Foundation Annual Reports

CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST
222 North LaSalle Street, Suite 1400
Chicago 60601-1009
(312) 372-3356

Period covered: Year ending September 30, 1997.

Purpose and areas of support: This community foundation was established in 1915 by Albert Harris, the son of Norman Wait Harris, founder of the Harris Trust and Savings Bank. It makes both direct and donor-advised grants to non-profit organizations that serve residents of metropolitan Chicago and Cook County, Ill.

In 1996-97, grants totaling $30,686,374 were allocated in five program areas: social services, which received 38.7 per cent of grant dollars; health, 22.8 per cent; civic affairs, 19.3 per cent; education, 12.0 per cent; and the arts and humanities, 7.2 per cent.

Overall, 59.9 per cent of grants were awarded through donor-advised funds, 35.5 per cent through discretionary funds, and 4.6 per cent through designated funds.

Allocations totaling $4,857,852 were made through the trust’s Children, Youth, and Families Initiative, which was created in 1991. It is a 10-year, $30-million effort to develop integrated, community-based programs in several of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. Awards included $40,000 to the Al Carter Youth Foundation for its North Town African-American Youth League, and $222,274 to Chicago Youth Centers-Elliott Donnelley Youth Center for the Grand Boulevard Community Arts Initiative.

Other social-services grants focused on improving emergency-relief, employment, housing, and welfare-to-work programs for at-risk adults and families, and on programs on aging and the elderly. For example, a three-year, $150,000 grant went to the University of Illinois at Chicago to conduct research on welfare restructuring and its effects on poor families and children.

Grants in other areas included $45,000 to the White Crane Wellness Center for health-promotion programs for frail elderly people, and $25,000 to the Chicago Jobs Council for salary support of a policy associate.

The trust completed two self-assessments of its grant making, one examining its support for small- to mid-sized arts organizations, and one examining grant making that benefits disabled people.

The trust has five affiliated organizations: the Chicago Community Foundation, the Chicago Area Foundation for Legal Services, the Human Relations Foundation of Chicago, the Lavin Family Supporting Foundation, and the Protestant Foundation of Greater Chicago.

Application procedure: Contact the trust to request a copy of its “Grant Guidelines” publication and additional information about the trust and its grant-review process. All applicants are urged to speak with a program officer in the appropriate area of interest before submitting a proposal for consideration. All grants are approved by the trust’s Executive Committee at its January, May, and September meetings. While the foundation sets no formal deadlines for submitting proposals, materials should be submitted to the grants manager well in advance of the anticipated need for a grant award.

Key officials: Bruce L. Newman, executive director; Anne Blanton, assistant director; Carol Y. Crenshaw, chief financial officer; Susan M. Herr, director of the Children, Youth, and Families Initiative; David R. Luckes, director of external relations; Sandy Chears, grants manager; Clarence N. Wood, president of the Human Relations Foundation of Chicago; James J. Glasser, chair of the Executive Committee.

Senior staff associates: Janice Bennett (civic affairs); Margo Corona DeLey, Michael S. Marcus, and Daryl Woods (social services); Ada Mary Gugenheim (health); Sarah Solotaroff (arts and humanities); Maria Whelan (education).

MEYER MEMORIAL TRUST
1515 S.W. Fifth Avenue, Suite 500
Portland, Ore. 97201
(503) 228-5512
World-Wide Web: http://www.mmt.org

Period covered: Year ending March 31, 1998.

Purpose and areas of support: The trust was created in 1978 through the will of Fred G. Meyer, who founded the chain of retail stores in the Pacific Northwest that bears his name.

The fund conducts three programs: General Purpose Grants, which has no limitation on award size or duration; Small Grants, which comprises awards of up to $12,000; and Support for Teacher Initiatives, which provides awards of up to $7,000 for innovative classroom projects. All grant making is restricted to projects in Oregon and in Clark County, Wash., which is adjacent to the Portland metropolitan area.

In 1997-98, the trust allocated 222 grants totaling $23.2-million. Geographically, dollars were distributed as follows: $15.7-million went to projects in the Portland area, $7.2-million to projects in the rest of Oregon, and $300,000 to projects elsewhere.

The general-purpose program received 97 per cent of grant dollars awarded. New appropriations emphasized the arts and humanities, education, health care, social welfare, and such other areas as economic and community development, the environment, housing and homelessness, libraries and literacy, non-profit management and volunteerism, and youth development.

Four grants of $1-million or more were made, including a $2-million, four-year grant to the Portland Art Museum to renovate the Belluschi Building complex.

Other grants included $52,300 to the Open Meadow Learning Center, in Portland, to create an alternative school program for at-risk middle-school students, and $47,300 to the Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center, in Cornelius, Ore., to expand a home-visitation program for new parents living in western Washington County.

Sixty-eight awards were made through the Small Grants program. For example, $5,000 went to Catholic Charities, in Portland, to expand its domestic- violence-prevention program to serve residents in north Portland.

Application procedure: Prospective applicants should request a copy of the trust’s “Grant-Application Guidelines” or obtain them on the foundation’s World-Wide Web site. After determining that the organization and its proposed project are eligible for consideration, applicants may submit a proposal and supporting documents as outlined in the guidelines. In general, grant requests must include a completed grant-application cover sheet (available as part of the “Grant-Application Guidelines”), a narrative proposal describing the applicant organization and the project for which funds are sought, a detailed budget for the proposed project, statements describing the financial condition of the applicant organization, copies of the applicant’s Internal Revenue Service letter documenting current federal-tax exemption or other basis for tax exemption, and a list of names and primary affiliations of the organization’s board members. Proposals sent electronically or by fax are not accepted.

Key officials: Charles S. Rooks, executive director; Wayne G. Pierson, treasurer; Alice McCartor, Charline McDonald, and Victor Merced, program officers; Marie Deatherage, special-projects officer; Donna Parsons, grants monitor; Debbie F. Craig, chairman of the Board of Trustees.

JESSIE SMITH NOYES FOUNDATION
Six East 39th Street, 12th Floor
New York 10016-0112
(212) 684-6577
World-Wide Web: http://www.noyes.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1997.

Purpose and areas of support: The foundation was established in 1947 by Charles F. Noyes, a New York real-estate developer, as a memorial to his wife.

In 1997, it appropriated $3.6-million in these program areas: toxics, which received 29 per cent of grant dollars; reproductive rights, 19 per cent; sustainable agriculture, 19 per cent; sustainable communities, 9 per cent; the metropolitan New York environment, 9 per cent; and related interests, 15 per cent.

The toxics program works to reduce threats posed by pollution and toxic substances to the environment and human health, particularly in the Southeast, Southwest, and Rocky Mountain states.

Reproductive-rights grants emphasize projects in the United States that involve new constituencies, support legal and policy efforts, and work to guarantee that reproductive-health issues are incorporated into health-care policies and reform.

Sustainable-agriculture grants are made to promote environmentally sound and equitable practices domestically, with particular emphasis on the Northeastern, Southern, and Rocky Mountain states.

Grants made outside the five standard programs currently focus on strengthening the U.S. non-profit world and on corporate accountability and responsibility.

Application procedure: Potential applicants should send a letter of inquiry of no more than three pages that includes a brief description of issues to be dealt with in the project, the history and goals of the applicant organization, and the organization’s involvement with those issues; a brief summary of the proposed project, including an outline of objectives and anticipated outcomes and implications; approximate starting date and duration of the project; total amount of support needed; the amount requested from the fund; and information about other sources of support, both assured and requested. Full proposals should be submitted only upon request.

Key officials: Stephen Viederman, president; Millie Buchanan, Victor De Luca, and Wilma Montanez, program officers; Margaret T. Segall, grants administrator and office manager; Chad Raphael, chair of the Board of Directors.