United Nations Foundation gets off to a quick start with first round of grants and a high-powered board
The United Nations Foundation’s initial round of grants reflects both the varied interests of its benefactor, Ted Turner, and the wide range of activities in which U.N. agencies play a role.
The foundation last month committed $22.2-million to help U.N. agencies combat intestinal parasites in Vietnamese children, prevent adolescent pregnancies in Honduras, enable women in Burkina Faso to improve the processing and marketing of income-producing nut butter, help former child soldiers in Sierra Leone adjust to life as civilians, promote land-mine awareness among children in Bosnia, and reduce China’s emissions of greenhouse gases, among other projects.
Since January, when Mr. Turner created the foundation, he has filled its board with men and women of commensurately broad international and programmatic experience. Its eight members, who will convene thrice a year, include Brazil’s First Lady, Ruth Cardoso; Emma Rothschild, a British economist and historian; Mozambique’s former First Lady, Graca Machel; Maurice Strong, a Canadian businessman with strong environmental credentials; Andrew Young, former U.N. Ambassador, Congressman, and Mayor of Atlanta; and Muhammad Yunus, who pioneered micro-credit among rural Bangladeshi women.
“Each of us wants to bring our own capabilities to bear on this challenge of insuring economic, environmental, and social progress in the 21st century,” says Mr. Turner, the vice-chairman of Time Warner, whose pledge of up to $1-billion last fall to support the United Nations through the new foundation already has helped raise public esteem for an insti tution that for many Americans remains poorly understood.
Officials at several non-profit groups that operate internationally say the United Nations Foundation is off to a running start. Even if their own organizations do not benefit directly from the estimated $100-million a year the foundation expects to give away for the next decade, charity officials say, broader public support for international development and a more effective United Nations can only help their common goals.
“It is very difficult for Save the Children to achieve its work without a United Nations that’s working efficiently,” says Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children, a humanitarian charity that operates in more than 40 countries.
Timothy E. Wirth, the new foundation’s president, is relishing the transition he has made after a quarter-century spent in marble buildings -- as a Colorado legislator, U.S. Congressman and Senator, and most recently as Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs.
Operating from a seventh-floor headquarters here where construction is still under way, Mr. Wirth and a score of employees are trading ideas, fielding offers of support, and mapping strategies for improving many agencies of the United Nations, including its children’s fund, development program, environment program, food program, health organization, population fund, and women’s fund. The U.N. International Partnership Trust Fund, a new entity set up in the U.N. Secretary-General’s office, serves as a conduit for ideas and money between the foundation and the United Nations. The trust fund both solicits proposals and awards the money, all subject to approval from the Secretary-General and the foundation’s board, which makes the final determination.
“We don’t want everyone running around the U.N. and coming to us because we have the money,” Mr. Wirth says. “The money’s the honey that draws the bees, but we don’t want to be that.”
After the flurry of activity surrounding the recent announcement of grants and board appointments, the United Nations Foundation is weighing its next steps. “Now that we’ve done this we’re going to take a longer period of time planning our program over the next six months,” Mr. Wirth says, “and spend less time trying to fund, fund, fund.”
The foundation’s mission is fourfold: to support U.N. causes selected jointly with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; to strengthen the United Nations and Mr. Annan’s efforts to make it more effective and accountable; to build public support for the institution by finding ways to publicize its benefits and its successes; and to raise additional money for international causes.
Most of the grants fall within the foundation’s principal interest areas: children’s health; women and population; and climate change and environmental protection. Notably absent are grants for such high-profile U.N. activities as peace-keeping operations or emergency aid for disaster victims or refugees. Those operations are the rightful province of governments, Mr. Wirth says.
“We wanted to get into a very strong emphasis on prevention rather than being ameliorative, of fixing problems after they’re already there,” notes Mr. Wirth. Mr. Turner has also said he wants his gift to supplement, not subsidize, normal U.N. operations.
Nearly all foundation grants will be awarded to U.N. agencies or programs. (The exception: The foundation’s sister organization, the Better World Fund, will make grants for activities the United Nations cannot or should not perform -- such as those conducted by the 170 chapters of the United Nations Association-U.S.A., which seeks to build broader support for the United Nations and for international affairs.)
But many of the projects will enlist the aid of non-governmental organizations. The Sierra Leone project to help reintegrate child soldiers into civilian life, for example, will involve participation by several charities, including the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, the Christian Children’s Fund, Handicap International, and World Vision. And the World Resources Institute will collaborate on the pollution-control project in China. Must Raise 10% of Budget
What’s more, Mr. Turner and Mr. Wirth drew heavily from the non-profit world in building the foundation. Patricia Lewis, former president of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives, is helping to lay the groundwork for its fund raising: As a public charity, the foundation must raise 10 per cent of its budget each year from outside sources.
J. Peterson Myers, president of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, has also helped with the initial planning stage. Susan Sechler, a senior fellow at the Aspen Institute, assisted in the selection of board members.
On the foundation staff, Ellen Marshall and Nicholas Lapham formerly worked for the National Audubon Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council, respectively.
Despite the impressive credentials of the foundation’s board and staff members, some observers wonder whether it will be able to help alter deeply ingrained patterns in the sprawling U.N. network of agencies and programs.
“The problem with the United Nations is that it’s not working very well,” says Anne Firth Murray, founder and former president of the Global Fund for Women, who is now a consultant for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. “I’m a very friendly critic, but I don’t believe that just pouring more money in is going to help.”
What is needed, in her view, is a more open-minded attitude among U.N. agency officials toward the people they are trying to help and the problems they are trying to solve. Solutions to many problems facing the world’s poorest people are best crafted not in New York, Washington, Geneva, or Rome, she says, but in the fields and rural villages where they arise.
“I would hope that [the United Nations Foundation] would attempt to make its grants and conduct its business in ways that were imaginative and transforming,” Ms. Murray says. “A number of people have said, ‘This is ridiculous; why go through the U.N.?’ I can see a good reason for doing so, but only if it helps transform the organization. Just channeling money into projects isn’t going to make it a better place; money is not what transforms.”
Ray Offenheiser, executive director of Oxfam America, also has some questions, based on the first round of grants. “While these projects support initiatives that clearly are connected with priority programs,” he says, “it’s still not clear to what extent they’ll contribute to changing the core culture of the U.N.”
But on balance, charity leaders endorse the foundation’s ambitious goals. Mr. MacCormack of Save the Children characterizes Mr. Turner’s gift as “a terrific vote of confidence in a world system that’s starting to work better.”
Mr. Wirth says that although many people have called to offer their support for the foundation, it has not formally begun raising money because it has not received its tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service. It expects that to happen by mid-summer.
The foundation will invite support from a wide mix of potential donors, Mr. Wirth says, including wealthy individuals, foundations, and corporations. It intends to set up a program to match gifts from other donors for programs of mutual interest.
“If X Foundation is especially interested in some aspects of women’s activities, for example, we’d be very eager to help bring them into these kinds of activities and match that program,” Mr. Wirth says. “We’ll set up a special fund to work on that sort of thing; if they put their money through the special fund, we’ll double it for them.”
The foundation also hopes to develop strong support in the business community, which it sees as a natural ally in its mission. “For American trade and American business around the world, stability is absolutely imperative for the conduct of business,” Mr. Wirth observes. “The United Nations is the single most important institution in terms of stability.”
Charity leaders say they would be concerned if the foundation were to compete with them by trying to raise money from the small subset of ordinary Americans who give consistently to international development.
“It’s a very positive thing, as long as they don’t go up against the non-governmental organizations in fund raising,” says Richard M. Walden, president of Operation USA, which works on issues involving children, health care, land mines, and disaster relief around the world. “If it does high-donor fund raising, getting other billionaires to contribute, that’s a good thing, because the United Nations can use it, and that money isn’t going to N.G.O.'s anyway.”
Mr. Turner, who will finance his gift by selling up to 18 million of the more than 50 million shares of stock he owns in Time Warner, does not plan to endow the foundation and does not want it to exist for more than a decade. Mr. Wirth concurs with that plan.
“I don’t want people that come to work for us to think that this is for the rest of their careers,” Mr. Wirth says. “I want people to be here as really good public-policy entrepreneurs for a few years and then go off and do something else and let other people come in.”
Given that short life span, the foundation will measure its success in part by the number of other donors and supporters it can rally to support international causes -- particularly those that relate to the United Nations. Much of its effort will focus on “telling the story” of the United Nations to Americans, many of whom do not realize the many functions it performs, from allocating radio frequencies and standardizing civil aviation protocols to tracking disease outbreaks and vaccinating children.
A large majority of Americans express support for the global institution in opinion polls. But a vocal minority of critics, Mr. Wirth says, is trying to sap that support. Those critics have succeeded in bottling up in Congress the $1.5-billion in dues that the United States now owes to pay for U.N. operations.
What the United Nations must do better, Mr. Wirth says, is respond to attacks by its critics rapidly and systematically so that its positive image is not besmirched.
One logical non-profit ally is the United Nations Association-U.S.A., which has 170 chapters throughout the United States. Their programs vary but often include public lectures and discussions as well as programs like the Model United Nations, in which students hold mock assemblies to debate international issues.
But the association, with a nationwide membership of 25,000 people and a total budget of less than $5-million, has had only moderate success in persuading Americans to actively support the world body.
“The United Nations is probably the most misunderstood major organization,” says Kari Heistad, executive director of the U.N. Association of Greater Boston. “Lots of people don’t understand what the United Nations does and how it impacts all our lives.”
The United Nations Foundation, she says, has already helped by dramatically focusing public attention on that institution.
“The fact that they’re around is getting people to talk about the U.N. in a positive way,” Ms. Hei stad says. “A foundation of that size and with that much clout, by continuing to draw attention to some U.N. successes, is able to solicit support on a national scale.”
Having a communications magnate like Mr. Turner raise money to support U.N. causes instantly broadens the universe of potential donors, she says.
“If you have Ted Turner ask for your support, it’s a little harder to say No,” Ms. Heistad observes. “We’re playing with the big guys now.”
Mr. Wirth, for his part, says the foundation plans to help the United Nations get its message across much more forcefully. Plans include the imaginative use of the Internet and perhaps the creation of a dedicated news service to report on U.N. activities.
The specific details will unfold over time, he observes, but the central point is that nearly all traditional institutions must be retooled for the 21st century.
“Everybody needs to change, everybody has to reform, but institutions have to be nurtured and worked on,” Mr. Wirth says. “Change doesn’t happen overnight.”
The investment of the time and energy needed to effect that change is absolutely crucial, he adds. “Something like the United Nations has to exist,” he says, “and so let’s make it as good as we possibly can.”