January 25, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes
By NICOLE LEWIS
The John and Mary R. Markle Foundation is “crossing some once-sacred lines in the foundation world” by planning to distribute half of its $200-million endowment in the next several years and considering grants to for-profit companies, says the magazine Fast Company (February).
Those measures aim to help fulfill the foundation’s main goal: “to pursue the potential of interactive media to improve people’s lives,” says Zoë Baird, the foundation’s president, in the story.
The foundation tends to favor grants that don’t abide by “old rules” of philanthropy, says Fast Company.
One foundation grantee, Paul Meyer, started a nonprofit organization that brought Internet capability back to war-torn Kosovo. He used a satellite dish to gain wireless access to the Internet and then charged nonprofit organizations in Kosovo a user fee that would subsidize local Kosovars who could not afford to be wired, says the magazine.
In October the foundation also helped sponsor two technology conferences, “Creating Digital Dividends” and “Kids’ TV Goes Digital.”
The first conference was aimed at persuading high-technology companies to view the developing world as a “business opportunity, rather than merely as a social problem,” says the magazine.
The second conference, which provided a forum on digital media, was part of the foundation’s new Interactive Media for Children program, headed by the veteran television programmer Alice Cahn. She will help identify ideas that combine education and new media and give seed money to the best ones, says Fast Company.
Although the magazine calls the foundation’s spending strategy “risky and controversial,” it has high praise for the foundation’s projects.
“Look closely at the most exciting efforts to link digital technology, public policy and vexing social problems,” Fast Company says, “and you’ll likely see the fingerprints of the Markle Foundation and its president, Zoë Baird.”
The article is available online at http://www.fastcompany.com.
