New Internet Focus Reaffirms Markle’s Commitment to Mass Communications

In 1969, when Lloyd Morrisett took the helm of the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, he decided it was time to steer it in a new direction:

ALSO SEE:

Taming the New Frontier

Grants Reflect Fund’s New Focus on Technology

The John and Mary R. Markle Foundation at a Glance

Television and other mass media would become the focus of its grant making.

Since the 1930s, the foundation had primarily focused on academic medicine, making grants to draw more talented teachers, researchers, and administrators to the nation’s medical schools.

Shifting the foundation’s resources to a still-emerging field was a way for it to make a major difference during a critical window of opportunity, he believed.

Mr. Morrisett last year retired as Markle’s president, and his successor, Zoe Baird, is repositioning its grant making once again to focus on a newly emerging industry: the Internet and information technology.

While many in the non-profit world praise Ms. Baird’s leadership, they say that credit for placing Markle in the center of the communications revolution goes to Mr. Morrisett.

When he became the foundation’s president in the late 1960s, the nation had only three broadcast networks and the Public Broadcasting Service. Cable television was just coming on the scene, and wireless communications, personal computers, and the Internet weren’t even a figment of the nation’s imagination.

“Lloyd was quite visionary to set the foundation on this path at a time when public awareness of media and communications as an issue was rare,” observes Andrew Blau, who was hired by Ms. Baird to be a program director at Markle.

Mr. Blau said a fitting legacy for Mr. Morrisett’s accomplishments is the fact that, after he retired, the foundation’s board reaffirmed its commitment to mass communications, rather than seeking to focus on an entirely different issue.

While Markle took on the challenge of dealing with new technologies, few other foundations have followed in its footsteps. Mr. Morrisett suggests that that is in part because foundations are often bound by their charters to support areas such as education or the arts, and they have trouble adding a technology program to their grant making.

Markle, he notes, has a very broad charter, which gives it tremendous flexibility in adapting to society’s needs. All the foundation has to do, the charter says, is award funds “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge among the people of the United States and to promote the general good of mankind.”

Mr. Morrisett also notes that tradition or inertia may also play a role. But he says that is not necessarily bad. “If a foundation is doing good work, why change it?” he asks.

Mr. Morrisett says those are not the only reasons the communications field is not a traditional hotbed of philanthropic activity. He says it is also because the field is highly specialized and dominated by commercial interests.

One way Mr. Morrisett tried to deal with the commercial issue was through the use of program-related investments, a mechanism that allows foundations to lend money to or invest in charitable ventures spearheaded by commercial entities that do not have tax-exempt status.

Under Mr. Morrisett’s leadership, for example, the Markle Foundation awarded $3.5-million to help Cable News Network improve the quality of its Presidential election coverage in 1992.

Mr. Morrisett originally intended to award such a grant to PBS, but changed his mind when public-television executives responded in what he considered to be a tepid manner.

The resulting CNN grant was a way to deal with the marketplace’s failure to provide high-quality election coverage — but in a non-commercial way, says Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project. In the end, Mr. Morrisett says he got what he wanted: The election coverage was more issues-driven that year on CNN, and also on the networks.

It is that kind of strategic decision making that made Mr. Morrisett an influential and effective leader, Mr. Schwartzman says. While Ms. Baird has big shoes to fill, he says he has “ample reason to believe she will maintain Markle’s tradition of having a very positive and important influence” on the communications field.