California’s long-standing image of itself as a civic innovator has grown starkly at odds with life in the Golden State. Some salient statistics help tell the tale: California ranked forty-eighth on recent national tests of eighth graders’ reading skills and forty-fifth on math tests.1 A science assessment found California’s eighth-grade students scoring the third lowest …
“Foundations” is a series of informal question-and-answer sessions with employees and others affiliated with The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to give them an opportunity to explain their work. Lawrence Mendenhall is general counsel and corporate secretary for the Hewlett Foundation. Before coming here last fall, Mendenhall was deputy director of legal affairs at The …
Lou Calcagno is a dairyman and farmer who has lived and worked in Monterey County his entire life. He also is someone with an intuitive sense of the importance of the arts in his life. “Every farmer knows what it’s like to be an artist,” Calcagno told a gathering on arts education earlier this year. …
The tag line for the Environmental Working Group’s Web site is “The Power of Information,” and it really lives up to its billing. Whether you want to know more about drilling and mining on public lands or something closer to home – like how to go green as a parent – the site brims with …
DAKAR, Senegal – Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced US$30 million in grants to 24 think tanks in East and West Africa. The Think Tank Initiative (TTI) will support independent policy think tanks in developing countries, enabling them to provide sound …
Nonprofit organizations generate a wealth of research on a variety of complex social issues that can help us understand the world around us. And they’re eager to share. But you have to know where to look. Finding this research – submerged in many nonprofit Web sites – can require huge effort, even for experienced navigators. …
In this special installment of the “Foundations” series, Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest discusses the impact of the current economic crisis on the Foundation and its grantees. What impact has the current economic crisis had on the Hewlett Foundation’s endowment? Like virtually everyone who participates in the markets, from Warren Buffett to the individual owner …
In a major conservation victory for America’s remaining pristine lands, the federal government this spring extended wilderness protection to 2.1 million additional acres of federal holdings – the largest such expansion in more than a decade. The new wilderness designation, signed into law by President Barack Obama in March, marks the first major environmental action …
Money Well Spent, Paul Brest and Hal Harvey’s book on strategic philanthropy, won the 2009 Skystone Ryan Research Prize, awarded by the Association of Fundraising Professionals Research Council. The book was selected for its focus on providing both donors and nonprofits insight on developing strategies that lead to concrete results. It was recognized for …
Dear Friends, As one of the most diverse states in the nation, California’s future depends significantly on the success of the communities of color that together comprise a majority of its population. The current economic hardships make it even more urgent to strengthen the nonprofit organizations that serve these communities. To that end, the Packard, …