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Alfred P. Sloan Foundation New York City Grantmaking The ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION makes grants primarily to support original research and broad-based education related to science, technology, economic performance, and the quality of American life. The Foundation is unique in its focus on science, technology, and economic institutions—and the scholars and Mission Statement practitioners who work in these fields—as chief drivers of the nation’s health and prosperity. The Foundation has a deep-rooted belief that carefully reasoned systematic understanding of the forces of nature and society, when applied inventively and wisely, can lead to a better world for all. ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION Why New York City? 2 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center 4 Science 6 Education 8 SPOTLIGHT: Inside Schools 10 Economics 12 Technology 14 Theater 16 SPOTLIGHT: World Science Festival 18 Radio & Television 20 Table of Contents of Table Film 22 Culture 24 SPOTLIGHT: Sloan Public Service Awards 26 List of New York Grantees 28 NEW YORK CITY GRANTMAKING 1 ew York City and the Sloan Foundation have a long history together. Alfred P. Sloan Jr.’s family moved Nto Brooklyn when he was eleven. This is where he grew up and went to school before going to MIT. His first job out of college, as a draftsman for the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company, was right across the river in Harrison, NJ. Mr. Sloan lived in New York most of his life, ran General Motors from New York during the apex of his career, and chose New York as the home for the foundation that would bear his name and carry on his legacy. We’re still in the same Rockefeller Center offices that Alfred P. Sloan Jr. himself picked out. Any Foundation employee can walk into Mr. Sloan’s old office and look down on the bustle in Rockefeller Plaza just like he must have so many years ago. We owe a lot to New York. Our employees live here, work here, send their kids to New York City schools. Sloan Foundation President Paul L. Joskow, grew up here, and is a product of the New York City public education system. Our grantees are here, too. In fact, because New York boasts so many outstanding scientific, educational, and cultural institutions, many of our grants go to projects or organiza- tions that operate out of the City, supporting, for example, the work of scientists at Columbia, the Museum of Natural Why New York City? York New Why History, the New York Botanical Garden, Rockefeller University, economists at NYU, students and researchers at CUNY, television and radio programming at WNYC and WNET. About 25 percent of the Foundation’s annual grant budget is spent in and around New York, more than $110 million since 2008 alone. In addition to the many grants that go to New York institutions through the Foundation’s research and education grants programs, the Foundation has a Civic Initiatives program that looks for unique opportunities to benefit the City in ways consistent with the Foundation’s mission to support research and education in the natural sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics. Since 2008, the Foundation’s Civic Initiatives program has made grants totaling nearly $20 million. New York City is our home. And like every resident, it’s our responsibility to take care of it and help it thrive. It’s a responsibility we take seriously. 2 ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION By The Numbers 2008–2013 Number of Grants Approved 1802 100% Grants Approved to NY State Institutions 277 15.4% Grants Approved to NY City Institutions 197 10.9% Total $ in Grants Approved $ 447,791,656 100% Total $ in Grants Approved to $ 110,610,459 24.7% NY State Institutions Total $ in Grants Approved to $ 66,409,597 14.8% NY City Institutions Total $ in Grants Approved through $ 19,090,863 4.3% the Civic Initiatives program Grant figures are from the period 1/1/2008 through 10/21/2013 NEW YORK CITY GRANTMAKING 3 t is a testament to Alfred P. Sloan’s extraordinary vision that some of the contributions for which the Foundation Iis most well-known are those Mr. Sloan himself made early in the Foundation’s history. Nothing illustrates this so clearly as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, the premier cancer research and treatment facility in the world. In 1945, Mr. Sloan spearheaded an initiative to make New York City the home to a first-class research center devoted to beating cancer. Sloan’s interest in the project was sparked by his longtime friendship with Charles Kettering, whose name the hospital also bears. Kettering, a brilliant scientist and head of the research division of General Motors, was, in Sloan’s eyes, one of the men primarily responsible for the company’s success during his tenure as Chairman and CEO. Kettering was keenly interested in cancer, having lost his sister to the disease, and together the two men set out to create the largest private research institution devoted to ending the scourge of the disease. Sloan constructed and equipped a 13-story facility to house research into the causes, prevention, and cure of cancer and related diseases. Over the next 35 years, the facility, originally the independent Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research (which later merged with Memorial Hospital for Cancer to become the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) would receive some $67 million dollars from Sloan himself, from the Foundation, and—upon his death in 1966—from Sloan’s estate to fund the construction of the Institute’s facilities and labs, to defray operating expenses, to train nurses and other staff, and to support research. Adjusting for inflation, Mr. Sloan’s contributions to Sloan- Kettering amounted to $500 million at 2013 price levels. The results speak for themselves. Today, people from all over the world come to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center seeking the very best cancer treatment modern medicine has to offer. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Y Photo courtesy of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Sloan-Kettering Memorial 4 ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION NEW YORK CITY GRANTMAKING 5 At the core of the New York Genome Center Sloan Foundation’s SUPPORTED SINCE: 2012 FUNDS COMMITTED: $3,000,000 mission is raising the quality of American The New York Genome Center is a life through accelerat- state-of-the-art genomic research and sequencing center that aims to trans- ing breakthroughs in form biological and biomedical research our scientific under- through the creation of one of the largest Science standing of the world. bioinformatics and genomics facilities An organization with in North America. A pioneering effort in scientific collaboration, the Center that mission could not was created through the cooperation pick a better place to of nearly every major medical and set down roots than educational research facility in the New York City. Home city, allowing New York’s hospitals, universities, and research labs to to some of the finest pool resources, share equipment, and scientific and educa- collaborate on research projects. The tional institutions in Center promises to turn New York into the world, New York an international leader in the rapidly expanding field of genomic research is where some of the and accelerate breakthroughs across most exciting science the biological sciences. in America happens. A scientist at work at the new Manhattan headquarters of the New York Genome Center. The center estimates it will create hundreds of new jobs in the rapidly growing fields of genomics and bioinformatics. Photo courtesy of the New York Genome Center. 6 ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION American Museum of Natural City University of New York History & the New York SUPPORTED SINCE: 2011 Botanical Garden FUNDS COMMITTED: $1,200,000 SUPPORTED SINCE: 2006 The Foundation is a proud supporter of FUNDS COMMITTED: $2,628,000 CUNY’s Decade of Science, a ten-year With Sloan support the American initiative to position CUNY as a leading Museum of Natural History and the New national scientific research institution York Botanical Garden have become world by strengthening and expanding its leaders in the field of DNA barcoding, research programs and educational the use of short DNA sequences to quick- offerings in science. Foundation grants ly, cheaply, and accurately identify plant support two exciting projects at CUNY: and animal species. Sloan has supported a fellowship program that provides efforts to develop barcoding technology, recognition and crucial research construct comprehensive databases of support to promising early-career sci- DNA barcodes, and demonstrate the vast entists, allowing CUNY to attract and array of important uses to which barcod- retain first-class scientific talent, and ing can be put. Sloan-funded barcoding a program that enriches the CUNY projects have led to many noteworthy educational program by providing discoveries about products for sale in New CUNY undergraduates with summer York, including studies showing one fourth research opportunities in New York of the city’s sushi mislabeled, Mississippi City labs, allowing talented students Paddlefish marketed as sturgeon caviar, to gain real life experience doing and the surreptitious sale of monkey, lion, real science. cane rat, and python meat in New York City restaurants and butcher shops. The New York Botanical Garden. The CUNY Graduate Center at 5th Avenue and 34th Street. Photo courtesy of Flickr user LorenzoSantos. Photo courtesy of David Shankbone. (CC BY-SA 3.0) (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) NEW YORK CITY GRANTMAKING 7 Sloan’s mission in National Action Council for education is to in- Minorities in Engineering (NACME) SUPPORTED SINCE: 2001 crease the quality and FUNDS COMMITTED: $48,700,000 diversity of higher education in STEM For more than a decade, NACME has been the chief administrator of the fields.

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