April 19, 2007 | Read Time: 3 minutes
While the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s $500-million commitment to combat childhood obesity
is one of the largest made for a single cause, it is not the biggest in history.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in Seattle — by far the nation’s wealthiest philanthropy — has allocated several larger grants for education and public health. For example, in 1999 it pledged $1-billion to start a college scholarship program for minority students from needy families, administered by the United Negro College Fund, in Fairfax, Va.
That year it also committed $750-million to the Vaccine Fund, the fund-raising arm of the newly created Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, in Geneva, to purchase vaccines needed to inoculate children in 75 countries.
In 2005 the Gates Foundation committed an additional $750-million to the Vaccine Fund (now known as the GAVI Fund) to enhance vaccine services in poor countries, expand the use of vaccines in regions where they are urgently needed, accelerate the development of new vaccines, and help guarantee safety by distributing single-use syringes.
Urging Others to Give
The Annenberg Foundation, in Radnor, Pa., garnered extensive news-media coverage in 1993 with its $500-million Annenberg Challenge, which parceled out grants designed to improve public schools across the country. At the time Walter H. Annenberg, the philanthropy’s founder, hoped the then-unprecedented amount — $711-million in today’s dollars — would “startle” other donors into contributing vast sums to alleviate social problems.
In 1997 Robert Edward (Ted) Turner, the news-media mogul, pledged $1-billion over 10 years to create and operate the United Nations Foundation and the Better World Fund, both in Washington. The commitment came at a time when the U.S. government was more than $1-billion in arrears on its payments to the United Nations. (Mr. Turner has paid some $652-million toward the pledge, which he now plans to pay off by 2013.)
Less than a month after Mr. Turner’s announcement, George Soros pledged $500-million over three years for public-health, democratization, and other projects in Russia.
Ambitious Efforts
It is difficult to calculate how much the Rockefeller, Ford, and other foundations spent cumulatively on efforts in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s to help bring about the green revolution in India, Mexico, and elsewhere, greatly increasing the production of corn, rice, wheat, and other essential grains.
However, as recently as 1986 the Rockefeller Foundation, in New York, allocated up to $300-million — or $563-million in today’s dollars — to create the International Program to Support Science-Based Development, which sought to promote the equitable, efficient use of scientific and technological innovations in developing countries.
More than six decades earlier, in 1923, the foundation had made another large, single allocation — of $45-million, or $541-million in today’s dollars — to the General Education Board for its efforts to revamp medical education nationwide. John D. Rockefeller, the oil baron, had created the organization in 1903 to aid education, with an emphasis on Southern institutions and the education of blacks.
And from 1898 until his death in 1919, Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American steel magnate, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York gave approximately $42-million — about $966-million in today’s dollars — to build more than 1,500 public libraries in the United States.
Perhaps the largest single commitment to a social cause, however, was made by the Ford Foundation, in New York, in 1955 to raise faculty salaries at U.S. colleges and universities. The foundation allocated $260-million — or nearly $2-billion in today’s dollars — to help augment the salaries of faculty members.
