77 Foundations Win Honors in Competition for Communications Efforts

Seventy-seven foundations will be honored for their communications efforts at this week’s annual

meeting of the Council on Foundations, in Chicago.

The council’s Wilmer Shields Rich Awards for Excellence in Communications, named after the council’s first executive director, have been made annually since 1984. Each year the awards recognize outstanding annual reports and Internet sites. Awards in other categories are given in alternate years. This year, awards were also given for magazines and periodicals, public-information campaigns, and guidelines for grant seekers.

Judges evaluated entries based on the overall results of the communication effort, the effectiveness of its message and design, the organization of the content, and distribution strategies.

The winners included:

• The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, in Morristown, N.J., received a special award to honor grant makers that communicate specifics about the people they are helping, and that do the best job of showing how their grant making has made a difference in the lives of individuals. In the annual report it issued to mark its 25th year of grant making, the Dodge Foundation asked people who were affected by the fund’s grant making to put into their own words how their causes had been transformed by philanthropic assistance. It also asked grantees to look ahead to the needs of the next quarter-century, and introduces each of their responses with the words of a poet — reinforcing the foundation’s emphasis on supporting poetry projects, such as starting the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in 1986.
• The Minneapolis Foundation ran a campaign called “Let’s Fix This” to inspire people to support groups helping the homeless and to encourage them to call for actions that would reduce the number of people who lack permanent shelter. The campaign appealed to the civic pride the state’s residents have in their ability to join together to deal with natural disasters, and used images showing how the state had overcome damage wrought by floods, tornadoes, and other such occurrences. Beyond television, billboard, and print advertisements, the foundation created a Web site to show people how to help and to teach them about the plight of the homeless in the state. It also held a public session, called “Troubled Waters,” to focus on strategies for providing low-cost housing. The session attracted 550 people, turning away 100 people who couldn’t fit in the meeting hall, and featured national housing experts as well as the state’s governor, Jesse Ventura. The foundation also held an art exhibit featuring works that evoked the image of home, and a fund-raising dinner that secured $6,000 for groups that help the homeless.
• The Marin Community Foundation, in Larkspur, Calif., asked middle-school and high-school students to find ways to capture, through photos and words, a day in the life of each of 50 organizations supported by the foundation. While the foundation hoped the students’ work would help make its annual report on grant making more compelling, its main goal was to educate young people about local needs and charities. In addition, the fund hoped to get young people to volunteer. The foundation says the effort seems to have increased youth involvement in nonprofit work, and noted that at least one student has been asked to serve on the board of a charity as a result of the annual-report project.