The Pew Charitable Trusts
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| Pew Charitable Trusts | |
|---|---|
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| Established | 1948 |
| Chairman | Robert H. Campbell |
| President | Rebecca W. Rimel |
| Faculty | 12 (board) |
| Staff | 630 |
| Budget | $250 million |
| Endowment | $5.0 billion |
| Location | Philadelphia, PA |
| Address | 2005 Market Street, Suite 1700 Philadelphia, PA 19103-7077 |
| Website | www.pewtrusts.org |
The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1948. With over US$5 billion in assets, its current mission is to serve the public interest by "improving public policy, informing the public, and stimulating civic life."[1]
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[edit] History
The Trusts, a single entity, is the successor to, and sole beneficiary of, seven charitable funds established between 1948 and 1979 by J. Howard Pew, Mary Ethel Pew, Joseph N. Pew, Jr., and Mabel Pew Myrin—the adult sons and daughters of Sunoco founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. The Trusts is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with an office in Washington, D.C.
Although today the Pew Charitable Trusts is rigorously non-partisan and non-ideological, Joseph Pew and his heirs were themselves politically conservative. The mission of the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust was to "acquaint the American people with the evils of bureaucracy and the values of a free market and to inform our people of the struggle, persecution, hardship, sacrifice and death by which freedom of the individual was won." Joseph N. Pew, Jr. called Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal "a gigantic scheme to raze U.S. businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs."[2]
Most of the early beneficiaries were such conservative organizations as the John Birch Society, the American Liberty League, and the American Enterprise Institute,[3][4] although other beneficiaries included a cancer research institute, a museum, higher education, the American Red Cross, and historically black colleges. For many years, the Trusts tended to fund charities and conservative causes in Philadelphia.
In 2004, the Pew Trusts applied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to change its status from private foundation to non-profit organization. Since the Pew's change to a charitable foundation, it can now raise funds freely and devote up to 5% of its budget to lobbying the public sector.
According to the Pew's 2009 Annual Report, five of the twelve Directors serving on the Board are named Pew. Two of the five are physicians.[5]
[edit] Current concerns
The Trusts' public policy areas include the environment, state policy, economic policy and health and human services.
The Trusts, with other groups, backed an effort to create marine protected areas in the Pacific Ocean, near the Mariana Islands.[6] The protected area was officially designated in January 2009, and includes the Mariana Trench, the deepest ocean canyon in the world. Another marine protected area that the Trusts and other groups sought to protect is Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument which was protected by President Bush in 2006.[7]
The mission of the Pew Environment Group, the conservation arm of The Pew Charitable Trusts, is to help meet what they view as one of the seminal challenges of our time: saving the natural environment and protecting the rich array of life it supports.
The aim is to strengthen environmental policies and practices in ways that produce significant and measurable protection for terrestrial and marine systems worldwide. In doing so, the Pew Environment Group works to advance scientific understanding of the causes and consequences of environmental problems, design innovative policy solutions to these problems and mobilize public support for their implementation.
Efforts are focused on reducing the scope and severity of three major global environmental problems:
- Destruction of the world's oceans, with a particular emphasis on marine fisheries.
- The loss of large wilderness ecosystems that contain a great part of the world's remaining biodiversity.
- Changes to the Earth's physical and biological systems linked to the buildup of greenhouse gases that are altering the world's climate.
The work of the Pew Environment Group encompasses two principal activities: fostering a better understanding of environmental problems through science and promoting sound conservation policy.
The Trusts also funds the Pew Research Center, the third-largest think tank in Washington DC, after the Brookings Institution and the Center for American Progress.
The Trusts have worked closely with the Vera Institute of Justice on issues related to state correction policies in the "Public Safety Performance Project."[8][9] In 2008, the Pew Center on the States reported that more than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high. The cost to state governments is nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more. The report compiled and analyzed data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics and Bureau of Prisons and each state's department of corrections.[10][11]
Pew Center on the States reported in 2009 that "explosive growth in the number of people on probation or parole has propelled the population of the American corrections system to more than 7.3 million, or 1 in every 31 U.S. adults." "One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections"[12] examined the scale and cost of prison, jail, probation and parole in each of the 50 states, and provides a blueprint for states to cut both crime and spending by reallocating prison expenses to fund stronger supervision of the large number of offenders in the community.
The Trusts funds the Pew Biomedical Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences, intended to support promising early and mid-career scientists investigating human health, both basic and clinical. The awards provide flexible support ($240,000 over a four-year period). Grantees are encouraged to be entrepreneurial and innovative in their research.[13]
The trust also helped fund the Gospel and Our Culture Network, which published books such as Missional Church: A vision for the sending of the Church in North America.[14]
[edit] Financial facts
According to the 2009 Annual Report, as of 30 June 2008, the Trusts owned over US$5.8 billion in assets. For the 12 months ending on that date, total revenues were about US$360 million and total expenses were about $250 million, of which about $14 million were for operating costs and fund raising expenses.
[edit] Controversy
The Trusts have supported the relocation of the famed Barnes Art Collection from its longtime home in Lower Merion, PA, to Center City. This has been controversial in the art world. “The Barnes Foundation was established by Albert C. Barnes in 1922 to ‘promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts.’...the Foundation is home to one of the world's largest collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early Modern paintings, with extensive holdings by Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, Renoir and Modigliani, as well as important examples of African sculpture.” [15]
Opponents of relocating the collection to a new museum along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway say the move violates Barnes’ will that the collection stay intact at its present location and not be loaned, transferred or sold. Columnist Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "It is perfectly clear exactly what Barnes specified in his will. It was drawn up by the best legal minds. It is clear that what happened to his collection was against his wishes."[16]
The Trusts became involved with the Barnes Collection when the foundation overseeing the art collection had serious financial trouble, contributing more than $20 million for a new museum. “If these problems had remained unaddressed, the Foundation would have been unable to pay its bills. The physical security of the individual artworks and the integrity of the collection as a whole would have been at risk,” Pew said.[16] On the other hand, Pew was partially responsible for the state of the estimated 20 Billion dollar collection before its acquisition. Former board members have stated that they believe the collection and its building was allowed to deteriorate in order to generate the crisis Pew needed to have the trust dissolved by the government and the collection moved. Pew has benefited financially via till-share from the relocation to museums which charge admission.
The controversy involving Pew and the collection was the subject of the documentary film, The Art of the Steal. The Trusts did not participate in the film because it believed it would be “severely biased,” The Washington Post said the film “is hostile and has an agenda.”[17]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ The Pew Charitable Trusts - Non Profit Organization Serving the Public. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ Wooster, Martin (April 1, 2005). "Too Good to Be True". http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006499. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ Diamond, Sara (1995). Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States. New York: Guilford Press.
- ^ Colby, Gerald; Charlotte Dennett (1995). Thy Will be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. New York: Harper Collins.
- ^ http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Static_Pages/About_Us/PEW%20Prospectus%2020092.pdf 2009 Annual Report
- ^ Bush to Protect Three Areas in Pacific by Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer, January 06, 2009. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ Global Ocean Legacy. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ Public Safety Performance. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ New High In U.S. Prison Numbers by N.C. Aizenman. February 29, 2008. Washington Post. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008. Released February 28, 2008. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ Corrections and Public Safety. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences. Retrieved 2010-02-22.
- ^ Guder, Darrell L; Barrett, Lois (1998-03-15). Missional church: A vision for the sending of the church in North America. ISBN 9780802843500. http://books.google.com/?id=nmn1xBsVBcIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Missional+Church&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- ^ barnesfoundation.org
- ^ a b http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=56872
- ^ Kennicott, Philip (2010-03-07). "'The Art of the Steal' highlights one-sided nature of some documentaries". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/04/AR2010030405778.html.
[edit] External links
- Official web site of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
- Pew Environment Group Official web site.
- Official Movie of their Charitable actions.
- Listing of Pew initiatives.
- 2007 Annual Report with financial information.
- History of the Trusts.
