Annie E. Casey Foundation

701 Saint Paul Street
Baltimore, MD 21202

Tel:  410-547-6600
Fax:  410-547-6624

Web: www.aecf.org

Leadership: http://www.aecf.org/AboutUs/LeadrshpMgmtTrustees.aspx

 

Since 1948, the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) has worked to build better futures for disadvantaged children and their families in the United States. The primary mission of the Foundation is to foster public policies, human service reforms, and community supports that more effectively meet the needs of today's vulnerable children and families.

The Foundation is a private charitable organization with assets of $3.3 billion (December 2004). It makes grants that help states, cities, and neighborhoods create more innovative, cost-effective responses to the needs of children and families. In 2004, the Casey Foundation awarded $171 million in grants.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation was established in 1948 by Jim Casey, one of the founders of United Parcel Service, and his siblings, George, Harry, and Marguerite, who named the philanthropy in honor of their mother. The Foundation's first grants provided support to a camp for disadvantaged children in Seattle, Wash., the home of the Casey family.

When Jim Casey gave up his administrative responsibilities as chief executive officer of UPS in the 1960s, he turned his attention to sharpening the programmatic focus of the Foundation. In the course of his personal research with experts in the field of child welfare, he concluded that many troubled adults had grown up unhappily in foster care, often being bounced from one foster family to another.

In 1966 his interest in long-term foster care led him to establish the Casey Family Programs, now an independent operating foundation in Seattle. In 1976 a similar program was established in Connecticut as the direct operating unit of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Headquartered in New Haven, Casey Family Services now has eight operating divisions offering an array of foster care and other services in New England and Maryland.

With the death of Jim Casey in 1983 and the increased resources from his estate, the Foundation's Board of Trustees began to explore opportunities to expand the Foundation's work on behalf of disadvantaged children. The Trustees committed the Foundation to an ambitious mission: to help build better futures for millions of disadvantaged children who are at risk of poor educational, economic, social, and health outcomes.

The grant making of the Annie E. Casey Foundation is limited to initiatives that have significant potential to demonstrate innovative policy, service delivery, and community supports for children and families. Most grantees have been invited by the Foundation to participate in these projects.

The Foundation does not make grants to individuals, nor does it provide grants for capital projects, medical research, direct services (with the exception of Baltimore city or work outside the United States). Much of the Foundation’s current funding is targeted to its Making Connections Initiative and its 22 sites. The Foundation annually declines a very high percentage of otherwise worthy proposals that do not meet these guidelines.

Started in 1999, Making Connections is a ten-year investment by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to improve the outcomes for families and children in tough or isolated neighborhoods. The Casey Foundation’s research has shown that children do better when their families are strong, and families do better when they live in communities that help them to succeed. Each Makings Connections site works with a team to help promote family neighborhood strengthening in a variety of ways, from a targeted effort toward one particular challenge to engaging in a full array of strategies all at once. It is up to those involved to decide how to proceed in their community.

Organizations wishing to send a proposal to the Foundation should submit a letter of no more than three typewritten pages describing the organization, its programs, the amount of funds requested, and a brief explanation of how the proposed work fits within the mission of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. There are no submission deadlines. Foundation staff members will review the material and reply in writing after approximately 30 days.

Among the many hundreds of Casey Foundation grantees are the following: the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); National Public Radio (NPR); the Brookings Institute; the Alan Guttmacher Institute; Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), Inc.; the Council on Foundations;  the Brennan Center for Justice; Public Broadcasting Service (PBS);  the Rockefeller Family Fund; the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation; the Aspen Institute;  Planned Parenthood; the National Council of La Raza; the Coalition for Juvenile Justice; the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy; the Center for Community Change; Reproductive Health and Rights; the Immigrant Advocacy Center;  the American Bar Association Fund for Justice and Education; the Urban Institute; the American Institute for Social Justice, Inc.; the Institute for Justice; the National Immigration Law Center; the New America Foundation; the Committee for the Prison Moratorium Project; the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies; the Handgun Epidemic Lowering Plan Network; the Childrens Defense Fund; the Black Women's Agenda, Inc.; the Institute for Community Peace; the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; Demos; Doctors Against Handgun Injury;  Alternative Directions; Alianza Dominicana; and, the Greater Baltimore Crisis Pregnancy Center.

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