Download 1999 Annual Report

1999 ANNUAL REPORT ABOUT THE FOUNDATION The Rockefeller Foundation is a philanthropic organization endowed by John D. Rockefeller and chartered in 1913 for the well-being of people throughout the world. It is one of America's oldest private foundations and one of the few with strong international interests. From its beginning, the Foundation has sought to identify, and address at their source, the causes of human suffering and need. The Foundation's grantmaking is now organized around four themes and one cross-theme listed on the following page. In addition, the Foundation has identified a number of special programs that it will continue or pursue for the first time. Together these themes constitute the Foundation's commitment to enrich and sustain the lives and livelihoods of poor and excluded people throughout the world. The Foundation maintains the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in northern Italy for conferences of international scope and for residencies for artists, scholars and policymakers, and other professionals from around the world. The Foundation is administered largely from its New York City headquarters. But more program work will now originate from its offices in Bangkok, Nairobi, Mexico City, Harare and San Francisco. The work of the these offices will be along the lines of the four themes and cross-theme. An independent board of trustees, which meets four times a year, sets program guidelines and financial policy, and approves all appropriations. © 2003 The Rockefeller Foundation 1999 ANNUAL REPORT CORE PROGRAM GOALS he following are the goals of the themes and cross-theme around which Foundation work will be organized in 2000. > Food Security: To help achieve food security for all through the generation of agricultural policies, institutions and T innovations that can provide sustainable livelihoods for the rural poor in regions of developing countries bypassed by the Green Revolution. > Creativity & Culture: To preserve and renew the cultural heritage of peoples excluded from the benefits of a globalizing world, to promote the free flow of ideas in the public sphere, and to support diverse, creative expression in the arts and humanities. > Working Communities: To transform poor urban neighborhoods in the United States into working communities — safe, healthy and effective neighborhoods — by increasing employment rates, improving urban schools so that all children get a quality education, and enhanc- ing participation of the poor and excluded in a democratic society. > Health Equity: To advance global health equity by pursuing the reduction of avoidable and unfair differences in the health status of populations. > Global Inclusion: To ensure that globalization processes are more democratic and equitable and benefit the most vulnerable and disenfranchised populations, cultures and communities around the world. Photograph Excised Here © 2003 The Rockefeller Foundation THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION I THE PRESIDENT'S LETTER hen John D. Rockefeller created the Foundation in 1913 he gave us a mission to "improve the well-being of mankind throughout the world." It was a farsighted and generous decision, giving future generations the opportunity to re-craft their strategies and W programs to meet the pressing problems of the day. This is an opportunity we have seized — a reflection of my appointment as president but, more important, a response to the rapid and far-reaching changes we are witnessing in the world around us. Over the past year we have undertaken a thorough and wide-ranging review of the Foundation, re-examining our values and competencies, and deciding how they should be applied to grantmaking at the beginning of the 21st century. Part of our goal is to become a truly global foundation. We have long had separate international and domestic sections; but the processes of globalization mean it is sensible and timely for the Foundation to drop these distinctions and to seek a more integrated global approach to our grantmaking. By this we do not mean that we will work everywhere; rather, it implies global awareness, globally shared values, a capacity to learn and contribute in specific places which inform global learning, and, conversely, harnessing global policies, knowledge and resources to advance conditions in specific places. At the same time we have decided to focus our new strategies on "improving the lives and livelihoods of poor and excluded people throughout the world." The poor, both in the United States and around the globe, tend to suffer disproportionately from ill health, inadequate education and housing, and from environmental degradation. Their life expectancies and the quality of their lives are reduced by factors that are mostly understood and are preventable. Society, either consciously or unconsciously, creates barriers that prevent many people from gaining access to education, health care, jobs or promotion, and may, in some circumstances, deny them basic civ- il rights. Most important, we recognize that the world as a whole cannot advance if the poor are left out of the process. Our focus on improving people's lives and liveli- Photograph Excised Here hoods reflects our recognition of the importance of not trying to deal with problems in isolation. Food, health, jobs and culture are intertwined in people's lives. It is through individual lives and livelihoods that the forces of globalization work. This is where the global intersects with the local, and where we can best understand how to bring about beneficial change. We have also decided that for us to become a foundation that is global yet works on the ground, we need better focus and greater integration. Accordingly we have chosen four major program themes — Creativity & Culture, Food Security, Health Equity and Working Communities. These were selected because they build on current strengths and capitalize upon our institutional legacy. We have also designed a cross-theme — Global Inclusion — which is intended to bring integration and synergy to the themes. In order to ground the themes and the cross-theme, we have begun to invest in a selected set of regional activities — in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the West Coast of the United States. This will serve the twin purposes of harnessing global knowledge and resources to solve on-the-ground problems and to inform global perspectives with the rich diversity of local conditions. As part of our review we re-examined our history. We were struck by the many instances of how the Foundation and its grantees, almost single-handedly, were able to bring about major charge for the good in the world. The eradication of hookworm disease, the creation of modern public-health education and the Green Revolution (following its beginnings in Mexico in the 1940s, a joint venture with the Ford Foundation) are some well-known examples. © 2003 The Rockefeller Foundation 1999 ANNUAL REPORT The question we asked ourselves was; Could we now achieve future successes in a similar fashion? The answer is almost cer- tainly, no. Our endowment size, and hence our annual expenditures, while still among the top 10 of American foundations, is relatively small compared to some of the new foundations being established. In the United States, the unprecedented accumulation of wealth is spawning new foundations experimenting with fresh methods of philanthropic practice. It is also increasingly apparent that many of the global problems that we face today — feeding the world; controlling HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis; creating full employment; educating all for cit- izenship in plural societies; and stimulating creativity and cultural development — are highly complex and not susceptible to easy solutions. We are convinced that the only way we can continue to make a significant difference is through partnership. This means col- laborating with other like-minded foundations, as we have done now for many years. But, more important, it means playing a partnership role with the other key actors in our society — government, the private sector and the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). At various times in recent history, people have assumed that all their needs could be met either by government through the wel- fare state, by the private sector working through the market or by the endeavors of a multitude of NGOs. We know now, even if we did not before, that each of these actors is constrained in ways that prevent them achieving their theoretically possible goals, The answer lies in see- ing them as partners complementing each other in pursuit of a common set of goals. And I believe that the foundation community, because of its experience, independence and flexibility, has a unique role in stimulating and facilitating such partnerships. It is a process that can occur at all levels, from the local community to the sphere of international relations. For example, local community foundations can help bring together local government, business and NGOs to work on employment generation or school reform. Or large international assistance organizations can join with private-sector interests in bringing needed medicines and vaccines to markets that are in need of _, , /* _ . , , , Photograph Excised Here them, but which otherwise might be ignored. We can point to many successes that the Rockefeller Foundation already has had in creating such partnerships to address issues both in the United States and in other countries. They not only demonstrate the ability of such arrangements to multiply many times over the original investment, but show how active collaboration involving shared goals and complementary resources, skills and competencies can produce collective results that transcend those which the individual players could achieve on their own. It is our hopeful expectation that our new program structure, global perspective and willingness to join forces with other inter- ested players will allow us not only to continue work which has been successful, but to open doors of opportunity for finding solutions to the multidimensional issues that millions of people around the world confront daily.

Load more