Town Creek Foundation

[Bill Scheurer]

Town Creek Foundation invests between $400,000-500,000 per year in their “promoting peace” category. For the past four years these contributions have generally gone to a cluster of 8 to 10 organizations, including Peace Action, FCNL, National Priorities Project, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, and Nuclear Watch New Mexico as regular grantees.

Both the foundation and all of their grantees are active members of the Peace and Security Initiative coalition which I have personally participated in for years but only recently with the Beyond War association. I know the leaders of many of their grantee organizations fairly well and they know me. However, I have only met the Town Creek president and executive director a couple times and they probably do not know me. None of them really know much if anything about Beyond War yet.

This is important because a premature letter of inquiry could prejudice our chances with them for a couple years. Their website says the following in this regard:

“Organizations that have not been invited to submit a full proposal may resubmit a letter of inquiry in subsequent grant cycles. Unless something significant has changed in the work or in our priorities however, there is little reason to believe that a subsequent submission will be successful.”

This suggests it may be a wiser course to hold off submitting in this cycle until we have formed a stronger relationship with them and got a sense of their timing and plans for new grantees?

Whenever we do decide to submit our first letter of inquiry to them we also must decide which “project” to attach to our request. Possibilities include the library display project, a marketing plan for the forthcoming book, our curriculum development plans, and a possible public opinion poll program.

They concentrate their “promoting peace” grantmaking in two areas:

• promoting a richer and more well informed public debate about national security policy especially as it is reflected in federal budget priorities, and
• reducing the risks posed by nuclear and chemical weapons by promoting the elimination of nuclear weapons, the responsible management of existing nuclear facilities, the responsible disposal of existing nuclear and chemical weapons, and the strengthening of arms control programs and policies.

This and an analysis of their current grantees suggests to me a focus on “think tank” and advocacy work in policy areas with a strong national security and nuclear connection. Our work is more in the nature of personal and public education. It is important for us to understand this distinction in approaching them. Our challenge will be to determine which one of our projects can be packaged in such as way as to have the strongest possible nexus to their goals. Whatever we choose needs a strong nuclear connection.

The Board Fundraising Committee needs to decide if we submit a letter of inquiry now and what that inquiry would focus on. My recommendation would be to wait until later and work on developing our relationship with them and on learning how to package our programs in line with their priorities. I do not have a strong opinion in this direction, but more of a mild leaning. Either way is fine with me.

[Winslow Myers]

I can see from your prudent description that delay might make sense. But if we described ourselves clearly as an organization that needed to support teams in the field, could we structure a proposal around travel expenses for you and Leonora--or even her salary? We could emphasize the 'policy' side of our curriculum (abolition, and the four alternatives to war--non-violent conflict resolution, collaboration, support for international law, and humanitarian foreign aid, as opposed to the personal change side.

[Bill Scheurer]

My sense is that their "policy" focus is more about developing new content to support the debate, rather than helping to spread the message to new people. All these groups do analyses, position papers, scorecards, information databases, legislative advocacy, etc. None of that is within our scope. That is why something like the public opinion polling program concept might attract their interest because it would be new content. This is what they mean by "promoting a richer and more well informed public debate" on security and nuclear issues.

[Bill Scheurer]

Minalee,

Thanks! I agree completely with you that grants are all about relationships. In the case of Town Creek they make it expressly clear that they do not want phone calls, emails or visits outside their established letter of inquiry process. That is why the relationship needs to be cultivated organically by getting to know each other in settings outside the structured grantor/grantee application process, through meeting and working with them at places like PSI and elsewhere.

Bill
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From: Minalee Saks [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 5:49 PM
Subject: RE: grant possibility - Town Creek Foundation

Hello all,

My experience in securing large grants of this type is that it almost always takes behind the scenes work to build a relationship with the foundation before asking for anything. I suggest a personal visit if possible, or at least scheduling a phone visit, with either the E.D. or President, whoever is more approachable, to orient them to the work Beyond War is doing. It helps to ask what part of the work is most interesting to them and how it may fit into their vision of what they want to accomplish.

I just had such a conversation with a foundation director, who helped me understand their constraints, preferences, concerns, timelines, and range of funding for a potential project.

Good luck,

Minalee

[Anne Millhollen]

I agree that it may be precipitous to apply for this grant cycle. I would suggest waiting for the next cycle too. That would allow us to finish evaluating books and creating brochures if we were to apply for the Library Project.

In terms of their priorities, I reacted to what they said by seeing several connections with the Library Project.
1. Our "War Is Obsolete" category emphasizes that nuclear armaments are the major reason to view war as obsolete. Our book in the Core List within that category is the Seventh Decade which focuses on the nuclear issue.
2. They also have an emphasis on media providing for an informed public. Although we will not apply within that category, our use of the public libraries of the U.S. is a clear public education effort.
3. They also emphasize long-term solutions and a strategy to effectively transform societies. The Library Project expands upon Beyond War's personal approach and extends it into public education accross our society.
4. One of the goals of their Promoting Peace Program is promoting a richer and more well-informed public debate. Again, by encouraging the reading of the Core List we are promoting a more well-informed public. As soon as we get the book discussion brochure created, these book discussions will encourage a debate of the issues.