FOUNDATIONS/GRANTS

CONTENTS:

• The W. Alton Jones Foundation
• The Rockefeller Foundation
• The Soros Foundations Network

THE W. ALTON JONES FOUNDATION

"Pete" Jones was a business leader who helped build Cities Service Company into a major oil and gas company. He established his foundation in 1944 for the betterment of mankind. He died in 1962.

The foundation's two major programs are the Sustainable World Program, which supports efforts to ensure that human activities do not erode the Earth's capacity to support living organisms and the Secure World Program, which seeks to build a secure world, free from the nuclear threat.

Both programs provide support at the national, local and grassroots level. For complete information, check out the Web site at

http://www.wajones.org/

THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION

The Rockefeller Foundation's approach to global challenges focuses on poor people's daily existence -- their lives and livelihoods -- and how the process of globalization can be turned to their advantage. The Foundation's program funding is focused and targeted among four themes of people's lives -- health, food, work and creative expression.

The Foundation has a long history of both creating new knowledge by employing the most up-to-date tools of science and technology and then disseminating that knowledge to ameliorate human suffering. Funding from the foundation has led to the eradication of hookworm, the development of a Yellow Fever vaccine and the modernization of developing country agriculture known as the Green Revolution.

The Foundation officers receive more than 12,000 proposals each year, 75 % of which cannot be considered because their purposes fall outside the foundation's program guidelines.

Full information on the foundation, including contact information is available at:

http://www.rockfound.org

THE SOROS FOUNDATIONS NETWORK

Philanthropist George Soros has funded many non-profits; together they are known as the Soros Foundations Network. At the center of this network are the national foundations, a group of organizations operating in over 30 countries around the world, principally in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union but also in Guatemala, Haiti and Southern Africa. All of the national foundations share the common mission of supporting the development of open society. The foundations operate and support initiatives concerned with arts and culture, children and youth, civil society development, economic reform, education, legal reform and public administration, media and communications, publishing and health care.

In the United States, The Open Society Institute (OSI) funds a series of youth initiatives, including the Urban Debate Program, which seeks to support the institutionalization of competitive high school debate in inner city school districts in New York City and around the country. OSI also funds the largest after-school program in New York City.

Organizations and individuals interested in applying for funding from the U.S. programs should submit a letter of inquiry as well as a request for complete application guidelines. The Center on Crime, Communities & Culture, the Emma Lazarus Fund, the Project on Death in America, and initiatives on reproductive health and choice and inner-city high school debate all award grants in their program areas.

The Web site is large and rather confusing, but worth a look at:

http://www.soros.org/

Maryrose Larkin