The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has joined a broad coalition of foundations, venture philanthropists and public agencies in supporting a philanthropy initiative from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, center officials announced Thursday.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation donated $150,000 to the New Frontiers of Philanthropy Project, which aims to open a new era in financing solutions for the world's social and environmental problems, Lester Salamon, the center's director, said in a statement.
In making its grant, Kellogg joined a network that includes other major foundations, leading venture philanthropists, public institutions such as the Federal Reserve and private financial institutions.
"We hope this will pave the way for other funders to join the coalition supporting this pioneering effort to conceptualize and promote the new approaches and new thinking on the frontiers of philanthropy and social investment," Thomas Reis, director of the foundation's Mission Driven Investments, said in the statement. "We see this project as building a bridge to the much larger pools of private capital that can be mobilized for social and environmental problem-solving and a way to legitimize more creative uses of private philanthropic capital in the process."
The New Frontiers of Philanthropy Project is currently working on three undertakings, the statement said:
- A volume on the newly emerging actors and tools being deployed on the new frontiers of philanthropy, to be published by Jossey-Bass Publishers;
- A significant dissemination effort for this volume to bring it to the attention of a broader set of stakeholders through release events, conference presentations, training sessions, an inter-active website and other means;
- Preparation of how-to materials to help foundations, private investors, nonprofit leaders and public officials use the new tools for expanding the resources available to address the world's problems.
An advisory panel comprising major figures in the social investing world is helping to guide this work. Its members include the presidents of the Nonprofit Finance Fund and the Schwab Charitable Gift Fund; the key figure in the F.B. Heron Foundation's mission investing work; and the former president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
