Foundation Annual Reports

MARGUERITE CASEY FOUNDATION
1300 Dexter Avenue North, Suite 115
Seattle, Wash. 98109
(206) 691-3134
http://www.caseygrants.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 2005.

Purpose and areas of support: In 1948, Marguerite Casey and her three brothers created the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which was named after their mother and supported efforts to aid disadvantaged children, youths, and families. Nearly two decades later, Jim Casey, one of the brothers and the founder of United Parcel Service (UPS), established Casey Family Programs, a philanthropy in the family’s hometown of Seattle that seeks to improve foster-care systems. Casey Family Programs endowed the Marguerite Casey Foundation in October 2001 to augment its work in the child-welfare field.

The foundation’s goal is to “nurture a movement of working families by engaging parents in efforts to improve conditions affecting their lives.” Within that framework, its grant making stresses activism, advocacy, and education.

The foundation’s grant making focuses on four U.S. regions: the West, with an emphasis on California and Washington State; the Southwest, including the United States-Mexico border; the Deep South; and the Midwest, with an emphasis on Chicago. In general, grants range in size from $100,000 to $650,000. Grants made to organizations located in Washington State range from $25,000 to $50,000.

Grants to encourage activism included $180,000 over three years to Mikva Challenge, in Chicago, to provide students in Chicago high schools with opportunities to actively participate in political processes.

Advocacy grants included a three-year, $225,000 award to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, in Albuquerque, to provide local communities with educational materials on civic participation and issues that affect low-income families.

Education grants included $150,000 over 30 months to the Community Culture and Resource Center, in Lexington, Miss., for efforts to restructure the public-school systems in that state’s Holmes County.

Grants in Washington State included $40,000 over two years to the Wing Luke Asian Museum, in Seattle, for programs and exhibitions that document the experiences of diverse, low-income Asian and Pacific-American communities.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the foundation allocated $1-million to various organizations to provide victims with food, clothing, and housing; it also accelerated the release of $2.3-million to grantees in the region so that they could respond to the situation.

The foundation also developed a policy paper analyzing the earned-income tax credit, which it says has “become the nation’s largest federal program to support low-wage working families.”

Application procedure: The foundation does not accept or respond to unsolicited grant proposals, inquiries, or letters of intent.

Key officials: Luz Vega-Marquis, president and chief executive officer; Alice Ito, interim director of programs; Craig Neyman, chief financial officer; Charles Fields, Peter Bloch Garcia, and Cynthia Renfro, program officers; Kathleen Baca, senior communications officer; Christopher Jones, grants administrator; Freeman A. Hrabowski III, chair of the Board of Directors.

J. PAUL GETTY TRUST
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, Calif. 90049
(310) 440-7300
http://www.getty.edu

Period covered: Year ending June 30, 2006.

Purpose and areas of support: The J. Paul Getty Trust is a private operating foundation that comprises four programs dedicated to advancing the “presentation, enjoyment, study, and conservation of the visual arts” among both general audiences and professionals in the field.

The trust dates back to the mid-1950s, when the oil tycoon J. Paul Getty opened a small art museum at his home in Malibu, Calif., to the public. He later built a Roman-style villa nearby that housed the J. Paul Getty Museum from 1974 to 1997.

Mr. Getty died in 1976, and the trust received most of his personal estate, estimated at $1.2-billion, in 1982. With this influx of money, the organization’s trustees expanded its mission to include work in conservation, education, research, and grant making.

Today the trust administers four complementary programs: the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation (formerly called the Getty Grant Program).

The Getty Foundation awards grants to individuals and institutions and also encompasses the Getty Leadership Institute, which provides professional-development opportunities for current and future museum curators and administrators.

Following Hurricane Katrina, the foundation set aside $2-million for a special fund to aid visual-arts organizations in New Orleans.

The Getty Center, designed by the architect Richard Meier, opened in Los Angeles in 1997. The complex displays the Getty Museum’s collections of European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, photographs, and decorative arts. The Getty Villa, in Malibu, reopened in January 2006 after several years of renovations. It houses the Getty Museum’s antiquities collection — which focuses on ancient Rome, Greece, and Etruria — as well as a master’s-degree program in archaeological conservation that is a joint venture of the Getty Conservation Institute and the University of California at Los Angeles.

James N. Wood, former director of the Art Institute of Chicago, became the Getty’s president and chief executive officer in February 2007. He succeeded Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation, who had served as interim president since February 2006, when Barry Munitz resigned amid investigations by the California attorney general into the alleged misuse of funds at the trust.

The annual report opens with a short essay by Louise H. Bryson, chair of the Board of Trustees, that discusses commitments and changes the board has made in the wake of that controversy, as well as changes in acquisitions policies following claims by the Greek and Italian governments that some objects in the Getty’s antiquities collection were improperly obtained.

Application procedure: Details about eligibility, deadlines, and application procedures for the Getty Foundation, as well as lists of recent grants awarded, may be found on the trust’s Web site.

Key officials: James N. Wood, president and chief executive officer; James M. Williams, vice president, chief investment officer, and treasurer; Peter Erichsen, secretary to the board, vice president, and general counsel; Ron Hartwig, vice president for communications; Robert Abeles, interim vice president for finance and administration; Michael Brand, director of the Getty Museum; Thomas Crow, director of the Getty Research Institute; Deborah Marrow, director of the Getty Foundation; Timothy P. Whalen, director of the Getty Conservation Institute; Louise H. Bryson, chair of the Board of Trustees.

ROCKEFELLER BROTHERS FUND
437 Madison Avenue, 37th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10022
(212) 812-4200
http://www.rbf.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 2005.

Purpose and areas of support: The fund was created in 1940 as a vehicle through which the daughter and five sons of the industrialist John D. Rockefeller Jr. could coordinate their philanthropy. Mr. Rockefeller made a significant gift to the fund in 1951, followed by a major bequest from his estate in 1960.

Although three generations of the Rockefeller family have served as trustees, in 1952 the foundation’s board was expanded to include trustees who were not family members.

In December 2005, David Rockefeller, former chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, announced that he would make a gift through his will that is expected to increase the fund’s endowment by some 30 percent. Mr. Rockefeller, 91, is a founding trustee who served on the board from 1940 to 1987. (In November 2006, Mr. Rockefeller pledged $225-million to the fund.)

Grant making revolves around four program themes, which sometimes overlap: democratic practice, human advancement, peace and security, and sustainable development. Within each program, the fund emphasizes projects in selected geographic locations.

The fund also continues to place special emphasis on four locales it has deemed “pivotal places”: New York City, Serbia and Montenegro, South Africa, and southern China. Those regions were chosen for their “disproportionate significance for the future of a surrounding region, an ecosystem, or the world.”

In 2005, the fund approved 328 grants totaling approximately $23.4-million. The largest proportion of the fund’s grant expenditures — nearly 32 percent — was awarded to projects in the four “pivotal places,” followed by sustainable development, 21 percent; democratic practice, 18 percent; peace and security; 16 percent; human advancement, 8 percent; and other, 5 percent.

In the report, the fund points to two crosscutting areas that it emphasized in 2005: engaging young people as “key agents of constructive social change” and global warming, including efforts to promote constructive action by the United States, multilateral groups, and existing global systems and institutions.

The fund’s grant making in the “pivotal places” is multidisciplinary, touching on two or more program themes, while acting upon identified local needs and priorities. For example, in Serbia and Montenegro the fund works to improve the performance and accountability of government agencies, engage citizens in democratic processes, and nurture sustainable urban and rural communities in Kosovo and elsewhere in the region.

The sustainable-development program has two main goals: stemming global warming both within the United States and on a global level, and conserving biodiversity and protecting forests, coastal rainforests, and other ecosystems in British Columbia, East Asia, the United States, and elsewhere.

Within the United States, the fund’s democratic-practice program promotes civic engagement as well as governance that is “fair, accountable, responsive, and efficient.”

Globally, the program supports efforts to help ensure that the needs of developing countries, environmental concerns, and democratic principles are taken into account by the World Trade Organization and other international groups.

The program on peace and security has two main goals: to advance critical thinking and challenge “conventional wisdom” about U.S. foreign policy, and to lessen tensions and misperceptions between Muslim and Western societies.

Human-advancement grants emphasize support for artists and cultural groups in New York City; arts exchanges between U.S. and Asian artists, through the Asian Cultural Council; public education in New York City and South Africa; increased ethnic diversity among American teachers; recognition of outstanding leadership in Asia, through the Ramon Magsaysay Awards; and assisting orphans and other children in South Africa affected by the AIDS pandemic there.

The annual report opens with an essay on global warming that discusses policies that have had positive impacts in England, Germany, and elsewhere.

Application procedure: Potential applicants are encouraged to closely review the foundation’s guidelines and lists of its most recent grants, both of which are available at its Web site, along with additional application information.

Key officials: Stephen B. Heintz, president; Geraldine F. Watson, vice president, finance and operations; Benjamin R. Shute Jr., secretary and program director, democratic practice (U.S.); Nancy L. Muirhead, assistant secretary and program director, South Africa; Leah A. D’Angelo, comptroller; Gail L. Fuller, communications officer; Hope A. Lyons, grants manager; Richard G. Rockefeller, chair of the Board of Trustees.

Program directors: Miriam Añeses (fellowships), Shenyu Belsky (southern China), Charles L. Granquist (Pocantico programs), William S. Moody (Serbia and Montenegro), Michael F. Northrop (sustainable development), and Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas (New York City).