Built on a Delivery Boy’s Dream, Casey Foundation Focuses on Helping Kids

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, one of the nation’s 30 largest foundations, was created by a Seattle man

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who dropped out of school and started a courier service to support his family.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that Jim Casey’s basement operation metamorphosed into United Parcel Service, an international corporation that ranked No. 46 in Fortune magazine’s latest listing of the nation’s 500 biggest companies.

Mr. Casey quit school at age 11 to work as a delivery boy and provide additional income to his family. His father died soon after, leaving his mother, Annie, to raise their four children alone. When Mr. Casey started his courier service it was first housed underneath a sidewalk adjoining a saloon.

Mr. Casey and his three siblings created the Annie E. Casey Foundation in 1948, naming it after their mother.

It was not until the 1960s, when Mr. Casey retired as chief executive of U.P.S., that he turned his full attention to the philanthropy. He concluded that it should focus on long-term foster care; after researching the issue he found that many troubled adults had spent their childhoods bouncing from one foster home to another.

When Mr. Casey died in 1983, he left the bulk of his estate to the foundation, catapulting it into the ranks of the nation’s largest foundations. It currently holds about $1.5-billion in assets, and dispenses about $120-million a year in grants.

During the 1980s, the foundation continued to focus on the well-being of disadvantaged children, but extended its grant making beyond foster care.

Today it operates programs in a much wider array of areas, from education to economic development, but all are aimed at helping poor children. One of its most high-profile efforts is its annual series of “Kids Count” reports, which track data on child well-being and rank states on whether conditions for children are improving.

In 1994, the foundation moved from Greenwich, Conn., to Baltimore to be closer to the problems it deals with through its grant making. It had been based in Greenwich since 1976, when U.P.S. relocated its corporate headquarters there from Seattle.

“Trying to fashion responses to at-risk kids led us to become concerned about kids in cities,” recalls the foundation’s current president, Douglas W. Nelson. “That made being in Greenwich, one of the least disadvantaged jurisdictions in North America, seem increasingly inappropriate for our mission.”

Observers say it is typical of Mr. Nelson’s leadership style that he used the acquisition of the foundation’s new headquarters as an opportunity to use the fund’s resources to do good. Mr. Nelson selected a vacant, deteriorating building that the foundation could renovate. The building was in such bad shape that he jokingly told the architects they should just blow a hole in the middle and start over.

And that’s what they did. Today there is a striking four-story atrium in the building’s center, and skylights flood the warm earth-toned corridors with light. Outside, its windows are adorned with flower boxes that make it look more like a cheerful apartment building than an imposing office.

Mr. Nelson feels that Baltimore offers Casey “a more relevant” hometown.

Being in the city “has deepened our commitment, refined our sense of the issues, and increased our sense of the capacity that exists in these communities.”

The foundation currently allocates about 10 per cent of its grants to Baltimore-related projects.

Under Mr. Nelson’s leadership, the foundation has also become known for its frankness — even going so far as to release a public report detailing why one of its major programs failed to produce the desired results. In a field where few like to admit defeat, Casey concluded that its “New Futures” program — a $50-million, five-year effort to aid disadvantaged adolescents — would have benefited from more planning time, more local leadership and advice, and more flexibility to adjust the design or financing midstream.

In addition to the Baltimore foundation, Mr. Casey’s wealth has supported two other charitable organizations that bear his family’s name. One is part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, while the other is a separate entity:

Casey Family Services (http://www.caseyfamilyservices.org) is a direct-services arm of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and is based in Shelton, Conn. It provides foster-care services and other family services at its divisions in seven states: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

The Casey Family Program (http://www.casey.org) is a separate Seattle-based operating foundation created by Jim Casey’s family in 1966. It provides long-term foster-care, adoption, and other related services and also undertakes advocacy campaigns on those issues.

For more information, contact the Annie E. Casey Foundation at 701 St. Paul Street, Baltimore 21202; (410) 547-6600; fax (410) 547-6624; e-mail: webmail@aecf.org; World-Wide Web: http://www.aecf.org.