Big Grant Makers Cut Staff Members
June 22, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Facing huge losses in their endowments since the onset of the global financial crisis, some of America’s largest foundations are cutting jobs, reports The New York Times.
Last week, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in Princeton, N.J., offered buyouts to 42 percent of its 250 employees. Last month, the Ford Foundation, in New York, offered a similar deal to 140 of its 550 staff members. In December, The California Endowment, in Los Angeles, cut 44 jobs. This year, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., has closed offices in Brazil, Mississippi, and South Africa, resulting in more than a dozen jobs lost.
The job cuts are coming after grant makers have already cut costs using other methods, says Bradford K. Smith, president of the Foundation Center, a research group in New York.
“I think we’re just at the beginning of this process,” he said, though he added that only a fraction of the nation’s private grant makers — about 4,000 out of more than 90,000 foundations — employed workers other than the founder or family members.
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