The Roothbert Fund, Inc. is a small, nearly all-volunteer scholarship fund based in New York City. It was founded in 1958 as a living memorial to the combined idealism of two people: Albert and Toni Roothbert, both of whom emigrated from Germany in the early 20th Century. They met in New York and married in 1937. At the time, he was a retired banker, and she was a retired fashion photographer.
The Roothberts shared a devotion to young people, whose idealism, they believed, was the best defense against a recurrence of the tragedies of the first half of the 20th Century. In the wake of the cataclysmic events of World War II, Albert Roothbert believed that "our young generation will create a new, more enlightened society, which will want to live democratic principles, not merely claim them."