New York Foundation

The New York Foundation, one of the first foundations created in the United States, was established in 1909 with a gift of $1 million from Alfred M. Heinsheimer. This money was a bequest from his brother Louis, originally left to the Jewish charities of New York on the condition that they federate within a year of Louis' death. When they failed to do so, the money reverted to Alfred, who created the New York Foundation as an alternate means to carry out his brother's wish. The Foundation's charter states its objective as the distribution of income "to altruistic purposes, charitable, benevolent, educational or otherwise, within the United States of America, as the trustees of said corporation may determine." This broad mandate proved beneficial over the first century of the Foundation's existence, allowing the Trustees to support organizations in diverse fields and to periodically reassess and revise their funding priorities. Heinsheimer's initial gift was supplemented by two others: a gift of $2.4 million from Lionel J. Salomon, restricted broadly to benefit the young and the elderly, and $6 million from the Estate of Alfred M. Heinsheimer following his death in 1929. In the first century of its existence, the New York Foundation awarded over $133 million in grants, and it continues to actively support charitable and non-profit organizations, with an emphasis on advocacy and community organizing for residents of disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods in New York City.

Founding chairman Jacob H. Schiff and first president Morris Loeb, along with trustees Isaac Seligman and Paul M. Warburg, shared a belief that New Yorkers, given the appropriate tools and means, could change their own neighborhoods and improve their lives. By providing grants to grassroots community organizations, they hoped to enable and encourage positive social reform. This emphasis on small, local organizations has been consistent throughout the Foundation's history, and its relatively small size and broad mandate allow it the flexibility to award grants to organizations responding to contemporary problems which have not yet warranted the attention of larger foundations. It particularly supports programs emerging from communities where existing services or institutions do not reach, neighborhoods taking action for their own improvement, and groups organizing to create a collective voice in order to be heard. Often these are start-up grants to new and untested programs. From its founding year into the present, the New York Foundation has provided grants to fund organizations in the fields of affordable housing, fair employment, health care and public health, workers' rights, law and criminal justice, literacy, child welfare, AIDS research and treatment, women's suffrage, racial equity, legal aid, the alleviation of poverty, civil rights, immigrants' rights, education reform, prison reform, and a myriad of other social concerns. In addition, the Foundation has supported cultural and educational institutions in and around New York City. Although the Foundation has awarded grants to some organizations which have become well established, it has also been the first and only funder for others.

For the first forty-five years of its existence, the New York Foundation operated without paid staff. Its trustees, largely drawn from the close-knit German Jewish families of New York and including many members and associates of the Schiff, Seligman, and Warburg families, worked without pay and often also agreed to serve on the boards of organizations they funded. They investigated grant requests as they were submitted, and the grants they awarded were largely shaped by their own interests, concerns, and expertise.

Several of the Foundation's earliest grants supported healthcare, from a 1910 grant to the Henry Street Settlement in support of a visiting nurse service (a program which continues) to the 1930 formation of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, established to research potential economic solutions to the escalating cost of health care. In addition, the Foundation has awarded grants to those researching and addressing specific health issues, including tuberculosis, polio, venereal disease (cloaked as "social hygiene"), mental health, maternity and infant care, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and a range of other diseases and disabilities. The Foundation has also extensively supported medical research and organizations which provide access to health care for the underserved and impoverished, and to improve the quality of existing care. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Foundation actively supported organizations addressing the personal and social concerns surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York.

The Foundation has funded many organizations committed to refugee and immigrant services, notably in the 1930s and 1940s as Jewish refugees fled Europe and needed assistance resettling and securing employment in the United States. Significant grants were awarded to the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Physicians, the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, and the National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany, in addition to dozens of smaller refugee service organizations. In more recent years, Foundation money has been allocated to groups advocating for immigrant populations in New York City, including programs committed to improving the housing and employment opportunities of African, Arab, Asian, Brazilian, Central American, Chinese, Filipino, Haitian, Korean, and Mexican communities, among others.

Health care and immigrant and refugee services are only two areas among many in which the New York Foundation has been active over the past century. Any attempt at comprehensive description of all awarded grants would fall short, as grantees range from quilters in the American South during the Civil Rights movement to anthropologist Franz Boas, in support of his work to disprove pseudo-scientific claims of racial inferiority promoted by anti-Semites in the 1930s.

From the guide to the New York Foundation records, 1909-2009, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)