Foundation Annual Reports

BOSTON FOUNDATION
75 Arlington Street
Boston, Mass. 02116
(617) 338-1700
http://www.tbf.org

Period covered: Year ending June 30, 2002.

Purpose and areas of support: Established in 1915, this community foundation makes discretionary, donor-advised, and other types of grants to benefit residents of the metropolitan Boston area. The foundation comprises more than 750 funds, including 58 new funds established during its fiscal year 2002.

During that period, the foundation awarded $53.7-million to approximately 2,000 organizations. Grants supported projects in various fields, with an emphasis on arts and culture, civic engagement, education and out-of-school time, health and human services, housing and economic development, the urban environment, and work-force development.

Discretionary grants included $70,000 to the Boston Urban Asthma Coalition to design a multidisciplinary plan for combating pediatric asthma, and $50,000 to La Alianza Hispana, in Roxbury, Mass., for efforts to spur community investment and development among local Latinos.

The fund also makes grants through special initiatives, which are generally announced through a “call for proposals” process. For example, in 2001-2, the foundation announced the Community Safety Initiative, a three-year $1.5-million effort to lower Boston’s homicide rate, which has doubled in recent years.

The five-year, $2.5-million New Economy Initiative made its first round of grants designed to bridge the “digital divide” and to strengthen the technological capacity of local nonprofit groups. Awards included $25,000 to the Camfield Tenants Association, in Boston, for a technology center that serves 810 low-income families living in three housing complexes.

Application procedure: The foundation welcomes applications from organizations in the metropolitan Boston area that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. If the applicant is new and not yet tax-exempt, an application may be submitted through a nonprofit group that has agreed to serve as fiscal agent. Potential applicants should contact the foundation to obtain a copy of its Grantseeker’s Guide to the Boston Foundation, which is available on the fund’s Web site along with other information on application procedures. Applicants may also submit a concept paper of two to three pages that describes the organization and the proposed project, including an estimate of the total budget and the portion that requires funds. There are no deadlines for concept papers.

Key officials: Paul S. Grogan, president; Travis McCready, chief of staff and corporate secretary; James A. Pitts, senior vice president and chief financial officer; Terry S. Lane, vice president for program; Mary Jo Meisner, vice president for communications, community relations, and public affairs; Ruben Orduña, vice president for development; Angel H. Bermudez, director of grant making; Kate Guedj, director of philanthropic services; Robert R. Wadsworth, program director; Ann McQueen, Cindy Rizzo, and Richard Ward, program officers; the Rev. Ray Hammond, chair of the Board of Directors; Anna Faith Jones, president emeritus.

HOUSTON ENDOWMENT

600 Travis, Suite 6400
Houston, Tex. 77002-3000
(713) 238-8100
http://www.houstonendowment.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 2002.

Purpose and areas of support: The foundation was established in 1937 by Jesse H. Jones (1874-1956) and his wife, Mary Gibbs Jones (1872-1962). Mr. Jones was a Houston-based financier and commercial builder; he also served as director general of military relief for the American Red Cross under President Wilson and as U.S. secretary of commerce under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Grant making emphasizes organizations and programs that benefit residents of the metropolitan Houston area and Harris County, Tex. The foundation also makes some grants to projects that serve other Texas cities and towns and, in rare cases, to U.S. institutions outside the state.

In 2002, the foundation allocated more than $69-million in the following six program areas: health and human services, which received 25 percent of grant dollars; community enhancement, 23 percent; higher education, 22 percent; the arts, 12 percent; elementary and secondary education, 12 percent; and medicine, 6 percent.

Grants made through the program on health and human services primarily emphasize support for multipurpose organizations, at-risk children, access to health care, emergency relief, and services for hungry and homeless people. For example, the Rose, in Houston, received $500,000 to expand facilities and add equipment and staff needed to provide breast-cancer screening services to low-income women.

Community-enhancement grants focus on community and work-force development, the environment and wildlife conservation, parks and natural spaces, historic preservation, the nonprofit sector, and youth development. Allocations included $2-million to Central Houston Civic Improvement, for Main Street Square, a three-block pedestrian center in downtown Houston, and $750,000 to the Katy Prairie Conservancy, in Houston, to acquire land in order to preserve the Katy Prairie and to protect a habitat that serves as home to more than 300 species of birds, mammals, and reptiles.

Higher-education grants support program development, scholarships and fellowships, chairs and other endowed programs, and capital improvement. For example, Rice University, in Houston, received $100,000 for summer internships for 15 first-year M.B.A. students.

The Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones Scholarship Program allocated $12,000 each to 319 graduates of high schools in Harris County. Scholarship recipients may apply the money to undergraduate tuition at any accredited four-year college or university.

Arts-related grants support organizations that bring exhibitions, performances, and arts education to residents of Houston and elsewhere in Texas. Awardees included the Gemini Series, a literary-arts center in San Antonio that received $12,000 for its move to a larger headquarters.

Grants to enhance primary and secondary education focus on teacher and leadership development and curriculum and program enhancement. For example, the foundation made a $500,000 award to Project Grad, in Bellaire, Tex., for programs designed to improve students’ academic performance and graduation rates and to encourage them to attend college.

Application procedure: The foundation makes grants only to those nonprofit organizations that are recognized as charitable organizations under the Internal Revenue Code. It does not make loans or grants to individuals. The foundation has no formal or required application form and no designated deadlines for the submission of requests. Applications should consist of a one-page cover letter, a three- to five-page proposal, a budget, and other supporting documents. Detailed information is available on the foundation’s Web site. Information regarding the Jesse H. Jones and Mary Gibbs Jones Scholarships may be obtained from the principals and counselors of high schools in Harris County, Tex.

Key officials: H. Joe Nelson III, president; Sheryl L. Johns, vice president, treasurer, and chief financial officer; David L. Nelson, vice president and grant director; Domingo Barrios, George V. Grainger, Ann T. Hamilton, Anna B. Leal, Donald Sheppard, and Emily L. Todd, grants officers; Helen Hill, E. Jane Kennedy, and Carolyn A. Powell, grants managers; Thomas C. Nall Jr., information officer; D. Kent Anderson, chair of the Board of Directors.

OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTEU.S. PROGRAMS

400 West 59th Street
New York, N.Y. 10019
(212) 548-0600
http://www.soros.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 2002.

Note: The annual report contains no further financial information.

Purpose and areas of support: The U.S.-based Open Society Institute is part of a network of foundations, created and financed by George Soros, that are active in more than 50 countries worldwide. Mr. Soros, one of the wealthiest men in the world, is a Hungarian-born financier who first became active as a philanthropist in 1979, when he began providing scholarships to enable black students in apartheid South Africa to attend the University of Cape Town.

The Open Society Institute’s U.S. Programs division was created in 1996. It operates programs and supports activities that focus on a wide range of issues in the United States, including increasing access to justice for low- and moderate-income people, promoting fair and impartial courts, abolishing the death penalty, reducing overreliance on incarceration for certain crimes, restructuring campaign finance, revamping U.S. drug policy, improving inner-city education and youth programs, enhancing palliative and end-of-life care, and supporting reproductive rights.

In 2002, the U.S. Programs division spent $90,782,000 as follows: the After-School Program received $21,583,000; the Criminal Justice Initiative, $11,050,000; Governance and Public Policy, $8,768,-000; the Program on Law and Society, $7,378,000; OSI-Baltimore, $6,515,000; Program on Reproductive Health and Rights, $5,-515,000; Project on Death in America, $5,178,000; drug-policy reform, $5,048,000; Youth Initiatives, $4,448,000; Medicine as a Profession, $3,364,000; New York City Community Fellows and Initiative, $1,608,000; and other U.S. programs, $10,327,000.

Allocations included $200,000 to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, in San Francisco, to ensure that defendants who are not citizens receive well-informed legal representation, and $155,000 to the New York State Naral Foundation, in New York City, for the Campaign for Access to Emergency Contraception.

In May 2002, Mr. Soros announced a major reorganization of OSI and the global network of foundations he finances. Broadly stated, the network will reduce support in some Central and Eastern European countries that are slated for entrance to the European Union; meanwhile, the network will increase support in various countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

This reorganization has also affected the U.S. Programs division in various ways. Grant making through the end of 2005 will not change significantly and current commitments will be honored. However, by 2006, the division will expend far fewer grant dollars than it does now. Programs that will end in 2003 through 2005 have begun to assess the best strategies for use of their current funds.

As certain program areas are phased out, justice-related efforts will become the primary focus of the U.S. Programs division, subsuming issues now covered by the Criminal Justice Initiative, the Program on Law and Society, and drug-policy reform. Activities will also have an increased focus on civil liberties and human rights in the United States, particularly concerns that have emerged in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The U.S. Programs division will also maintain a larger flexible general fund from which to make occasional grants in areas that will no longer have formal grant-making programs, including activities related to campaign-finance reform and death and dying. Money from the fund will also be available for special opportunities and activities that cut across program areas.

As it decreases its grant making, OSI also plans to be more involved in domestic- and foreign-policy activities. In June 2002, OSI reestablished an office in Washington that focuses on violations of civil liberties, the restructuring of criminal- and civil-justice processes, and domestic human and civil rights. The Washington office will also emphasize work on the role of the United States in the world, global economic policies, and international development assistance, including funds to combat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

Application procedure: Inquiries about grants may be submitted via the OSI Web site, where an interactive system helps potential applicants determine the programs for which they are eligible. Once a program is chosen, the system provides additional information about it as well as a hyperlink to the program’s site, where an online letter of inquiry may be filled out and submitted.

Key officials: Gara LaMarche, Open Society Institute vice president and director of U.S. programs; Nancy Youman, associate director of U.S. programs; Antonio Maciel, director of grant making and program development; Maria Teresa Rojas and Alvin Starks, associate directors of grant making and program development; Jo-Ann Mort, communications director; Aryeh Neier, president, Open Society Institute; George Soros, chairman, Open Society Institute.