CSSP : About Us : Major Funders

Working to Create Opportunities for America's Children and Families and their Communities

Resources

Major Initiatives

Center for Community Partnerships
Community Decision Making
Strengthening Families Through Early Care & Education

Established in 1948 by Jim Casey, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has worked to build better futures for millions of disadvantaged children and their families in the United States. Their mission is to foster public policies, human service reforms, and community supports that more effectively meet the needs of today's vulnerable children and families. Working with neighborhoods and state and local governments, the Foundation provides grants to public and nonprofit organizations to strengthen the support services, social networks, physical infrastructure, employment, self-determination, and economic vitality of distressed communities.

For the past 30 years, the Foundation has been committed to improving the lives of people from low-income communities. Since 1999, the Foundation has been shifting toward a single focus of helping to strengthen nonprofit youth development organizations to assist more youth from low-income families in making a successful transition to independent adulthood. This new approach, called Institution and Field Building, utilizes Due-Diligence, Business Planning, Investments, and Performance Tracking and Evaluation.

As of January 31, 2001, the staff, initiatives, and associated funding of the Clark Foundation's Program for Children moved to the New York-based Center for Community Partnerships in Child Welfare, of the Center for the Study of Social Policy. This new Center will be responsible for supporting the continued implementation of Partnerships for Protecting Children in Cedar Rapids, IA; Jacksonville, FL; Louisville, KY; and St. Louis, MO.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation was created in 1996 in accordance with the will of Doris Duke. The foundation's mission is to improve the quality of people's lives by nurturing the arts, protecting and restoring the environment, seeking cures for diseases, and helping to protect children from abuse and neglect.

The performing arts program mission is concentrated in five areas designed to strengthen performing arts organizations and support individual artists, ensembles and companies: Leadership Presenting Institutions, National Service Organizations, Jazz Initiative, Theatre initiative and Talented Students in the Arts Initiative. Child abuse prevention focuses on the areas of primary prevention, early intervention and, education and Training. The Environment Program pursues its mission in three areas: Land Conservation, Forest Conservation and Conservation Leadership. The mission of the Medical Research Program of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to contribute to the prevention and cure of disease by supporting medical research, initially in four disease areas: cardiovascular disease, cancer, AIDS, and sickle cell anemia and other blood disorders.