grantees' sons usually became officials.
On Monday several of the grantees said they had received a letter of apology from Mr. Miller.
What makes the grants especially encouraging to many of the grantees is that they come from artists they admire, and are free of bureaucratic impediments.
"We know our job is not to be a boutique school," said Dennis Littky, co-director of the Big Picture Company, one of the grantees.
Several of the grantees say the foundation could have preserved good will if it had been up front about what was going on.
Mr. Miller said that he was too badly injured to contact the grantees, and that his many years of service should count for something.
That decision, made because the grantees are said to have reaped high profits without making the investments required by their contracts, affects some of the country's most prominent businessmen, whose dissatisfaction has been made clear.
The money allocated to the fund will first go to intermediary organizations, like social venture funds or community foundations, which would identify the grantees and distribute money to them.
