Foundation Annual Reports

COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR THE NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION

1201 15th Street, N.W.,
Suite 420
Washington, D.C. 20005
(202) 955-5890
http://www.cfncr.org

Period covered: Year ending March 31, 2006.

Purpose and areas of support: Established in 1973, the foundation makes unrestricted, field-of-interest, donor-advised, and other grants through more than 560 constituent funds, primarily to benefit residents of the metropolitan Washington area.

During its 2006 fiscal year, the foundation allocated 3,996 grants totaling $91,235,382 as follows: youth and education received $37,015,395; health and human services, $27,008,519; arts, culture, and the humanities, $4,628,076; the Survivors’ Fund, $3,720,564; the environment, $3,131,150; community development, $2,123,632; faith and religion, $2,021,951; “bridging differences,” $1,920,180; legislative and advocacy, $1,058,698; and other, $8,607,217. Overall, 65 percent of grants went to groups in the Washington metropolitan area.

Through the Greater Washington Youth Philanthropy Initiative, teams of teenagers make grants of up to $2,500 for peer-based after-school programs and recreation centers, arts and sports activities, health services, job-training and employment projects, and youth-development programs.

The “bridging difference” program has two components: Common Ground, which makes grants of up to $35,000 for social-justice issues that affect minority communities, with an emphasis on neighborhoods that are racially diverse, and the Washington Area Partnership for Immigrants, which supports leadership-development and legal-rights activities.

Other funds that award competitive grants include the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries.

Allocations included $50,000 to CASA of Maryland, in Takoma Park, to support vocational-training courses, employment assistance, and English-language instruction for low-income immigrants, and $20,000 to the Youth Action Research Group, in Washington, for a youth-organizing campaign in the city’s Shaw neighborhood that will help improve the D.C. Summer Youth Employment project.

Also in the 2006 fiscal year, the foundation awarded grants totaling $345,000 from its Katrina Open Arms Fund to 10 local organizations that provided services to people evacuated to the region from the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.

Grants included $45,000 to Northern Virginia Family Service, in Fairfax, Va., to provide evacuees with case-management services and $45,900 to the William Wendt Center for Loss and Healing, in Washington, to offer mental-health services.

The Survivors’ Fund supports the long-term counseling, educational, health, rehabilitation, and other needs of individuals and families affected by the September 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon.

The foundation also maintains three regional affiliate funds: the Alexandria Community Trust, in Northern Virginia; and the Montgomery County Community Foundation and the Prince George’s Community Foundation, in two suburban Maryland counties.

Application procedure: Potential applicants should visit the foundation’s Web site to review a list of discretionary grant-making funds, to request information about application guidelines and deadlines, to provide the foundation with updated information about the applicant organization, or to be placed on the mailing list of any of the foundation’s discretionary funds.

Key officials: Terri Lee Freeman, president; Kenny Emson, senior vice president, development and donor services; Kathy Whelpley, senior vice president, strategic planning, governance, and special projects; Mark Hansen, chief financial officer; Silvana Straw, senior program officer; Ben Glenn II, manager of communications; Starlet Hunter, manager of donor services; Alicia Reid, grants manager; Desiree Griffin-Moore, executive director, Prince George’s Community Foundation; Sally Rudney, executive director, Montgomery County Community Foundation; Jonelle Stachura Wallmeyer, executive director, Alexandria Community Trust; M. Charito Kruvant, chair of the Board of Trustees.

WILLIAM AND FLORA HEWLETT FOUNDATION

2121 Sand Hill Road
Menlo Park, Calif. 94025
(650) 234-4500
http://www.hewlett.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 2005.

Purpose and areas of support: William R. Hewlett, a co-founder of the Hewlett-Packard Company, created the foundation in 1966 with his wife, Flora Lamson Hewlett, and their eldest son, Walter B. Hewlett, hoping to help solve social and environmental problems both domestically and abroad.

Mrs. Hewlett died in 1977 and the elder Mr. Hewlett passed away in January 2001, leaving much of his estate to the foundation, thus substantially boosting its assets. The fund is wholly independent of the Hewlett-Packard Company and its associated charitable programs.

In 2005, the foundation made $319,916,093 in grant payments and awarded new grants totaling $178,405,974 in the following program areas: the environment, which received $39,171,408; population, $37,779,001; education, $36,869,332; global development, $22,424,000; the performing arts, $14,985,500; regional grants, $8,027,710; and philanthropy and organizational effectiveness, $5,587,870. It also made awards totaling $13,811,158 for special projects.

Grant making reflected re-aligned strategies, including the first awards made through the foundation’s new program in global development, as well as a regional grant program that augments the fund’s support for groups that help low-income people in the San Francisco Bay Area. The foundation also closed its U.S.-Latin American relations program; its continuing work in Mexico — which focuses on philanthropy, public accountability, and research on economic development — is now housed within the global-development program, while projects on air quality and transportation in Brazil and Mexico have been moved to the environment portfolio.

In 2005 the foundation also phased out its program in conflict resolution, followed in 2006 by its Neighborhood Improvement Initiative, which worked to counter the steady deterioration of two neighborhoods in San Jose and East Palo Alto.

The environmental program continued to stress three goals: safeguarding important ecosystems and landscapes in western North America; creating strong, diverse constituencies in California that favor environmental-protection efforts; and advocating energy efficiency and renewable energy sources that can help curb overreliance on fossil-fuel energy systems.

In 2004, the foundation’s Board of Directors approved a revised strategy for the population program that emphasizes these three areas: improving access to high-quality family-planning and reproductive-health services, ensuring both adequate resources and evidence-based policies for such services worldwide, and advocating and protecting the reproductive health of Americans.

For example, Equilibres and Populations, in Paris, received $175,000 for a research workshop on the effects of population and reproductive health on economic development.

Grants made through the new global-development program included $1-million to the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, in New York, for Wide Angle, a public-television documentary series on international topics, and $450,000 to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington, to examine the potential impact of proposed trade policies on workers and poor people in Brazil and India.

The annual report is prefaced by an essay by the foundation’s president, Paul Brest, that examines the role of collaboration in successful grant making.

Application procedure: Detailed guidelines are available on the foundation’s Web site.

Key officials: Paul Brest, president; Susan Bell, vice president and program director, philanthropy; Laurance R. Hoagland Jr., vice president and chief investment officer; Eric Brown, director of communications; Carolyn Provost, director of grants administration; Walter B. Hewlett, chairman of the Board of Directors.

Program and initiative directors: Moy Eng (performing arts); Hal Harvey (environment); C.R. Hibbs (program officer and managing director for Mexico); Joseph Ryan (program officer and managing director for Latin America); Sara Seims (population); Smita Singh (global development); Christine Sherry (Philanthropy Workshop West); Marshall (Mike) Smith (education); M. Ann Tutwiler (program officer and managing director for trade and development).

WILLIAM PENN FOUNDATION

2 Logan Square, 11th Floor
100 North 18th Street
Philadelphia, Pa. 19103
(215) 988-1830
http://www.williampennfoundation.org

Period covered: Year ending December 31, 2005.

Purpose and areas of support: Otto Haas, a co-founder of the chemical company Rohm and Haas, and his wife, Phoebe Waterman Haas, an astronomer, established the foundation in 1945 as “a response to social problems following World War II.” Originally called the Phoebe Waterman Foundation, the fund assumed its current name in 1974, which was named for the 17th-century Quaker who helped found the colony that would become Pennsylvania as well as Philadelphia — “the City of Brotherly Love.” When Mr. Haas died in 1960, he bequeathed the bulk of his estate to the foundation, and his wife continued to donate to it until her death in 1967.

Virtually all the foundation’s grants are made to benefit residents of the metropolitan Philadelphia area, which comprises Pennsylvania’s Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia Counties and New Jersey’s Camden County.

In 2005, the foundation received 345 letters of inquiry and approved 239 new grants totaling $67,923,615. Those grant dollars were allocated to its three grant-making programs: children, youth, and families, which received $25,117,421; environment and communities, $23,938,950; and the arts and culture, $10,826,465. The remainder went to grants given through the foundation’s Opportunity Fund and the 50th Anniversary Fund.

The foundation’s children, youth, and families program emphasizes projects related to early-childhood development, “more-effective and equitable education policies,” support services for at-risk families, and youth development. Allocations included $82,500 to the School District of Philadelphia to expand SchoolStat, a program that provides a monthly snapshot of how local schools are performing, including on such indicators as student attendance and suspensions.

In the environment and communities program, grants for community revitalization are limited to selected neighborhoods of Philadelphia and Camden, N.J. Grants to conserve watersheds and ecosystems are awarded within an expanded region that includes parts of the Delaware, Schuylkill, and Chesapeake Bay watersheds.

Awards included $1-million over 18 months to the Center City District, in Philadelphia, for three projects designed to enhance cultural sites, parks and public spaces, and transportation systems, and $550,000 to the Natural Lands Trust, in Media, Pa., to acquire and protect parcels of land in the Delaware River watershed.

Arts and culture grants stress operating and planning support, and the foundation often collaborates with the Pew Charitable Trusts, also in Philadelphia. For example, a three-year, $472,000 grant went to the Trusts to manage the Pennsylvania Cultural Data Project, a standardized online system for collecting historic financial and organizational data from arts and cultural groups throughout the state.

The foundation also maintains a program that evaluates the progress of its three priority areas and shares knowledge gained through its grant making.

Application procedure: Prospective applicants should visit the foundation’s Web site for detailed information about its grant-making strategies, eligibility requirements, and procedures for submitting a letter of inquiry.

Key officials: Feather Houstoun, president; Bruce Bergen, director of finance and administration; Ronnie Bloom, director, children, youth, and families; Olive Mosier, director, arts and culture; Helen Davis Picher, director, evaluation and research; Barbara A. Scace, director, information systems and grants administration; Brent Thompson, director, communications; Geraldine Wang, director, environment and communities; Thomas Haas, chair of the corporation; David Haas, chair of the Board of Directors.