Khayami’s cultural interests concurred with the Encyclopaedia Iranica’s mission of recording, preserving, and disseminating research on Iranian history and civilization. In 2001, he was unanimously elected as Chairman of the Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation, a project that he had already been inconspicuously supporting for several years. Under his chairmanship a number of successful Gala Benefit Dinners were held in New York, Houston, London, Los Angeles and Miami and the Foundation was able to substantially enlarge its endowment. At the end of his term in 2005, Mahmoud Khayami was unanimously elected as Lifetime Honorary Chair of the Foundation.