Hewlett Foundation 2009 Annual Report Making grants to solve social and environmental problems, at home and around the world. EDUCATION | ENVIRONMENT | GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PERFORMING ARTS | PHILANTHROPY | POPULATION | SPECIAL PROJECTS About Us | Board and Officers | Staff About the Foundation The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1967 to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. The Hewlett Foundation At A Glance (as of December 31, 2009) Total Assets: $6.87 billion Total dollar amount of grants and gifts awarded in 2009: $235,100,000 Total dollar amount of grants and gifts disbursed in 2009: $345,190,721 Total number of grants and gifts awarded in 2009: 596 Average grant amount in 2009: $397,225 Median grant amount in 2009: $150,000 Number of employees: 104 This year, President Paul Brest’s essay focuses on the newly announced integrated Global Development and Population Program. After more than a year of consultation and planning, the Global Development Program and the Population Program started taking steps to integrate their work into a unified program, recognizing that the work they conduct is mutually beneficial and reinforcing. You can read the essay and read more about the program integration on the next pages. Integrating The Foundation's Global Development and Population Programs* President's Statement - 2009 Annual Report In March 2010, after more than a year's intensive work by the Hewlett Foundation's staff and Board of Directors, the Foundation decided to combine its Global Development and Population programs into a single program. Building on the traditions and commitments of its antecedents, the new program seeks to improve the lives of the world's most vulnerable people, especially women and girls, through more accountable governance, improved reproductive health and rights, access to quality education, and better economic opportunities. This essay describes the background of the Board's decision. History of the Population Program Population was prominent among the issues that animated Bill and Flora Hewlett from the earliest days of the Foundation, with grants to Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Association of San Francisco dating back to 1967. At that time, the Foundation was concerned about the disastrous effects of unbridled population growth, and supported family planning as a specific method to combat this problem. In 1977, under the presidency of Roger W. Heyns, the Foundation formally established four programs, all of which remain to this day: Arts and Humanities (now Performing Arts), Education, Environment, and Population. Anne Firth Murray, the first program officer for Population, played a major role in defining its focus: the provision of family planning both domestically and globally. When the Hewlett Foundation was established, population growth was a problem of global dimensions. Economic development, the increased availability of family planning (aided in part by Hewlett and other foundations), and other forces effectively helped reduce population growth over the next half century. (Figures 1 to 4 illustrate these dramatic changes in global demography.) In the twenty-first century, fertility rates remain high mainly in sub-Saharan Africa and other pockets of extreme poverty. This same period also saw a transformation in global consciousness about issues of reproductive health and rights, which crystallized in 1994 in the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt. The resulting Programme of Action links population, women's well-being, and development as essential means for combating poverty and stabilizing population growth.2 The Programme of Action further recognized the intrinsic value of reproductive rights and the need to protect them in all countries, regardless of their rates of population growth. Under the successive leadership3 of Faith Mitchell (1987 to 1992), Nancy Moss (1993 to 1995), Joseph Speidel (1995 to 2002), and Sara Seims (2003 to the present), the Population Program strengthened its commitment to family planning and reproductive health because of their benefits to individuals, societies, and the entire global community. The Program's work focused increasingly on sub-Saharan Africa, where fertility rates remained, and still remain, high. Under Ms. Seims' direction, the Program undertook a major review of its overall strategies. This led to the adoption of the mutually reinforcing goals of "promoting and protecting reproductive health and rights and helping governments stabilize their populations in ways that maximize human well-being and sustain the environment." The Program also supported studies of the relationship between fertility rates and access to quality education, and launched a research initiative to understand the complex relationship between family planning and reproductive health on the one hand, and poverty and economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa on the other. Emergence of the Global Development Program While Population has been among the Foundation's core programs since its origin, grantmaking in the broader arena of global development emerged only in the past decade. In 2002, the Board of Directors approved a three-year exploratory initiative led by Smita Singh to identify international problems that the Foundation could meaningfully address. The initiative made grants in areas including foreign aid effectiveness and agricultural trade reform; journalism, media, and public education about global current affairs; research and policy analysis on development and security concerns; and in-country philanthropy. After initial explorations, the initiative concentrated mainly on challenges facing the developing world. After three years of promising grantmaking, the Board authorized the development of a new Global Development Program, headed by Ms. Singh, with the mission of "improving the lives and livelihoods of people in developing countries, particularly those living on less than $2 a day." After intense research and consultation, the Program developed a strategic plan that was approved by the Board in 2007. It included a set of initiatives designed to overcome significant barriers to equitable growth: • Increasing the transparency and accountability of public spending in order to improve basic services. • Expanding agricultural markets for small farmers. • Improving educational outcomes for children in developing countries. In addition, recognizing the importance of developing countries' having independent capacity for policy analysis, the Program supported indigenous policy research institutions and think tanks throughout the developing world. Although a young program, Global Development quickly gained influence on issues such as reforming development assistance practices, making aid more transparent and accountable, and refocusing global attention on education in developing countries from mere access to quality and outcomes. The Program collaborated in creating the Revenue Watch Institute and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and played a major role in exposing European Union agricultural subsidies and Mexican budget practices to public scrutiny. Collaboration between the Programs Virtually since its beginning, the Foundation has been aware of the factors that connect population and reproductive health issues with the broader global development agenda. Early on, Population's Anne Firth Murray had noted that fertility was affected by a country's stage of economic development and by women's access to education and employment: "We had to provide family planning services for women so they had [the] choice to limit their families, and we also had to develop economically and educationally so people would see the value of having fewer children and . understand that if they could have healthy children, they didn't need to have ten in order to have three or four survive." The emergence of the Global Development Program soon led to collaborations with the Population Program that built on these connections. For example, they undertook a joint initiative on Quality Education in Developing Countries, believing that improved learning outcomes in developing countries would have multiple benefits for economic development, health, individual well-being, and fertility. Given the direct links between education and better quality of life for all, and particularly between girls' education and lower fertility rates, the Foundation saw investment in this initiative as a way to further its overarching goals. Learning from Global Development's work on transparency and accountability, Population launched an initiative for "More Money, Well Spent" on family planning. This effort supports efforts to allocate family planning and reproductive health resources more efficiently and effectively. The two programs seek to ensure that poor people receive high-quality basic services, including clean water, education, and reproductive health. Integrating the Programs As we saw these convergences, Sara Seims, Smita Singh, and I began asking whether the Foundation's goals might be more effectively reached by moving beyond informal collaboration between the programs to formally combining them. We saw particular benefits from placing population issues within the broader global development frame. We also recognized that because both program directors were leaving the Foundation within the coming year and a half, this was an opportune time