Message From the President

Presidential Grants

By Charles R. Halpern
President, Nathan Cummings Foundation

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Foundations can trigger a complex interaction of people, ideas, and institutions. We do so in various ways: by making grants; by announcing our interest in an area; by publishing papers; by convening meetings of experts and visionaries. Sometimes foundations create new programs that have a significant impact on real world issues. At the Nathan Cummings Foundation we try to identify major problems and develop strategies to address them. In addition to providing financial support to grantee organizations, we consider ourselves a part of the community of people and groups working to deal with problems and advance a field.

Our responsiveness to the fields in which we make grants has two dimensions. First, we try to be responsive to grant applications-to respond promptly to them, based on an evaluation of their intrinsic merit and the extent to which they fit into our Foundation's goals. We have tried to define our interests specifically and clearly to assist grant seekers in deciding whether it is worthwhile to apply to us for support. This practice reflects our belief that targeted grantmaking is more effective.

Second, we try to be responsive to an entire field-to identify needs which have not yet been addressed by any group. Sometimes we identify inchoate problems, not yet framed in public debate, which might emerge in a few years. Sometimes we can detect a pattern in the grant applications we receive that is invisible to people who are closer to the day-to-day activity. Sometimes our commitment to future generations makes different issues seem especially important to us.

We have a senior program staff that is experienced in their fields and in frequent communication with key people. They have had experience working in non-profit organizations; they wer e grantees before they were grantmakers. If we are not receiving applications to address issues we consider critically important, we will discuss with organizations in the field the possibility of their organizing a project to meet the need, or the creation of a new institution to address the unmet needs.

Participating in the creation of new institutions and programs is very much in keeping with an activist posture. We believe that it is altogether appropriate for foundations to take the initiative, so long as it is done in dialogue and partnership with those active in the field and with other funders. We feel privileged to support the energetic people who undertake new initiatives. I shall provide a few examples of such grantmaking.

TRANSPORTATION

When we initiated our environment program and decided to make transportation policy a central element, we found that there were few environmental organizations that had identified transportation as a priority concern. Yet our analysis had led us to conclude that over reliance on the automobile lay at the heart of many of our most urgent environmental problems-air pollution, acid rain, global warming. We have encouraged environmental groups and the larger society to confront this problem, and to provide a wider range of transportation alternatives. This has led us to support the creation of transportation projects within national environmental organizations, to support state and local transportation programs, and to support the creation of a national coalition of environmental and civic groups-the Surface Transportation Policy Project-to undertake a broad effort of public education. During the past year, since the passage of important transportation legislation, we have supported a consortium of environmental advocacy groups to assure that state decisions support and promote a variety of transportation alternatives, not simply an expansion of environmentally destructive highway networks.

In these clustered grants, the Foundation has a goal: to promote the creation of a varied system of transportation. We believe there should be a change in the entrenched policies and practices which encourage and subsidize automobile travel at the expense of all other systems. Such change can occur only through sophisticated and varied advocacy approaches; we have supported public education, advocacy within the environmental community, advocacy before administrative agencies, and to the extent permitted by the Internal Revenue Code, legislative activity.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN RUSSIA AND UKRAINE

Two years ago a delegation of Foundation trustees toured Russia and Ukraine, meeting with the emerging Jewish leadership. In areas where Jewish institutions had been repressed for decades, we found a striking number of nascent Jewish institutions-from religious schools to synagogues, poverty-relief organizations to human rights advocates. The enthusiasm of the Jews in that region to explore the possibilities of Jewish heritage and identity were deeply moving, and we resolved to develop a program to support their efforts.

This commitment was undertaken at the same time that many Jewish philanthropists were supporting Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union to Israel. Our analysis, based on our own observations and the advice of experts, indicated that millions of Jews would remain in Russia and Ukraine. For various reasons, they chose not to immigrate to Israel and try to re-establish lives in a crowded and difficult situation. Many Jews wanted to re create Jewish instit utions in their homeland. We have supported Jewish studies programs in Russian institutions of higher learning. We created, with the Moriah Fund and others, a special fund to make small grants to fledgling Jewish Sunday schools, synagogues and social agencies. A few thousand dollars can make an immense difference at this time.

If we had waited for grant requests, this initiative would not have been undertaken. After two years of grantmaking, we are persuaded that these efforts are extremely important, and that they are likely to lead many Russians and Ukrainians to find new meaning in their Jewishness. This does not, of course,underestimate the hazards of a resurgence of anti-Semitism in a land where such prejudice has deep roots and a bloody history. However, we believe that efforts to help the Jews of Russia and Ukraine to organize themselves and establish vibrant institutions, linked to institutions in the West, is a realistic response to that threat.

MIND/BODY HEALTH--CENTER FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF HEALTH

We found that a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrated that mental and emotional states can cause or exacerbate illness. Health is a matter of social and psychological well-being, not just the absence of disease. Interventions aimed at mental states can improve physical health and speed recovery. We made grants to support those doctors and other scientists whose research was building this body of evidence. We also wanted to assure that policy makers in government and the health care industry took these new findings into account, directed research dollars into this sphere, and oriented health care systems to the needs of the whole patient-psychological as well as physical. We joined with The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in establishing the Center for the Advancement of Health in Washington, DC, an institution which brings to the attention of health policy makers the importance of these new developments and their capacity to make health care more effective, less expensive, and more humane. Recently, the CAH has undertaken to explore ways in which health maintenance organizations, critical providers in the emerging new health delivery system, can be more receptive to mind-body approaches in treating the whole patient.

THE CONTEMPLATIVE MIND IN SOCIETY

Several of our grants have supported efforts to encourage meditation practice, in the belief that periods of quietness and reflection can improve health, deepen spiritual insights, and avoid burnout in busy lives. In our health program, we have supported programs at the University of Massachusetts and the Harvard Medical School to use the benefits of meditation for controlling chronic pain and reducing stress. In our Jewish Life program, we have helped to establish a Center for Jewish Meditation, which has revived ancient meditation practice and taught it to more than 1500 students. In the environment program, we have supported the Positive Futures project to establish retreats for environmental activists. Recently, we have begun a working group on the Contemplative Mind in Society which brings together people from diverse disciplines and viewpoints to discuss the potential that contemplative practices might have for making our society more humane, healthy, and spiritually rich.

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Since our program areas continue to confront deep and intractable problems, we will continue to work to develop novel solutions. The environmental crisis continues to deepen. Disparities between rich countries and poor co untries, and between rich Americans and poor Americans, continue to grow. We want to support people who are taking the lead in developing imaginative approaches to the environmental crisis; in reforming health systems riddled with inequities, high costs, and depersonalized service; in rebuilding a new sense of Jewish identity encompassing spiritual values and social justice; and in promoting broad participation and free expression in the art world.

All of these efforts demand something more than tactical approaches and piecemeal solutions. They demand wisdom-attention to the long-term, recognition of the interdependence of all human beings, reverence for the earth qualities that go beyond operational skill and manipulation of knowledge. We support efforts to re-value the quality of wisdom in our society.

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In 1993, a group of our Trustees visited grantees and potential grantees in Israel, just a few weeks after the historic handshake between Rabin and Arafat on the White House lawn. We found a sense of hope and expectation in which people were willing to set aside old animosities and fears about an uncertain future. The intervening months have proved extremely difficult. Nonetheless, we continue to support the peacemakers and encourage those Jews and Palestinians who have the largest stake to work constructively and collaboratively to find a way to peace.

Many factors led to the creation of the peace process. We are pleased that our grants over the past years-to encourage dialogue between Jews and Palestinians, to address the injustices faced by Arab citizens in Israel, and to stimulate the evolution of inclusive democratic institutions in Israel-may have played a small part in creating the ground for the formal negotiations. We view with admiration the work of the non-governmental organizations and private citizens which laid the foundation for the peace process. Their work is a reminder of the importance of activities of private individuals and their organizations, acting outside the realm of government. Such activity will be more critical in the next century.

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reforming health systems riddled with inequities, high costs, and depersonalized service; in rebuilding a new sense of Jewish identity encompassing spiritual values and social justice; and in promoting broad participation and free expression in the art world.

All of these efforts demand something more than tactical approaches and piecemeal solutions. They demand wisdom-attention to the long-term, recognition of the interdependence of all human beings, reverence for the earth qualities that go beyond operational skill and manipulation of knowledge. We support efforts to re-value the quality of wisdom in our society.