Foundation Annual Reports

COMMUNITY FOUNDATION SILICON VALLEY
111 West St. John Street
Suite 230
San Jose, Cal. 95113-1104
(408) 278-0270
http://www.cfsv.org

Period covered: Year ending June 30, 1998.

Purpose and areas of support: This community foundation was founded in 1954 as the Community Foundation of Santa Clara County. It comprises more than 300 individual funds, and makes competitive, field-of-interest, and donor advised and designated grants to benefit residents of Santa Clara County and southern San Mateo County.

Grants are allocated in four program areas: neighborhoods, the arts, education, and general purpose — which encompasses community and social services, health, the humanities, and the environment.

The education program emphasized schoolwide efforts to promote early-grades literacy. Last September, it awarded $123,340 to eight local elementary schools for programs to increase the number of students reading at grade level by the third grade.

The foundation completed the first year of the Mayfair Neighborhood Improvement Initiative, through which 76 community-renewal projects are planned to benefit the Mayfield neighborhood of east San Jose. Partners in the Mayfair Initiative include the City of San Jose, Santa Clara County, the local school district, and several local non-profit organizations.

The five-year “Arts Build Communities” program is financed by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund. It is initially focusing on the towns of Gilroy and Milpitas and on the San Jose neighborhood of Mayfair, and seeks to broaden public participation in the cultural, fine, and performing arts and to use the arts to strengthen neighborhoods in those three communities.

The “Youth in Philanthropy” program enlists teen-agers at risk of dropping out of school or becoming involved in gangs or other delinquent behavior in writing grant guidelines, assessing youth-services projects, and awarding grants of up to $1,000 to those projects they judge most promising. Last year, the program divided $25,000 among 27 projects, including a Latino student union at Santa Teresa High School.

In November, the foundation published Giving Back, the Silicon Valley Way, a report based on comprehensive research it conducted on giving and volunteerism by companies, technology entrepreneurs, and other individuals in Silicon Valley. Among its findings: approximately one-third of Silicon Valley households earning more than $100,000 per year give $1,000 or less to charity, and 83 per cent of regional households donated to charity, compared to 69 per cent of households nationwide.

Application procedure: Organizations must have a current tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code in order to apply. The foundation plans to issue new grant-making guidelines this month.

Key officials: Peter Hero, president; Winnie Chu, vice-president for programs and planning; Susan Luenberger, vice-president for development and marketing; Robert Rosendale, vice-president for investments and finance and chief financial officer; Elizabeth Anabo, senior program officer; Harry Saal, chair of the Board of Directors.

ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION

140 East 62nd Street
New York 10021
(212) 838-8400
http://www.mellon.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1998.

Purpose and areas of support:

The foundation was created in 1969 through the consolidation of the Avalon Foundation, established in 1940 by Ailsa Mellon Bruce, daughter of Andrew W. Mellon, and the Old Dominion Foundation, established in 1941 by her brother, Paul Mellon.

In 1998, grants totaling $144.4-million were allocated in six program areas: higher education and scholarship, which received $87.7-million; conservation and the environment, $14.9-million; public affairs, $12.3-million; population, $11.0-million; performing arts, $10.4-million; and museums and art conservation, $8.1-million.

The total amount awarded represented a significant increase — approximately 20 per cent — from the previous year’s grant making.

More than 60 per cent of total appropriations went to programs in higher education, research, and scholarship, with a broad emphasis on the humanities. Specifically, grants stressed postdoctoral humanities research, liberal-arts colleges, minority education, research libraries, and the use of electronic technology to teach foreign languages and other subjects and to disseminate scholarly research.

Twenty-five higher-education grants of $1-million or more were awarded, including $2,235,000 to the American Council of Learned Societies, in New York, to inaugurate a new program supporting ambitious, long-term research by recently tenured faculty members in the humanities and related social sciences.

Other grants included $800,000 to Brown U., in Providence, R.I., for teaching and research in Latin American studies, and $600,000 to the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, in Middlebury, Vt., to enable 100 faculty members from Appalachian and historically black colleges and universities to attend its program in Austria.

While the foundation’s grant making continues to focus on U.S. institutions, it also maintains an international emphasis on education and research projects in South Africa. Nearly $13-million was awarded in 1998 for graduate training and faculty development, library automation and collaboration, new teaching methods, and demographic research and training. For example, $375,000 went to the University of Natal, in Durban, to create a national digital archive of South African periodicals.

Environmental grants emphasized ecological research, studies of the effects of environmental regulation, and training and projects on coastal, soil, plant, and tropical ecology. Awards included $410,000 to the Ecological Society of America, in Washington, for a program for minority students in ecology.

Public-affairs grants focused on minority participation in international affairs, philanthropy and volunteerism, literacy, and policies that affect immigrants, refugees, and humanitarian assistance. Awards included $95,000 to Duke University, in Durham, N.C., for research on refugee children and adolescents.

Two grants totaling $3,100,000 were made to the Urban Institute, in Washington, for studies on the economic and public-policy implications of the coming bulge in the retirement-age population of the United States.

The foundation’s former arts program has been divided into two components: the performing arts, and museums and art conservation. The fund endorsed a new program to strengthen U.S. symphony orchestras; it plans to make three-year grants of up to $1-million to approximately five orchestras annually. It also plans to increase its grant making in the museum and art-conservation fields.

Application procedure: Applications are reviewed throughout the year, and no special forms are required. In most cases, a short letter describing the nature and amount of the request and the justification for it — along with evidence of tax-exempt designation from the I.R.S. and any supplementary exhibits the applicant may wish to include — is sufficient to permit consideration by staff members. Only rarely is a grant made in response to an unsolicited proposal outside defined areas of interest, and prospective applicants are encouraged to explore their ideas informally with foundation staff members — preferably in writing — before submitting formal proposals. The foundation does not make grants to individuals or to organizations that are primarily local.

Key officials: William G. Bowen, president; T. Dennis Sullivan, financial vice-president; Harriet Zuckerman, senior vice-president; Mary Patterson McPherson, vice-president; Stephanie Bell-Rose, Jacqueline Looney, Carolyn Makinson, Thomas I. Nygren, William Robertson IV, James Shulman, and Catherine Wichterman, program officers; Hanna H. Gray, chairman of the Board of Trustees.

PUBLIC WELFARE FOUNDATION

2600 Virginia Avenue, N.W.
Suite 505
Washington 20037-1977
(202) 965-1800
http://www.publicwelfare.org

Period covered: Year ending October 31, 1998.

Purpose and areas of support:

The foundation was established in 1947 by the newspaper publisher Charles Edward Marsh. He endowed the fund by donating three daily Southern newspapers — The Gadsden Times, The Spartanburg Herald & Journal, and The Tuscaloosa News — which were sold to the New York Times Company in 1985.

In 1997-98, the foundation made domestic and some international grants in the following eight program areas: health, which received 68 grants totaling $3,362,000; the environment, 81 grants totaling $2,955,000; population and reproductive health, 46 grants totaling $2,571,500; human rights and global security, 55 grants totaling $2,265,000; community economic development and participation, 41 grants totaling $2,046,000; disadvantaged youths, 57 grants totaling $1,985,000; criminal justice, 28 grants totaling $1,210,000; and the disadvantaged elderly, 19 grants totaling $832,500.

Grants in the health program emphasized health-care advocacy, access, and reform; preventive and primary services; hunger and nutrition; occupational health and safety; and mental-health advocacy and services.

Environment grants focused on the effects of environmental degradation and pollution on human health, particularly in low-income communities. For example, $25,000 went to Dakota Rural Action, in Brookings, S.D., for its work on corporate livestock operations, mining, solid-waste disposal, and other such environmental problems affecting South Dakota residents.

Allocations in the population and reproductive-health program stressed the reproductive health of teen-agers; AIDS prevention, education, and advocacy; reproductive rights; and reproductive-health programs for women in developing countries.

The human-rights and global security program makes grants in four priority areas: international human rights, countering hate-motivated crimes and discrimination, immigration and refugees, and global security.

The community-development program works to strengthen the effectiveness of low-income communities to promote policies that benefit poor people, including in the areas of housing, hunger, legal services, and economic development.

The Fund for Washington’s Children and Youth awarded its first grants in 1997; it serves youngsters living in the District of Columbia’s Hillsdale, Parkland, and Washington Highlands neighborhoods. The Welfare Reform Fund was also established in 1997. In its second year of grant making, it allocated 20 grants totaling $500,000 for community-based efforts to respond to the effects of welfare restructuring on low-income and vulnerable people.

Application procedure: Initial requests for first-time support and for projects that have not received support from the foundation in the recent past should come in the form of a letter of inquiry. When a letter of inquiry indicates a sufficient connection to foundation priorities, a full proposal will be requested. Letters of inquiry should be addressed to the Review Committee at the address above and should include a cover sheet of no more than two pages and a brief narrative of no more than three pages. Contact the foundation for a more-detailed set of guidelines for the letter’s format or visit its World-Wide Web site.

Key officials: Larry Kressley, executive director; Anne Townsend, deputy director; Rebecca A. Davis, senior program officer; Jodi Williams, evaluation director; Martha M. Bentley, grants manager; Thomas J. Scanlon, chair of the Board of Directors.

Program officers: Adisa Douglas (population and reproductive health), Teresa Langston (health and disadvantaged elderly), Neil A. Stanley (criminal justice and disadvantaged youth), Midge Taylor (environment), and Joe Wilson (human rights and global security).