Scope and arrangement
The Irene Diamond Fund records date from 1994 to 2012 and document the organization's annual grant program. The records consist of annual reports, correspondence, financial audits, memorandum, printed material on grantee organizations, press clippings, and grant program reports. While the majority of the collection pertains to grant awardees, there is a limited amount of documentation on rejected grant applicants.
The collection is organized into two series. Series I: Grantees consists of chronological files for grants funded between 1994 and 2012. Grantees files include annual appeals, award letters with descriptions of the grant-funded project, agreements between the fund and the grantee organizations, grant evaluation reports, and one video recording. Series II: Administrative Files contains office correspondence, including award letters, rejection letters, and responses to general inquiries, as well as spreadsheets listing awarded and rejected projects throughout the lifespan of the fund.
The Irene Diamond Fund records are arranged in two series:
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1994-2012
Series I contains files for grantee organizations supported by the fund between 1994 and 2010. Grantee files contain funding checks; annual appeals, award letters, and other correspondence; executed grant agreements; documentation about the grantee organization; reports on the grant project; and grant data worksheets. Grant evaluation reports, submitted at six months and at the conclusion of the funding year, contain an organization's self-evaluation of the grant project and details on how the funds were used in the project budget. Grant data worksheets were generated by the fund's database system, and provide the current funding status for the grantee organization, the fund's internal notes on the project, a payment schedule, and recommendations on file such as considerations for renewal. Documentation about the grantee organization, which was both submitted with reports and collected by fund staff, includes newsletters, clippings, annual reports, financial audits, program brochures, and proof of the organization's non-profit tax status. If the fund elected to support multiple programs within an institution over one funding year (e.g. a general support grant and a fellowship program grant), award letters, grant agreements, reports, and grant data worksheets are present for each grant program.
This series also includes one video recording from the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center's 2009 Irene Diamond Award Gala. The short film discusses Mrs. Diamond's interest in AIDS research and the impact of the research center's innovations on AIDS treatment. The video recording is unavailable for use pending preservation transfer.
Files in this series are arranged chronologically by grant year, then alphabetically by organization name within each year. Multiple files for perennially funded organizations are therefore found throughout the series.
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1986, 1996-2010
Series II primarily consists of the fund's outgoing correspondence chronological file, but also includes documentation about the fund's grant program as a whole. The chronological file is divided between grantees and rejected applicants. Grantees files contain grant award letters, check enclosure letters, and unsigned grant agreements. Other administrative correspondence, such as responses to general inquiries, are interfiled with grantees letters, though sporadically. Rejected Applicants files hold all outgoing rejection letters between 1998 and 2001, as well as a spreadsheet listing rejected applicants from 2002 to 2011. Grant Commitments consists of a spreadsheet of the fund's grant disbursements between 1994 and 2010, listing payee organization, project description, program area (e.g. music, dance, health), followed by an annual payment amount. The grant commitments spreadsheet is a helpful reference tool for its detailed chronological overview of the fund's grant awards from the organization's founding to its final years. Lastly, this series includes a photograph of Irene Diamond and resolution of appreciation both relating to the Aaron Diamond Foundation's contributions to the New York Public Library's children's collections.