Foundation Annual Reports

THE FREEDOM FORUM
1101 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, Va. 22209
(703) 528-0800
http://www.freedomforum.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1999.

Note: Financial data are for the Freedom Forum Inc., the Freedom Forum Newseum, and the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center.

Purpose and areas of support: Allan H. Neuharth, retired chief executive officer of the media company Gannett, established the Freedom Forum in 1991 as the successor to the Gannett Foundation. The Freedom Forum promotes journalism education, media studies, First Amendment protections, the professional development of journalists, and the advancement of women and minorities in journalism.

Its activities include conferences, publications, online services, research, training, partnerships, and fellowships.

The Freedom Forum supports two affiliated organizations: the Newseum, which has exhibits in Arlington, Va., and New York; and the First Amendment Center, at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville. It also maintains four offices abroad.

More than 460,000 people visited the Newseum in Arlington during 1999, its third year of operation. The museum features exhibits and interactive activities on the news and news media, such as a poll conducted last year in which visitors could vote for the most-significant stories of the 20th century. The top choice: the United States’ dropping the atomic bomb on Japan.

In addition, 75,000 people visited the Newseum in New York during its first year, and 120,000 people visited a $5-million mobile version of the museum that toured 23 states. The Arlington site opened a permanent outdoor exhibit last year to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Eight chunks of the wall, a guard tower, and other artifacts greet visitors to the Newseum’s Freedom Plaza.

The international division directs the fund’s foreign programs, which include conferences and forums on global media issues, training programs for journalists, and a network of news and journalism libraries in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The foundation’s largest program for prospective minority journalists, the Chips Quinn Scholarships, provided summer internships to 76 students at 38 daily newspapers. The Freedom Forum also coordinated “Project Excellence/Freedom Forum Scholarship Day,” during which 37 colleges offered 555 scholarships to black students from metropolitan Washington.

Other activities included three publications of the Media Studies Journal on covering events in China, the future of television news, and the aftermath of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe. The First Amendment Center contributed three of the five guidebooks on religion and education that President Clinton last year ordered to be distributed to every U.S. public school.

Application procedure: The Freedom Forum supports only its own programs and related partnerships. It does not accept unsolicited grant requests.

Key officials: Charles L. Overby, chairman and chief executive officer; Peter S. Pritchard, president; Robert H. Giles, senior vice president; Felix F. Gutierrez, senior vice president and executive director of the Pacific Coast Center; Kenneth A. Paulson, senior vice president and executive director of the First Amendment Center; Joe Urschel, senior vice president and executive director of the Newseum; Chris Wells, senior vice president of international programs; Harvey S. Cotter, vice president of finance and treasurer.

NINA MASON PULLIAM CHARITABLE TRUST

135 North Pennsylvania Street
Suite 1200
Indianapolis 46204-2400
(317) 231-6075

200 East Van Buren Street
Phoenix 85004
(602) 444-1143

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1998.

Purpose and areas of support: The foundation was created in March 1997 upon the death of Nina Mason Pulliam, the retired president of Central Newspapers Inc., which publishes the flagship dailies in Indianapolis and Phoenix.

Mrs. Pulliam, whose late husband, Eugene, had founded the company in 1934, bequeathed all of her shares of Central Newspapers stock to establish this fund. The amount of the bequest totaled $333,806,798; Mrs. Pulliam stipulated that the trust should improve the lives of residents of Arizona and Indiana and support projects to help poor people, women and children, and animals. She also wanted the trust to improve education and health care, and to assist blind people — Mrs. Pulliam had temporarily lost her sight because she was allergic to printer’s ink.

In 1998, its first year of grant making, the trust awarded $5,388,032 to 47 organizations that Mrs. Pulliam directly supported in her lifetime. The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, in Indianapolis, and the Heard Museum, in Phoenix, each received $1.5-million to construct educational pavilions.

Other grants included $500,000 to the Indiana Blind Children’s Foundation, in Indianapolis, and $100,000 each to zoos in Indianapolis and Phoenix.

Application procedure: The trust accepts proposals from organizations that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, with primary consideration given to charities in metropolitan Indianapolis and Phoenix. The trust will consider grant proposals on an occasional basis from national organizations whose programs benefit those cities or other communities in Arizona and Indiana, or that benefit society as a whole. Organizations in Arizona and Indiana should send their inquiries to the respective addresses above.

Key officials: Harriet M. Ivey, president and chief executive officer; Frank E. Russell, Nancy M. Russell, and Carol Peden Schatt, trustees.

ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

420 Fifth Avenue
New York 10018-2702
(212) 869-8500
http://www.rockfound.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1999.

Purpose and areas of support: The industrialist John D. Rockefeller endowed the foundation in 1913. Last year, it announced a major overhaul of its grant-making programs (The Chronicle, December 16).

The foundation’s core goals — to eliminate poverty, wipe out hunger, improve education, and fight disease — now shape the operation of five main program areas, as opposed to a dozen.

The new programs, which the foundation is organizing this year, are creativity and culture, food security, health equity, working communities, and global inclusion.

In 1999, grants and fellowships totaling $112,424,073 were allocated in these areas: equal opportunity, which received $20,525,000; arts and humanities, $17,770,000; population sciences, $16,650,000; global environment, $14,900,000; health sciences, $13,165,000; agricultural sciences, $12,905,000; strategic alliance, $5,190,000; African initiatives, $3,500,000; building democracy, $2,450,000; global programs, $2,200,000; and centers and special interests, $3,169,073.

The equal-opportunity program focused on American cities with high poverty rates and supported programs to increase jobs, develop communities, improve urban schools, and ensure civil rights.

Arts and humanities grants went to U.S. and foreign projects that promote diversity and exchanges across ethnic and racial divides.

The population-sciences program worked to provide reproductive-health and family-planning services and counseling worldwide. Grants in agricultural sciences supported biotechnology and other efforts to increase the crop yields of farmers in developing countries.

The foundation allocated $5.2-million for a partnership with the California Endowment aimed at improving the health of and increasing employment opportunities for poor people in southern California.

Internationally, the foundation operates the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in northern Italy and runs offices in Bangkok; Harare, Zimbabwe; Mexico City; and Nairobi, Kenya. It expects to originate more programs from those foreign locations as it restructures its grant making.

Application procedure: Many of the foundation’s new programs are under development and are not yet accepting proposals. The foundation urges potential applicants to send first a brief letter of inquiry, without attachments, to the appropriate theme office. In general, the foundation considers three factors in evaluating grant proposals: the project’s relevance to foundation programs and strategies; the applicant’s qualifications and record of achievement; and the applicant’s ability to secure additional funds from other sources. Applicants may obtain guidelines by writing or calling the foundation or visiting its Web site.

Key officials: Gordon Conway, president; Lincoln C. Chen, executive vice president; Karen Polk, acting director for communications; Denise Gray-Felder, acting director for administration and budget; Rosalie J. Wolf, treasurer and chief investment officer; Charles J. Lang, comptroller; Alice Stone Ilchman, chair of the Board of Trustees.

Program directors: Timothy Evans (director for health equity), Robert Herdt (director for food security), Julia I. Lopez (director for working communities), Susan Sechler (director for global inclusion), Lynn A. Szwaja (acting director for creativity and culture).