October 3, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Carnegie Corporation of New York has announced it is changing its grant making and simplifying how it categorizes its giving.
After a yearlong review, which included discussions with grant beneficiaries, outside academic experts, and others, the foundation said it wanted to make its efforts more strategic.
Carnegie’s move mirrors changes at other venerable philanthropies and is expected to influence how smaller grant makers oversee their operations.
The foundation, which is one of the largest in the country with $3-billion in assets, will continue to focus on its traditional goals — improving education and supporting international peace — but it is changing how it classifies its giving. Most grants will now fall into two broad categories, national and international programs, whereas before the foundation had more than six distinct grant-making areas.
Vartan Gregorian, the foundation’s president, said the new structure will continue to meet Andrew Carnegie’s original vision of the fund, which the steel magnate established in 1911, but will also allow it to be more responsive to emerging needs and streamline its work.
The aim was “to eliminate duplication and unnecessary competition within the corporation; to bring coherence and efficiency to the activities of our national and international programs; and to communicate with our grantee community — with one voice,” Mr. Gregorian writes in an essay on Carnegie’s Web site.
While the major change is structural, several grant programs have been cut.
“Some long-standing programmatic investments, having accomplished much of the agendas for them when they were initiated, will be brought to closure,” said a statement on Carnegie’s Web site.
In its international giving, the fund will end its support for nonproliferation efforts for biological weapons and Russian higher education. On the domestic agenda, Carnegie is cutting its giving to alter campaign-finance laws.
One new area the foundation plans to support in a larger way are efforts to understand the Islamic religion, Muslim nations, and American Muslims. Foundations have largely ignored the need to back such work, according to charities that seek to promote a dialogue between the West and Islam.
Mr. Gregorian said Carnegie sees its “Islam Initiative” as a vital part of its philanthropy.
“Since September 11, 2001, it has become clear that no thoughtful — and realistic — organization can work in the international arena without deepening the breadth and scope of our knowledge and understanding about Islam,” he writes.
Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a research organization in Cambridge, Mass., said Carnegie’s changes are similar to ones made recently by other venerable grant makers in New York.
The Rockefeller Foundation overhauled its programs last year, and in August the Ford Foundation appointed a new leader, Luis A. Ubiñas, a former business consultant who is expected to push the philanthropy to be more business-like and efficient. (Read The Chronicle’s coverage of the changes at Rockefeller and Ford.)
