By DOMENICA MARCHETTI
Foundations have traditionally shied away from supporting charities that focus on gun control,
especially because of the subject’s political overtones. In recent years, however, more and more foundations are making grants that focus on the issue.
In 1999, following the shooting massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, the Irene Diamond Fund and George Soros’s Open Society Institute, both in New York, pledged $5-million apiece to start the Funders’ Collaborative for the Prevention of Gun Violence, to persuade more grant makers to take on the cause.
Another half-dozen or so grant makers have since pledged an additional $1-million each to the collaborative, which supports research on the effects of gun-related violence on society and public health, and is helping to finance several lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors, among other projects.
Vincent McGee, vice president of the Irene Diamond Fund, says the collaborative is also working with about a dozen other foundations that have begun to support gun-control groups, as well as several individual donors, including one -- for now, anonymous -- who in the coming weeks plans to pledge at least $10-million to the issue. A portion will go to charities working to decrease gun-related violence, while some will be donated to political groups that support gun control.
Mr. McGee and others who have recently taken up gun-violence prevention readily acknowledge that the way was paved for them by grant makers such as the California Wellness Foundation, in Woodland Hills; the George Gund Foundation, in Cleveland; and the Joyce Foundation, in Chicago.
The Gund Foundation began supporting gun-violence prevention in 1988, when it started making grants to the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and the Educational Fund to End Gun Violence, to help finance their legal research and litigation. Gund has distributed $1-million to the cause since 1988.
A Public-Health Issue
The California Wellness Foundation and the Joyce Foundation helped put gun violence on the radar screen of many grant makers by framing it as a public-health issue rather than a criminal-justice matter, which had been the prevailing view in the nonprofit world. That approach helped broaden the number of grant makers who got involved in the cause, since many foundations include health as part of their missions. Seeing the issue as a health matter, rather than a political one, also helped make grant makers more comfortable supporting the cause. “It took some effort to get funders, as well as the public and policy makers, to see this as a public-health, and so a preventable, issue,” says Roseanna Ander, who oversees gun-violence grant making at the Joyce Foundation.
In the past seven years, Joyce has poured $21-million into the issue, supporting research on the health-care costs of gun-related violence and effective prevention strategies.
“In order to have rational policy you have to have a better understanding of the magnitude and scope of the problem,” says Ms. Ander. “We have better data on the types of dogs that kill people than we do on guns.”
Joyce has also financed groups calling on the federal government to regulate guns as a consumer product, with design and safety standards, and organizations that encourage medical professionals to treat gun violence as a public-health threat.
In addition, Joyce has supported efforts by cities and the N.A.A.C.P. to sue gun manufacturers and distributors, a tactic that has yielded mixed results so far.
Meanwhile, the California Wellness Foundation has focused on reducing gun-related violence in that state as part of a 10-year, $60-million violence-prevention program it began in 1993 -- its first year of making grants. The foundation’s program, which has spent about $6-million specifically on gun-related violence, has been aimed in large part at curbing injury and death among California youth, says Gary Yates, the president.
Collaboration Since 1994
In 1994, the foundation helped to start the National Funding Collaborative on Violence Prevention, a group of about 25 grant makers whose goal is to focus national attention on all types of violence and also to support local programs that deter violence in neighborhoods. So far the group has donated -- or helped to raise -- $19-million for gun-violence prevention.
The collaborative is also starting an effort to train health professionals and civic leaders in ways to reduce violence, as well as provide management aid to charities working on the issue.
In addition to its involvement in the collaborative, the California Wellness Foundation has used public-education campaigns to persuade everyone from policy makers to medical professionals to civic leaders to treat youth violence as a public-health epidemic.
The foundation also pledged $13-million over 10 years to create the Pacific Center for Violence Prevention, which conducts policy research. The center is run by Andrew McGuire, who also heads the Million Mom March Foundation.
The success of the various programs, Mr. Yates says, can be measured in part by the gun-control legislation that California has passed in recent years.
“Seven years ago, no significant gun-control legislation had ever been able to get out of committee in the state legislature,” he says. “We now have some of the strongest gun-control legislation in the country.” Those measures include a one-per-month limit on the number of handguns an individual may purchase, and a ban on the small, cheap handgun known as the Saturday night special.
“Our expectations about what could be done in public policy were exceeded,” Mr. Yates says.
Although the number of grant makers supporting gun-violence prevention is on the rise, Ms. Ander says she is disappointed that more have not joined the cause.
“This is an issue that is definable and is winnable,” Ms. Ander says. “Even a relatively small amount of resources can have an impact.”