October 11, 2010

Kellogg adds support to New Frontiers of Philanthropy Project

The Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies has announced that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has joined a broad coalition of foundations, venture philanthropists and public agencies in supporting the center’s New Frontiers of Philanthropy Project.

The Kellogg Foundation’s $150,000 gift will significantly advance this project’s objective to open a new era in financing solutions for the world’s social and environmental problems, according to Lester M. Salamon, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies.

“A subtle revolution is transforming how social and environmental objectives are being supported as we move more fully into the 21st century,” Salamon said. “The New Frontiers of Philanthropy Project will bring the newly emerging forms of social investing and philanthropic action to the attention of much broader audiences in a form that will give them clearer focus and promote their wider use.”

In making its grant, the Kellogg Foundation joins 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,” said Thomas Reis, director of Mission Driven Investments at the Kellogg Foundation. “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 foundation has allocated and invested $100 million into mission investing over the past three years, and the New Frontiers project will serve to increase knowledge about mission investing in general.”

The New Frontiers of Philanthropy Project is currently at work on three major undertakings: a volume on the newly emerging actors and tools being deployed on the new frontiers of philanthropy, to be published in spring 2011 by Jossey-Bass Publishers; a dissemination effort to bring this volume to the attention of a broader set of stakeholders through release events, conference presentations, training sessions, an interactive website and other means; and preparation of materials to help foundations, private investors, nonprofit leaders and public officials utilize 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 the work, and a team of academics and highly regarded practitioners is preparing the New Frontiers of Philanthropy volume. The Kresge Foundation helped launch the project with a major grant in 2007.

For more information on the project, go to www.ccss.jhu.edu/index.php?section=content&view=9&sub=106.