Funders Leaving the Field

http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/magazines/2004/SeptOct/Fundersleave.htm

Some of the larger and better-known foundations active in K-12 education during the 1990s appear to have shifted to other concerns in the past five years. A few of these have shifted their attention to pre-K education, while others have redirected their K-12 involvement away from grantmaking intended to directly affect student achievement in the classroom.

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts have made pre-K education funding their top priority involving the schooling of children. While the Foundation Center placed the Packard Foundation third on its list of the most generous contributors to K-12 education in 1998, Packard disappeared from the top 50 foundations in 2002. According to program officer Kathleen Reich, this is not coincidental. She explains that "over the past 18 months, we transitioned from more general support of child care and early education policy and practice to a strong focus on preschool for all." She adds that "several factors influenced our decision, most notably the compelling research about the importance of preschool, and the foundation's desire to focus its work in order to enable grantees to have the maximum impact in reaching program goals."

While Packard contributed well over $20 million to K-12 education causes in 1998, this figure declined to just over $2 million in FY 2003. Moreover, of the $2 million it gave in 2002 just 40 percent supported conventional K-12 reform efforts, while 60 percent went to music and arts programs. Reich confirmed the smaller emphasis on traditional K-12 academic improvement initiatives when she stated, "Currently, the Packard Foundation's K-12 funding is focused on promoting the growth and sustainability of high-quality afterschool programs."

The Pew Charitable Trusts provide another example of a traditionally strong K-12 supporter who has all but exited the field. Pew ranked fifth overall among foundations in K-12 funding for 1998, but by 2002 had dropped to fifteenth. Today, Pew's central education initiative is pre-K education, with K-12 education a clear second banana. Susan Urahn, director of the education program and Knowledge Resources department at Pew Charitable Trusts, confirms that the move away from K-12 is deliberate and that the main reason for such a shift in focus was, in a word, "efficacy." According to Urahn, Pew believes the best investment is in the early years, and so given Pew's "limited resources," pre-K became the main focus. "We are doing very little active K-12 education funding at this point," Urahn concludes.

Another large player in K-12 education, the Rockefeller Foundation, disappeared from the 2002 top-50 list after placing sixteenth in 1998, when the foundation gave $7 million in this area. Rockefeller reports it gave well under $5 million to K-12 during 2003, with 60 percent of this giving going to researchers, groups commemorating Brown v. Board of Education, or minority legal services groups. Rockefeller's "Working Communities Program," which in years past has served as the foundation's dispenser of K-12 monies, now cites its leading concern as "research and advocacy addressing the need for adequate financing for educational equity." In 2002, USA Today reported that "the Rockefeller Foundation had given $ 20 million over ten years to low-income schools but last year stopped that entirely to focus its money on research that will help lobbyists in state capitals force tax dollars to be more evenly divided among rich and poor districts."

-Michael T. Hartney