Foundations for ideas

Lynn Poole summarizes the modern concept of foundations for philanthropy. Dr. Milton S. Eisenhower, president of Johns Hopkins University, reports that there are 7,000 private foundations in the U. S. with assets of over $7 billion. He discusses their varied interests noting that this program will focus on a representative foundation's private gifts to education. Henry T. Heald, president of the Ford Foundation, explains that the purpose of this foundation's twenty programs is to advance human welfare. Secretary of the Ford Foundation Joseph M. McDaniel points out that foundations can be discriminating, flexible, and can show by example. He describes the Ford Foundation's funding of both the Woodrow Wilson program for attracting able students into the teaching field and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. Mr. McDaniel explains that about 400 applications are funded from the 5,000 received annually. These are selected because they seem to provide the best solutions to issues that are within the foundation's purpose and interests. Clarence H. Faust, president of the Fund for the Advancement of Education of the Ford Foundation, describes some of the teacher shortage solutions supported by this fund. For example, this fund contributes to new school construction, and in 1955 it partnered with the Carnegie Foundation to create the National Merit Scholarship Corp. to provide scholarships to send more students to college. Mr. Faust also discusses the "Hagerstown Project" in Washington County, MD where a grant from the Ford Foundation has supplied funds for a five-year experiment using closed circuit television for classroom instruction.