Award-Winning Publications

Council on Foundations honors grant makers for innovative communications efforts

The Council on Foundations this week is presenting 71 foundations with awards for outstanding annual and biennial reports, newsletters, special reports, public-policy campaigns, and Web sites.

The Wilmer Shields Rich Awards for Excellence in Communications, which have been given annually since 1984, were named for the council’s first president. The Communications Network, which represents public-relations officials at foundations, co-sponsors the awards.

The council received 296 submissions this year. More than 50 judges chose the winning entries based on their overall impact, the effectiveness of the message and design, how well the material was organized, and the strategies foundations used to distribute their reports or get attention for advocacy campaigns.

Among this year’s winners is the Open Society Institute, in New York, which is being honored with a special-recognition award for its report “Building the New South Africa: One House, One Dream at a Time: The Story of Nurcha.”

The report uses photographs and text to chronicle the work of one of the institute’s grantees, the National Urban Reconstruction and Housing Agency, a Johannesburg group that builds low-cost housing in South Africa and provides jobs in the housing industry. The grant maker produced 5,000 reports, at a cost of $55,000, to promote Nurcha’s efforts and attract other donors to support the group.

The Medtronic Foundation, a corporate grant maker in Minneapolis, won a bronze award for a brochure that replaced its annual report.

The publication is a foldout piece with five panels that contains only highlights of the grant maker’s activities and refers readers to its Web site for details. Because the foldout is less expensive to produce than an annual report, the foundation has been sending it to a broad audience, including community leaders in Minneapolis as well as in other areas where it makes grants.

The Marin Community Foundation, in Novato, Calif., won a silver award for its special report “Building a Legacy,” which was designed to let people know that it supports not just programs and services but also the buildings that house them — health-care facilities, community centers, and office space for nonprofit groups. The foundation spent $9,000 to publish 2,500 reports, which it sent to foundations, elected officials, donors, and others in the region it serves.

A full list of the award recipients is available on The Chronicle’s Web Site.