- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"97.37 linear feet", "unit"=>"linear feet"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"231 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}], "supress_display"=>true}
- unitid
-
{"value"=>"MssCol 18363", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"18363", "type"=>"local_mss"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1909-2009", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1909/2009"}
- date_inclusive_start
-
1909
- date_inclusive_end
-
2009
- keydate
-
1909
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"New York Foundation records"}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">The New York Public Library. <span class=\"subarea\">Manuscripts and Archives Division</span></span> <div class=\"address\"><span class=\"addressline\">New York, New York</span></div>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"The New York Foundation is a philanthropic foundation, established in New York City in 1909 for the purpose of providing financial support towards \"altruistic purposes, charitable, benevolent, educational, or otherwise.\" For over a century, the Foundation has awarded grants to charitable and non-profit organizations in numerous fields, including public health, workers' rights, literacy, child welfare, AIDS research and treatment, women's suffrage, racial equity, legal aid, the alleviation of poverty, civil rights, immigrants' rights, and education reform, among many others. Although some earlier grants supported programs in other areas of the country, the bulk of the Foundation's grants since 1975 have been awarded to organizations in New York City, with a focus on grassroots community organizations."}
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"<p>New York Foundation records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library</p>"}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"New York Foundation", "type"=>"corpname"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>The New York Foundation, one of the first foundations created in the United States, was established in 1909 with a gift of $1 million from Alfred M. Heinsheimer. This money was a bequest from his brother Louis, originally left to the Jewish charities of New York on the condition that they federate within a year of Louis' death. When they failed to do so, the money reverted to Alfred, who created the New York Foundation as an alternate means to carry out his brother's wish. The Foundation's charter states its objective as the distribution of income \"to altruistic purposes, charitable, benevolent, educational or otherwise, within the United States of America, as the trustees of said corporation may determine.\" This broad mandate proved beneficial over the first century of the Foundation's existence, allowing the Trustees to support organizations in diverse fields and to periodically reassess and revise their funding priorities. Heinsheimer's initial gift was supplemented by two others: a gift of $2.4 million from Lionel J. Salomon, restricted broadly to benefit the young and the elderly, and $6 million from the Estate of Alfred M. Heinsheimer following his death in 1929. In the first century of its existence, the New York Foundation awarded over $133 million in grants, and it continues to actively support charitable and non-profit organizations, with an emphasis on advocacy and community organizing for residents of disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods in New York City.</p> <p>Founding chairman Jacob H. Schiff and first president Morris Loeb, along with trustees Isaac Seligman and Paul M. Warburg, shared a belief that New Yorkers, given the appropriate tools and means, could change their own neighborhoods and improve their lives. By providing grants to grassroots community organizations, they hoped to enable and encourage positive social reform. This emphasis on small, local organizations has been consistent throughout the Foundation's history, and its relatively small size and broad mandate allow it the flexibility to award grants to organizations responding to contemporary problems which have not yet warranted the attention of larger foundations. It particularly supports programs emerging from communities where existing services or institutions do not reach, neighborhoods taking action for their own improvement, and groups organizing to create a collective voice in order to be heard. Often these are start-up grants to new and untested programs. From its founding year into the present, the New York Foundation has provided grants to fund organizations in the fields of affordable housing, fair employment, health care and public health, workers' rights, law and criminal justice, literacy, child welfare, AIDS research and treatment, women's suffrage, racial equity, legal aid, the alleviation of poverty, civil rights, immigrants' rights, education reform, prison reform, and a myriad of other social concerns. In addition, the Foundation has supported cultural and educational institutions in and around New York City. Although the Foundation has awarded grants to some organizations which have become well established, it has also been the first and only funder for others.</p> <p>For the first forty-five years of its existence, the New York Foundation operated without paid staff. Its trustees, largely drawn from the close-knit German Jewish families of New York and including many members and associates of the Schiff, Seligman, and Warburg families, worked without pay and often also agreed to serve on the boards of organizations they funded. They investigated grant requests as they were submitted, and the grants they awarded were largely shaped by their own interests, concerns, and expertise.</p> <p>Several of the Foundation's earliest grants supported healthcare, from a 1910 grant to the Henry Street Settlement in support of a visiting nurse service (a program which continues) to the 1930 formation of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, established to research potential economic solutions to the escalating cost of health care. In addition, the Foundation has awarded grants to those researching and addressing specific health issues, including tuberculosis, polio, venereal disease (cloaked as \"social hygiene\"), mental health, maternity and infant care, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and a range of other diseases and disabilities. The Foundation has also extensively supported medical research and organizations which provide access to health care for the underserved and impoverished, and to improve the quality of existing care. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Foundation actively supported organizations addressing the personal and social concerns surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York.</p> <p>The Foundation has funded many organizations committed to refugee and immigrant services, notably in the 1930s and 1940s as Jewish refugees fled Europe and needed assistance resettling and securing employment in the United States. Significant grants were awarded to the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Physicians, the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, and the National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany, in addition to dozens of smaller refugee service organizations. In more recent years, Foundation money has been allocated to groups advocating for immigrant populations in New York City, including programs committed to improving the housing and employment opportunities of African, Arab, Asian, Brazilian, Central American, Chinese, Filipino, Haitian, Korean, and Mexican communities, among others.</p> <p>Health care and immigrant and refugee services are only two areas among many in which the New York Foundation has been active over the past century. Any attempt at comprehensive description of all awarded grants would fall short, as grantees range from quilters in the American South during the Civil Rights movement to anthropologist Franz Boas, in support of his work to disprove pseudo-scientific claims of racial inferiority promoted by anti-Semites in the 1930s.</p>"}
- custodhist
-
{"value"=>"<p>These records came directly to NYPL from the New York Foundation in 2010. Many of them had been stored off-site for years and appear to have been occasionally recalled from storage for consultation.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The bulk of the collection consists of grant files which are arranged alphabetically. Materials in these files include grant proposals, applications for grant renewals, correspondence between grantees and New York Foundation staff, printed matter submitted by applicants (including annual reports, press coverage, newsletters, and other materials in support of their application), interim and final reports, internal memoranda, and other records related to the awarding and administration of grants. In most cases, recent files contain more extensive documentation than earlier files. The collection also includes historical materials, meeting minutes and agendas, and files related to the Foundation's involvement with the Cooperative Assistance Fund.</p> <p>The collection contains records related to each organization the Foundation funded, as well as some of those it chose not to fund. These records not only document the individual organizations, communities, and programs which benefitted from grants, but also - when considered in the aggregate - provide insight into the social, cultural, educational, political, and medical issues which New Yorkers and others faced in the course of the twentieth century. They provide a window onto an expansive range of neighborhoods, ethnicities, and under-documented groups, and in many instances they reveal the effects of broader events (Civil Rights activism, the Reagan administration's attempt at \"welfare reform,\" the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the September 11 attacks, to name only a few) on local communities of people and grassroots organizations.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The New York Foundation records are arranged in four series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/18363#c137901'>Series I: Historical Materials</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1909-2003</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Series I contains legal documents related to the establishment of the New York Foundation in 1909 and subsequent changes to its governance and funding. Included are wills, an act of incorporation, deeds of trust, agreements, a charter, and various iterations of the Foundation's by-laws and their amendments. In addition, the series contains multiple edited and annotated typescripts of two unpublished histories of the Foundation, written by former secretary Jerome H. Schloss and former executive director Sol Markoff, as well as a printed copy of Executive Director Madeline Lee's <span class=\"title\">Listening at the Grassroots: Reflections on 25 Years of Grantmaking in the World's Greatest Cit</span>y. Materials are arranged chronologically.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/18363#c137932'>Series II: Board of Trustees and Committee Records</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1909-2009</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Series II contains minutes from meetings held by the New York Foundation's Board of Trustees from 1909 through 2005, as well as indices to the minutes from 1909-1948 and 1956-1970. Early meeting minutes often include copies of pertinent legal documents. Although in recent years the Board of Trustees has held three regularly scheduled meetings each year, in earlier years meetings were held more frequently, as there were no paid staff and the Foundation's operation was entirely dependent on the trustees. Various committees (ad hoc and standing) hold meetings in addition to those of the full board. Minutes from committee meetings are also in this series, as are files related to breakfasts held by the Nominating Committee in 1981 and 1982 to meet potential future trustees.</p> <p>Beginning in 1974, the Foundation distributed packets to Trustees in advance of meetings as preparatory reading. These packets include agendas as well as so-called \"indexes of recommended grants.\" These indexes contain extensive information about the applications to be reviewed and decided upon at each meeting, including those which were not ultimately funded.</p> <p>This series includes annual reports compiled by the Foundation's Trustees between 1913 and 1955 and published reports (annual, biannual, and multi-annual) from 1949 through 2007. There are also correspondence files for some Trustees. It should be noted that these files are not comprehensive and sometimes contain correspondence and clippings about a Trustee rather than with him or her.</p> <p> All materials in Series II are arranged chronologically except the Trustee correspondence, which is arranged alphabetically by surname.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/18363#c138161'>Series III: Cooperative Assistance Fund</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1968-1987</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Series III is composed of files related to the New York Foundation's participation in the Cooperative Assistance Fund (CAF) between 1968 and 1987. The CAF, established in Washington, D.C. in 1968, was a consortium of foundations which contributed funds to an investment pool. The profits generated from these investments were used to support development in disadvantaged and low-income communities, particularly in the urban North and rural South. This type of investment, now commonly known as a program-related investment (PRI), was innovative when begun by the CAF in in 1968. The New York Foundation ended its involvement with the CAF in 1987.</p> <p>Files in this series are arranged chronologically and contain correspondence, printed materials, meeting minutes, and agendas. Of note are materials related to the New York Foundation's 1987 decision to terminate involvement in the CAF and to donate its remaining investments to the Fund rather than withdraw them.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/18363#c138186'>Series IV: Grant Records</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1909-2006</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The grant records comprise the bulk of the collection and contain extensive documentation of the Foundation's grant making activities over almost a century. They include grant files, a card file, a ledger, and files related to small grants the Foundation awarded to select grantees for specific purposes. Although in earlier years programs were sometimes funded for many consecutive years, the renewal procedure subsequently became more formalized, requiring grantees to apply for renewal of their grant each year, for up to five years. Occasionally grants were canceled due to the grantees' failure to submit timely reports or for inappropriate use of funds. It should be noted that many organizations which received Foundation support underwent one, or several, name changes. Folder titles have not been changed, so researchers should look for files under all known names of an organization. Also, some folder titles include an approval number (e.g. #811) which was used internally to keep track of which applications were awarded grants. These can be cross-referenced with related entries in the card file and ledger, also in this series.</p> <p>The grant files are arranged alphabetically. It should be noted that personal names, or organizations named after individuals, were alternately alphabetized by forename or surname, so both possible alphabetical locations should be checked. The grant files include some or all of the following: copies of applicants' verification of tax-exempt status (Internal Revenue Service forms), applications for grant funding and renewal, signed grant agreements, correspondence between grantees and Foundation staff, printed materials about the applicants (newspaper clippings, annual reports, letters of recommendation, flyers, brochures, photographs), interim and final progress reports, and other records related to the awarding and administration of grants.</p> <p>The grant files may hold less formal documentation of grantees' accomplishments and setbacks, including anecdotal accounts about their programs. New York Foundation staff conduct site visits periodically, and their notes and feedback from those visits are often placed in the files. Grant applications and interim reports provide extensive information about the development of strategies and techniques to address particular social problems. The grant files also include files for intermediary agencies whom the Foundation paid to provide training and other services to grantees, including Arete, Brooklyn in Touch, the Non-Profit Computer Exchange, Infoshare, Cause Effective, Community Resource Exchange, and Accountants for the Public Interest. This series also contains a card file used to track applications and grants awarded; a ledger with entries for each applicant between 1933 and 1960, noting approvals and amounts granted; records from conferences held in the 1980s to support grantees; and files related to special small grants which supplemented some grantees' funding and provided specific training and support. These special grants include Organizer's Expense Account (OEA) grants, which covered incidental expenses of community organizing, national travel to conferences, training, and retreats for joint strategizing; Summer Internship in Community Organizing (SICO) grants, which supported 10-week internships in community organizing for young people between the ages of 16 and 23; and Technical Assistance Grants, which helped defray the cost of hands-on consulting help in areas including public relations, fundraising, special events, planning, and technology. Also included are files concerning Director's Discretionary Grants (DDGs), most often awarded when an organization faced unexpected, severe economic crisis, and files about Summer Youth Programs. Records of these smaller grants are filed chronologically, with files from each year alphabetized.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p>The New York Foundation records are organized in the following series:</p> <ul> <li>Series I: Historical Materials, 1909-2003</li> <li>Series II: Board of Trustees and Committee Records, 1909-2009</li> <li>Series III: Cooperative Assistance Fund, 1968-1987</li> <li>Series IV: Grant Records, 1909-2006</li></ul>", "supress_display"=>true}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Donated by New York Foundation, 2010</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Compiled by Laura Morris.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p>The New York Foundation records were arranged into series based on their function and/or creators. Grant files which had been sent to off-site storage in intervals were reintegrated and alphabetized as a single unit. Records containing confidential personal information, including Social Security Numbers and financial records, were discarded. Duplicate materials were also discarded. Board of Trustee meeting minutes which were donated as electronic PDF files were printed and are now in the collection in hard copy.</p>"}
- userestrict
-
{"value"=>"<p>Copyright for documents created by New York Foundation staff has been transferred to NYPL.</p>"}
- relatedmaterial
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"archref\">Aaron Diamond Foundation records, 1955-2001. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">AIDS and Adolescents Network of New York records, 1987-1999. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Committee of Fourteen records, 1905-1932. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars records. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Environmental Action Coalition records. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Goddard-Riverside Community Center Records, 1854-1994. Columbia University Rare Books & Manuscripts Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Hudson Guild records, 1896-1990s. Columbia University Rare Books & Manuscripts Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Jacob A. Riis Neighborhood Settlement Records, 1891-1990. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">NYPIRG Straphangers Campaign records, 1962-2007 (bulk 1979-2006). Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">People With AIDS Coalition records, 1987-1993. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">People's Institute records. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center Records, 1959-1995. Columbia University Rare Books & Manuscripts Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Travelers Aid Society of New York Records, 1917-1979. New York Historical Society.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Vincent Astor Foundation records, ca.1900-1998. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Visiting Nurse Service of New York records, 1889-2007. Columbia University Health Sciences Library.</span> <span class=\"archref\">Women's Prison Association of New York records, 1845-1983. Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.</span>"}
- extent_statement
-
97.37 linear feet (231 boxes)
- date_start
-
1909
- date_end
-
2009