Guarding Against Future Threats

Attacks prompt many grant makers to pursue new programs aimed at curbing terrorism

After spending more than $95-million to support emergency relief and recovery

services after the September 11 terrorist attacks, foundations are now considering numerous ways to respond to long-term issues.

Foundations are contemplating grants to deal with a wide range of issues, including promoting peace, national and international security, ethnic relations, international aid, civil liberties, Muslim studies, bioterrorism research, and public health.

Among the recent efforts:

• Several foundations, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, have committed a combined $1-million in the past eight weeks to the Global Terrorism Project, a new effort sponsored by the International Crisis Group, in Brussels, to research and make recommendations to Western governments on how to end the conditions in which terrorists flourish.
• The MacArthur Foundation has dedicated $5-million to long-term responses to the terrorist attacks. Included in the $2.5-million already awarded is money for public-television documentaries on Osama bin Laden and other subjects, briefings on terrorism and other key issues for members of Congress, and support for human-rights workers monitoring refugees in Pakistan and elsewhere. Jonathan F. Fanton, MacArthur’s president, says the money will be used to answer several questions: “How do we think about U.S. interests and responsibilities as we respond to new threats to international security? What conditions give rise to terrorism and sustain it? What are the domestic implications of tighter security for civil liberties? What can be done to ensure the flow of information and analysis sufficient for citizens to make reasoned judgments about how to move forward?”
• The Nathan Cummings Foundation, in New York City, has set aside $500,000 for efforts that include protecting the civil liberties of Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans and encouraging the public to treat them in the same way as people of other ethnic backgrounds.
• The Kansas Health Foundation has invited officials from state and local governments, hospitals, laboratories, and other entities to a meeting in December to develop a statewide alert system for health officials in the event of bioterrorist attacks or other emergencies. The foundation has committed $200,000 to draft a plan that pulls together the recommendations from the meeting.

As foundations are considering new grant-making efforts, numerous charity officials are concerned about where the money will come from. Many foundation officials interviewed by The Chronicle say they would not cut off current grantees and do not plan to reduce overall spending on grants next year despite drops in foundation assets as a result of the slumping stock market.

While money for some types of projects will inevitably suffer as others are added, most of the new grants awarded so far have been relatively small, and they have been made from special reserve funds.

At the Ford Foundation, for example, officials have not yet decided how much to spend on antiterrorism grants, but they say that the money will come from a fund set aside for new programs.

“That does mean we won’t be able to take as much in new programs,” says Barry D. Gaberman, Ford’s senior vice president. Among the issues Ford is exploring: the impact of judicial corruption and fairness on the emergence of terrorism, how poverty contributes to the problem, and how the movement of people and money across borders affects terrorism.

Many foundations are waiting for forthcoming board meetings to decide how the attacks will affect their giving. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation board will decide this month whether to set aside $5-million to $10-million for programs related to the attacks. Other foundations have already committed all grant money for the year and plan to wait until 2002 before exploring new directions. Some foundations also say they want to be sure to help current grantees before starting new programs, especially since the attacks have coincided with an economic downturn that has caused fund-raising woes for numerous nonprofit groups nationwide.

Muslim Culture

Of the foundations that have already moved ahead with grants prompted by the September 11 attacks, a key focus for many involves giving Americans a better understanding of Muslim people and issues.

“The United States, psychologically, culturally, and socially, has not been readied to expand its accommodation of faiths beyond Judeo-Christian,” says Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Mr. Gregorian says future grants might include efforts to bring together Muslim, Jewish, and Christian theologians and to encourage American Muslims to become more active participants in Internet discussions.

The Ford Foundation has given $300,000 to Fenton Communications, a public-relations firm that works with nonprofit groups, for efforts to help civil liberties groups reach out to Arabs and Muslims and make Americans more aware of racial profiling and other issues facing Arab-Americans.

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, which supports national and international programs that aim to promote tolerance and understanding between people of different races and ethnicities, hopes to apply that expertise in its own backyard, says Maureen H. Smyth, vice president for programs. In the coming months, Mott is considering sponsoring meetings between Arab groups and other community groups in Detroit and southeastern Michigan, with a goal of promoting understanding and tolerance between them. The Detroit metropolitan area is home to about 300,000 Arab-Americans, one of the largest concentrations of Arabs outside the Middle East.

Public Opinion

Several grant makers say the terrorism attacks have prompted them to look more closely at the role news organizations play in shaping public opinion on issues related to terrorism.

Judy Barsalou, grants program director of the U.S. Peace Institute, says there is a sense among many foundation leaders that news organizations failed to give a thorough picture of events and views in the Middle East prior to the attacks, especially Arab views. “There were important gaps in the public’s understanding of the circumstances that gave rise to terrorist acts,” she says. “There is a sense that the media had at some level failed to address some of these issues.”

Several funds are making grants to support alternatives to mainstream reporting. The Tides Foundation, in San Francisco, is spending some of the $376,000 it has collected in its 9/11 Fund to help the DC Independent Media Center provide articles on its Web site.

In the wake of the attacks, some foundations are also paying renewed attention to bioterrorism and public health. But whether foundation giving will increase for such projects is unclear because the federal government might pay for some efforts foundations were considering supporting. Congress has approved some $1.5-billion to date to fight bioterrorism and protect public health.

At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which spent $84-million last year on numerous health projects, “we’re just in the early stages of understanding what exactly the new federal legislation is going to bring,” says Nancy J. Kaufman, a vice president who oversees health programs. “We’re looking for opportunities to fund things that would not be covered by recent legislation or by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We’ll be looking to see if there’s a unique role.”

Public education is one important area, she notes, such as what people can do to reduce the spread of anthrax spores or other dangerous bacteria. Another is preparedness in the event of large-scale disasters such as a terrorist attack. Other nations have learned to prepare for such attacks, but until now, “this has not really hit our shores in a big way,” Ms. Kaufman says. “There are procedures that may need to be put in place in this country that are common elsewhere.”

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which makes bioterrorism grants for prevention, detection, and preparedness, is just now sorting out what impact the federal money will have on its giving. It awarded $3.5-million last year to the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, and helped support a conference that studied legal issues related to bioterrorism, such as what authority state and local governments have to quarantine people. Says Paula J. Olsiewski, a program director: “Our question now is, will those specific areas be addressed by the government money? And if so, are we going to step back? It’s a matter of understanding where our money can make a difference.”

Not all foundations are pegging their grant making to the government’s activities. Marin J. Strmecki, vice president and director of programs for the Smith Richardson Foundation, which supports policy research and analysis related to bioterrorism and national security, says the foundation doesn’t expect to reduce its grant making in such areas no matter what the government does. “There will be a good deal of government money coming into analysis of terrorism and government strategies. But I would expect there will still be important niches that are not covered,” Mr. Strmecki says. In addition, he says, the foundation’s board will probably increase funds for foreign and defense policy research.

Promoting Mideast Peace

Some foundations are looking overseas to see how they can help, and coming up with answers that include improving relations between people of different faiths in the Middle East and making it easier for people outside the United States to obtain news and other information.

The Open Society Institute, a New York philanthropy financed by George Soros, has given $300,000 to establish computer centers in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan where anyone can go to obtain access to the Internet. “That’s going to be an ever-more important need, to communicate information to people over there so that they’re able to understand developments around them,” says Anthony Richter, director of the society’s central Eurasia project.

The attacks have also emphasized the importance of building better understanding between Israelis and Arabs, says Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Foundation. He says that while the Israeli conflict has no direct connection to the attacks, U.S. support of Israel has been cited by some radical Islamic groups as a cause for hostility toward the United States. The foundation may restart or replace several projects that brought Israelis and Palestinians together. Some projects were suspended after the peace talks between the two groups broke off and hostilities resumed last year.

Since the attacks, the Abraham Fund, which gives money to programs that promote peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, has found it easier to attract contributions, says chairman Alan B. Slifka. The organization hopes to collect enough to pay for all of the programs it would like to support. “Last year we had $2.5-million worth of requests, but we were only able to fund 40 percent of them,” he says.

Even foundations not involved in work with an obvious connection to the attacks say the events of September 11 will shape the way they move ahead with their grant making.

One possible growth area is public service. The Henry M. Jackson Foundation, which promotes interest in public service, could expand its own programs, such as student internships with federal agencies, and will look at ways to attract more public attention and money to the issue, says Lara Iglitzen, executive director.

“This seems to have done more in one fell swoop than anything in the past 30 years to remind people just what role our government can play in our society, whether it’s federalizing airport security or providing antibiotics,” she says. “It’s a moment in history when people are going to want to give their time and their energy to the country.”

Some foundations say the attacks have highlighted the importance of the programs they already support. Among these is the New York Foundation, which backs legal aid and other services for the poor.

“When we first sat down after September 11, we all had the same feeling as many nonprofits: What does any of this matter now?” says Madeline Lee, the foundation’s executive director. But once the group saw how the combination of the attacks and the worsening economy were hurting low-wage workers — and the nonprofit organizations that help them — its attitude changed, she says. The foundation is now considering whether to help grantees by lifting its limits on the length of time it will provide aid to start-up charities, she says.

Other groups also say their immediate focus is to help charities that are already supported by foundations, especially given concerns that a poor economy may reduce contributions by individuals. “We’ve taken a very strong position that any response should not be at the expense of the traditional giving agenda,” says Mark Charendoff, executive director of the Jewish Funders Network, an umbrella group of Jewish family foundations. “There has to be a net gain.”