She had been orphaned as a child, and in her honor Andrus bought a farm in Westchester County, New York in order to establish an orphanage.

In the early 1970s, the board of the Julia Dyckman Andrus Memorial shifted its programmatic emphasis to serve as a residential treatment, special education and diagnostic center for emotionally disabled children.

Family stewardship of Surdna over the years has been informed by Andrus's values: thrift, practicality, modesty, loyalty, excellence and an appreciation for direct service to those in need.

In 1989, the third and fourth generations of the Andrus family on the Surdna board established programs in Environment and Community Revitalization and decided to enlarge the professional staff to broaden the Foundation's effectiveness.

Its goal was to materially boost the quality of life in a large swath of the South Bronx, to support a group of CDCs by buying into their agenda for doing so, and to (later) create an institution that could live on vigorously and independently after the program formally concluded in 1998.