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GRANTS
Overview
During the July 1, 2001, through June 30, 2002, time period, we made grant payments of $3,720,056 through our program areas. This includes a payment of $666,666 toward our $2,000,000 commitment to the Foothill DeAnza Community Colleges Foundation. These payments reflect new grants approved by the Board of Directors as well as payments on multi-year grant commitments.
| Environmental |
16 grants |
$ 268,500 |
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| Kirsch Investigator Awards |
4 grants |
720,000 |
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| Medical/Science Projects |
4 grants |
323,000 |
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| Political Reform and Global Theme |
2 grants |
350,000 |
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| Silicon Valley Community |
52 grants |
1,490,256 |
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| Discretionary |
35 grants |
568,300 |
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Silicon Valley Urgency Fund
"The Urgency Fund kept many services operating plus it provided momentum toward other funding and retooling within the agency…it turned out to be like a challenge grant to other donors who support us."
- Executive Director of a Silicon Valley nonprofit safety net services organization |
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Nonprofit agencies throughout the Silicon Valley experienced an extremely difficult time this past year with declining government funding and the re-allocation of many donors’ contributions for the September 11th victims’ funds, compounded by increasing client needs due to the recession. The Skoll Community Fund, a “sister” supporting foundation within Community Foundation Silicon Valley, began efforts to raise much-needed funds for agencies that provide food, shelter, clothing and health care to the Silicon Valley with a $2 million contribution.
Steve and Michèle Kirsch understood that these safety net organizations were facing dwindling resources and increased need in the community. Despite the Foundation’s own dwindling resources and other grant and public policy commitments, we were the first to join the Urgency Fund. We contributed a $200,000 grant and participated in determining the criteria for the awards and the recipient organizations.
Other local organizations, including the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health and Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), also stepped forward. As a result, the Urgency Fund raised close to $3 million and, in December 2001 and April 2002, 52 agencies received 87 grants ranging from $1,000 to $175,000. These were “above and beyond” the grants that any of the agencies would have received during the year from these same funding sources. Some of the organizations that received assistance were the Second Harvest Food Bank, Asian Americans for Community Involvement, American Red Cross, Fair Oaks Senior Center, San Jose Family Shelter, and the Support Network for Battered Women.
Kirsch Investigators
The first grant program developed by the Foundation was the Kirsch Investigators Award Program. It began as a multi-year grant to senior researchers, with the hope that it would enable them to explore new areas of research in which they had developed an interest. After we scanned the field of medical research grants, however, it became clear that a significant gap in funding existed for investigators after their developmental awards had been completed and before they were fully funded by National Institutes of Health and other major awards programs. We therefore re-directed our Awards Program to promising, mid-career researchers who could benefit from unrestricted funding to further develop their labs and their research. Through the end of June 2002, the Foundation had made multi-year commitments totaling $2,970,000 to the investigators and their respective institutions.
In late May 2002, the Scientific Advisory Board and seven of the current Award recipients gathered for a daylong seminar to share the results of the research being conducted and to celebrate with Steve and Michèle Kirsch and the Foundation’s Board and staff.
The Kirsch Investigators and their current institutions are:
• Ben A. Barres, M.D./Ph.D., Stanford School of Medicine
• Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco
• Ronald DePinho, M.D., Dana Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School
• Allison J. Doupe, M.D./Ph.D., University of California, San Francisco
• Geraldine C. Seydoux, Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
• Jonathan L. Tilly, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School
• Alexander Varshavsky, Ph.D., California Institute of Technology
• Susan R. Wente, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University
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Kirsch Investigators:
(Top row, left to right)
Geraldine C. Seydoux
Ben A. Barres
Alexander Varshavsky
Susan Wente
(Bottom row, left to right)
Elizabeth H. Blackburn
Jonathan L. Tilly
Allison J. Doupe
Not pictured: Ronald DePinho |
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