Foundation Annual Reports

BURROUGHS WELLCOME FUND
P.O. Box 13901
21 T.W. Alexander Drive
Research Triangle Park, N.C. 27709
(919) 991-5100
http://www.bwfund.org

Period covered: Year ending August 31, 1999.

Purpose and areas of support:

The fund makes awards to help scientists in the United States and Canada early in their careers and to support researchers working in fields in the basic medical sciences that are “undervalued or underfunded.”

The fund was created in 1955 as the corporate foundation of the Burroughs Wellcome pharmaceutical company. In 1993, the London-based Wellcome Trust — the foundation of the British parent company, Wellcome Foundation Ltd. — allocated $400-million to be paid over five years to the fund. That donation enabled the fund to become fully independent of the company, which was acquired by the pharmaceutical firm Glaxo in 1995. The fund has no affiliation with the company now known as Glaxo Wellcome or with any other corporation.

In 1998-99, the fund allocated new grants totaling $47.4-million as follows: Career-development programs for scientists received $20.0-million; the pharmacological sciences, toxicology, and experimental therapies, $10.0-million; emerging infectious diseases, $6.3-million; “interfaces” between the physical, chemical, and computational sciences, $5.2-million; science education, $2.8-million; reproductive science, $1.7-million; and improving the general environment for science, $1.4-million.

In all, the fund supported roughly 600 new and continuing grants at more than 200 academic and other non-profit institutions in the United States and Canada.

The fund made career-development grants in four major programs: Career Awards in the Biomedical Sciences; the Hitchings-Elion Fellowships; Life Sciences Research Fellowships; and BWF Research Travel Grants, which enabled scientists to study in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The Career Awards in the Biomedical Sciences was the fund’s largest professional-development program: In its fifth year of operation, 24 postdoctoral investigators received grants totaling $12-million. The annual report notes that among the 1995 and 1996 recipients, 93 and 100 percent, respectively, earned tenured faculty appointments.

The fund continued its second year of awards to support “translational” scientists — people who can bring the advances in biomedicine to the bedside, and in so doing gain better diagnoses and treatments of diseases. The fund awarded $7.4-million from this program to 19 people in 1998-99.

The program on emerging infectious diseases focused on human diseases caused by parasites and pathological fungi and supported research on molecular parasitology, mycology, and malaria. Beyond those programs, the fund teamed with the Wellcome Trust in 1998-99 to give a total of $18-million to groups working in Egypt, Nigeria, and Peru on maladies including tuberculosis and hepatitis C.

The fund committed $3-million to create the Innovation Awards in Functional Genomics, which are designed to help people analyze data from genetic sequencing in order to study human diseases.

Science-education grants support hands-on activities for middle- and high-school students in North Carolina through the Student Science Enrichment Program, as well as visiting professorships in the basic medical sciences and microbiology.

Application procedure: The fund makes approximately 90 percent of its grants through 14 competitive awards programs. All but one of those programs are open to scientists who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States and Canada; awards made through the Student Science Enrichment Program are limited to non-profit organizations in North Carolina. Most awards are made to degree-granting institutions in behalf of individual researchers, who must be nominated by their institutions.

Organizations that receive awards must be tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. In general, government agencies are ineligible for awards.

The fund does not support activities that are primarily clinical (such as disease diagnosis and treatment) or primarily related to health care and health-care policy. Guidelines and deadlines for competitive award programs are available on request, via e-mail at info@bwfund.org, and on the fund’s Web site.

Key officials: Enriqueta C. Bond, president; Martha G. Peck, vice president for programs; Scott Schoedler, vice president for finance; D. Carr Agyapong, senior program and communications officer; Martin Ionescu-Pioggia, Victoria McGovern, and Nancy S. Sung, program officers; Karyn Hede, communications officer; David M. Kipnis, chair of the Board of Directors.

SKILLMAN FOUNDATION

600 Renaissance Center, Suite 1700
Detroit 48243
(313) 568-6360
http://www.skillman.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1998.

Purpose and areas of support:

Rose Skillman endowed the foundation in 1960 with funds from the estate of her husband, Robert, a vice president and director of the 3M Company, who died in 1945.

The foundation makes grants for programs in southeastern Michigan, with an emphasis on the metropolitan Detroit area, which comprises Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne Counties.

The foundation retooled its grant making as of January 1999. It trimmed its program areas from nine to four fields of interest, and now focuses almost exclusively on children and families. The new categories are titled Children’s Relationships, Learning Opportunities, Home and Community, and Grantmaking Opportunities — the last program reflecting the personal desire of Mrs. Skillman to improve children’s lives.

This annual report closes the book on the foundation’s previous grant-making procedures.

In 1998, the foundation awarded a total of $19.7-million as follows: Five programs for children, youths, and families received $15.2-million, or 77 percent; strengthening community and civic organizations received $2.3-million, or 12 percent; culture and the arts received $1.1-million, or 6 percent; and other programs, including basic human needs, received the remainder.

The children, youths, and families category encompassed programs in education, child and family welfare, child and family health, youth development, and juvenile justice.

Grants in those categories included the final payment of a four-year, $280,000 award to Latino Family Services, in Detroit, for a program to fight infant mortality.

Other grants included $30,000 to World Medical Relief, in Detroit, to pay for medical prescriptions for low-income elderly people, and $100,000 to Michigan’s Thanksgiving Parade Foundation, in Detroit, to pay for a student float- and balloon-design contest.

The foundation’s arts grants focused mainly on providing general operating support to a score of arts and cultural organizations; an exception was an award of $1.5-million to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall for its capital campaign.

Leonard Smith, who had served as president of the foundation since 1983, retired in December 1999.

Application procedure: The foundation encourages applicants to read the latest editions of its Grantmaking Policies and Procedures and Guide to Evaluation, particularly in light of its recent changes in grant making. Applicants may request both publications through the foundation’s program office or peruse them on the Web site listed above.

Key officials: William J. Beckham, president; Kari Schlachtenhaufen, executive vice president; Richard Connell, vice president, treasurer, and chief investment officer; Carol Goss and John Ziraldo, senior program officers; Jodee Fishman Raines and Claudette Y. Smith, program officers; Walter E. Douglas, chair of the Board of Trustees.

ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION

630 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2550
New York 10111
(212) 649-1649
http://www.sloan.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 1998.

Purpose and areas of support:

Alfred P. Sloan Jr., former chairman of General Motors, created the foundation in 1934. It awards grants in four program areas: science and technology, standard of living and economic performance, education and careers in science and technology, and selected national and civic issues.

Through the Sloan Research Fellowship Program, the foundation allocated $35,000 each to 100 scholars working in chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, or physics.

The foundation gave a total of $1.4-million to 50 doctoral candidates working in economics and mathematics. This Dissertation Fellowship Program, which began in 1984, ended last year.

The foundation made direct grants in 1998 for research on astrophysics, computational molecular biology, marine science, molecular evolution, theoretical biology, and the history of science and technology. The lion’s share of grants in the last category — seven awards totaling $835,742 — went to Internet-related projects geared to telling the stories of disciplines that included electrical engineering and virology.

Economics grants focused on improving the standard of living for Americans and spurring U.S. competitiveness through projects and research on the manufacturing and service industries, global industrial production, human resources and wages, the role of corporations and non-profit groups in society, government performance, higher-education institutions, and dual-career working families.

The foundation supports 13 centers at corporations and higher-education institutions in the United States that are devoted to the study of American industries. In 1998, more than 230 teachers and 160 graduate students were engaged in research and publishing at these Sloan Centers, on topics that included apparels, construction, food, health care, metallurgy, motor vehicles, pharmaceuticals, and trucking.

New grants in this category included $1.8-million to the University of California at San Diego to establish a center to study computer-information storage.

The foundation also renewed a grant to the Fund for the City of New York, which received $2.9-million to continue assessing city-government agencies.

Allocations related to education and careers in science and technology emphasized educating and retaining women and minorities; making higher education available outside the classroom; and improving public knowledge of science and technology.

For example, the American Film Institute, in Los Angeles, received $141,000 for a seminar to promote accurate portrayals of scientists in television programs and movies.

Grants made through the selected-issues program included $395,100 to the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, N.Y., for a program to help small businesses sell more of their products through improved design.

Application procedure: The foundation has no deadlines or standard forms. It advises prospective applicants to submit a brief letter of inquiry, rather than a fully developed proposal, as a first step. Grants of $30,000 or less are made throughout the year by officers of the foundation. Grants of more than $30,000 are made by the board, which meets quarterly. Letters of application should be sent to the president or another officer of the foundation and should include details about the applicant, the proposed project, and the project’s expected cost and duration. In the case of new applicants, proof of the tax-exempt status of the organization that will administer the grant should be included, unless it is a recognized higher-education institution. Additional information about the foundation’s programs is available on its Web site.

Key officials: Ralph E. Gomory, president; Stewart F. Campbell, financial vice president and secretary; Hirsh G. Cohen, vice president; William B. Petersen, vice president and chief investment officer; Jesse H. Ausubel, Kathleen E. Christensen, Ted Greenwood, A. Frank Mayadas, Gail M. Pesyna, Michael S. Teitelbaum, and Doron Weber, program directors; Christopher T. Sia, controller; Harold T. Shapiro, chairman of the Board of Trustees.