Foundation Annual Reports

CONRAD N. HILTON FOUNDATION
100 West Liberty Street, Suite 840
Reno 89501
(702) 323-4221
Period covered: Year ending February 28, 1998.

Purpose and areas of support: The foundation was created in 1944 as a trust by Conrad N. Hilton, who established what is now the Hilton Hotels Corporation. Mr. Hilton left the bulk of his estate to the foundation upon his death in 1979. It is the beneficiary of two trusts that hold more than 25 million shares of common stock in the Hilton Hotels Corporation; at the end of fiscal year 1997-98, those stocks were valued at approximately $750-million.

Grant making focuses on four major areas: blindness, domestic violence, early-childhood development, and homelessness.

Blindness-related grants emphasize direct services for infants and children who are blind or have multiple disabilities and programs to prevent blindness caused by vitamin deficiencies or disease.

Domestic-violence grants seek to insure that victims receive improved support and services from health-care providers, the criminal-justice system, and religious organizations.

Early-childhood-development grants focus on disadvantaged children from birth through the age of 3, with special emphasis on disabled and minority infants and toddlers.

Grants related to homelessness stress supportive-housing services for mentally ill and other homeless people in New York.

The foundation administers the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, which annually provides a $1-million award to a non-profit or non-governmental organization that has “made an extraordinary contribution toward alleviating human suffering.” The inaugural prize, in 1996, went to Operation Smile, in Norfolk, Va., and the 1997 prize went to the International Rescue Committee, in New York.

The Conrad N. Hilton Fund is a supporting organization that provides grants to the Conrad N. Hilton Fund for Sisters, a separate fund of the Roman Catholic Church, and to 11 other organizations named in its charter.

Application procedures: The foundation neither encourages nor generally considers unsolicited proposals. It initiates and develops major long-term projects and then seeks out appropriate organizations that can best implement those projects.

Key officials: Donald H. Hubbs, president; Steven M. Hilton, vice-president for programs; Judy Miller, vice-president and director of the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize Program; Patrick J. Modugno, vice-president for administration; Dyanne M. Hayes, assistant vice-president for programs; Deborah Kerr, secretary and treasurer; Marge Brownstein, senior program officer; Rose Arnold, grants manager.

W. ALTON JONES FOUNDATION
232 East High Street
Charlottesville, Va. 22902-5178
(804) 295-2134
e-mail: earth@wajones.org
World-Wide Web: http://www.wajones.org/
Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1997.

Purpose and areas of support: The foundation was established in 1944 by W. Alton (Pete) Jones, an industrialist who worked primarily in the oil business. Grants are made in two major areas: the sustainable-world program and the secure-world program.

Awards in the sustainable-world program are made to maintain biological diversity, to promote new sources of energy that do not contribute to climate change, to encourage economic policies that promote environmentally sound development, to eliminate pesticides and other systemic contaminants, and to develop the field of environmental law and media.

Grants related to biological diversity support projects in two watersheds — the Amazon River and its tributaries and Brazil’s Pantanal and Parana-Paraguay River watershed — and in the forest ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, Alaska, Siberia, and the eastern United States. Grants are also made to encourage international agreements and treaties that protect biological diversity and forests and related public education.

Climate- and energy-related awards focus on promoting energy sources based on hydrogen fuel cells, supporting multinational climate-protection treaties, and implementing energy-efficient solutions to urban transportation problems in Brazil, China, Mexico, and the United States.

Economic-policy grants emphasize balancing economic and environmental concerns and creating models that “assess the full costs of human activity on the planet.”

Grants to eliminate system- ic contamination emphasize research and other efforts to protect children from health threats posed by pesticides, endocrine disruptors, and lead.

Awards in the secure-world program are made for projects to eliminate and dismantle nuclear weapons, to abate their development and testing, to prevent nuclear accidents and terrorism and the release of radioactive materials, and to dispose of nuclear waste in a safe manner.

Grants are also made for projects to promote security, conflict resolution, and cooperation in the former Soviet Union; the Middle East, including Iran; Korea, China, and Japan; India, Pakistan, and China; and Europe.

Application procedures: Most grant making occurs through foundation-initiated programs, but unsolicited inquiries related to the foundation’s priorities are considered. Before submitting a proposal, applicants should send a letter of no more than two pages that describes the goals of the project and that summarizes the means by which those goals will be met and the amount of support that is requested.

Key officials: J. P. Myers, director; George R. Perkovich, deputy director for program and program director (secure world); Glenn A. Holley, deputy director for administration; Charles O. Moore, associate program director (sustainable world); Kristen C. Godard and James H. Pissot, program officers (grassroots environment); William E. Hoehn III, program officer (secure world); Ji-Qiang Zhang, program officer (sustainable world); Patricia Jones Edgerton, president of the Board of Trustees.

CORPORATIONS
FREDDIE MAC FOUNDATION
8200 Jones Branch Drive
Mailstop 259
McLean, Va. 22102
(703) 903-2214
World-Wide Web: http://www.freddiemacfoundation.org
Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1997.

Purposes and areas of support: The foundation was created in 1990 by Freddie Mac; it makes grants in four main program areas: strengthening families, education, foster care and adoption, and advocacy and public awareness of issues affecting at-risk children and families.

In general, the foundation’s grant making focuses on the metropolitan Washington area, which the foundation defines as the District of Columbia; Maryland’s Charles, Frederick, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince George’s Counties; and Virginia’s Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William Counties and the cities of Alexandria, Falls Church, Leesburg, and Manassas Park. Limited support is given to statewide programs in Maryland and Virginia and to programs that are national in scope.

Grants to strengthen families focused on home-visitation and child-rearing programs, services for victims of domestic violence and substance abusers, programs to prevent teen-age pregnancy, mental-health services, and projects to engage fathers more in the development of their children.

Education grants emphasized both early-childhood education and academic and support services for school-aged children and their families. For example, $40,000 went to the Center for Policy Alternatives, in Washington, to develop new mechanisms for financing child care in metropolitan Washington, and $18,355 went to Community Ministries of Rockville, in Maryland, to provide English-language classes to Latino adults and tutoring for their children.

Grants related to foster care and adoption focused on reducing the amount of time children spend in foster care, providing services to children in foster care who have critical medical or other special needs, and improving and developing the field, including the recruitment of foster and adoptive parents and training for child-welfare social workers.

The foundation continued a process undertaken in 1996 to expand its grant making to Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York. Grant making in those cities is by solicitation only.

Application procedure: New applicants must submit a complete proposal with supporting documentation, following the “Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers Common Grant Application” form. Current grantees can submit an abbreviated version of the form, available from the foundation. Concept papers must be submitted for requests that are in excess of $50,000; they should be no longer than three pages and should discuss the goals of the proposed project, the measurable objectives and timetable for achieving those goals, the project’s budget, the amount of the grant request, the specific purpose of funds, and a brief description of the organization. After approval of the concept paper, a full proposal will be requested.

Key officials: Maxine Baker Stokes, executive director of the foundation and vice-president for community relations; Lafayette Barnes, director of foundation giving; Karyn Sandelman, director of corporate giving and employee involvement; Kathy Whelpley, director of communications and operations; Desiree Griffin-Moore, Rick Leon, and Renette Oklewicz, managers, grant making; Leland C. Brendsel, chairman of the Board of Directors.