Tides was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, who worked with Jane Bagley Lehman, heir to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company fortune. In the chapter entitled "The Givers" in his 2017 publication by the same name, "The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age", which is a more recent edition of his 2010 book, "Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America", David Callahan wrote that Pike was an "entrepreneurial activist" and that Pike and his "wealthy friends" teamed up" to create Tides which "used donor-advised funds to direct resources to progressive causes." Callahan, who is the co-founder of the think tank Demos, also described the origins of Donors Trust, an American non-profit donor-advised fund that was founded in 1999 to safeguard the "intent of libertarian and conservative donors".