PROSPECTUS - The Pew Charitable Trusts

PROSPECTUS

The Pew Charitable Trusts is driven by the power of 

knowledge to solve today’s most challenging problems. 

Pew applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improve 

public policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life. 

We partner with a diverse range of donors, public and 

private organizations and concerned citizens who share 

our commitment to fact-based solutions and goal-driven 

investments to improve society. 

An independent nonprofit, Pew is the sole beneficiary 

of seven individual charitable funds established between 

1948 and 1979 by two sons and two daughters of Sun Oil 

Company founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, 

Mary Anderson Pew. 

© 2009 The Pew Charitable Trusts. All rights reserved. 

The Pew Charitable Trusts 

2005 Market Street, Suite 1700 

Philadelphia, PA 19103-7077 

215.575.9050 

901 E Street NW, 10th Floor 

Washington, DC 20004-2037 

202.552.2000 

www.pewtrusts.org

Pew Prospectus 2009 

1 

Message from 

the President 

REBECCA W. RIMEL 

President and Chief Executive Officer 

In the aftermath of a historic presidential election and inauguration, 

one cannot help but reflect on the genius of the 

founding fathers. There is something truly extraordinary in the 

fact that, nearly 250 years ago, this small collection of individuals 

somehow managed to birth a nation that would eventually 

swear in as its leader a person who could not even have 

voted through most of its history. They left us with much more 

as well: a constitutional framework that would enable later 

generations to rise to fundamental challenges to our national 

dreams and aspirations, improving what is good and innovatively 

fixing what is broken. 

Perhaps the greatest gift to future generations the founders 

left was their humble embrace of imperfection in pursuit of 

the greatest possible good that circumstances would allow. 

They say as much in the first 15 words of the preamble to the 

U.S. Constitution, a document J. Howard Pew, one of the 

founders of The Pew Charitable Trusts, called “the greatest 

charter of liberty ever penned." Their simple yet audacious 

hope was to create a “more perfect”—not perfect, but 

more perfect—union than the world had previously seen. 

The founding fathers understood free society to be a dynamic 

place of untold challenges and inconceivable change, where 

realities they could scarcely imagine—the good and the ill, the 

profound and the profane—would force later generations to 

question and reinvent all but the most fundamental truths. 

That is what we face in this period of change, when an 

economic recession is demanding creative responses and 

technology is radically transforming not only the patterns of 

our individual lives but also the globe we inhabit. Our national 

history teaches us to look hopefully yet realistically toward 

meeting the demands of an always-uncertain future. We can 

learn much by considering lessons from the past: How does 

change happen? When is it productive? What are the predicates 

for its success? 

One hundred years ago, when our society was, as it is today, 

beginning to fully comprehend the unique moment presented 

by the dawn of a new century, we saw both the promise 

and limitations of modernity played out in sharp relief. The 

turn into the 1900s marked the beginning of what has been 

called the American Century. The founding fathers’ daring 

experiment—building out of whole cloth a nation that grew to 

stretch across an entire continent—was seen as a success. 

Though yet to be truly tested in the international arena, the 

expansion of wealth, population and confidence in America’s 

power and purpose began to lay the foundation for our presence 

on an increasingly interconnected global stage. During 

this era, the ability of people around the world to communicate 

in real time—a pipe dream for all previous generations— 

had become an everyday reality.

2 

An explosion of scientific discovery began to pervade daily 

life. Medical diagnosis and treatment improved, often bringing 

cures to illnesses that had once been veritable death 

sentences. Manufacturing became more efficient, and the 

greater production could satisfy the material needs of an 

expanding population. 

Yet the rapid pace of advancement brought corollary challenges. 

The Panic of 1907 shook confidence in the financial 

institutions that had become the bedrock of the economy. 

Ever larger and more densely populated cities compounded 

tragedy, whether caused by forces of nature, such as the San 

Francisco earthquake of 1906, or the by-product of urbanization 

that produced slum dwellings and child labor in factories. 

Pioneering the techniques that would later define the 

standards of American investigative reporting and photojournalism, 

Upton Sinclair and Lewis Hines gave voice to the 

voiceless of the American Century—the poor, immigrants, 

children—in ways that shocked the conscience and often led 

to reform. Equally profound, for the first time people began 

to confront the reality that there are limits to the bounty of 

our planet’s natural resources. 

Through it all, America endured. It endured, as it always 

does, by returning to a fundamental proposition built into our 

founding documents: Change can meet challenge when it is 

grounded in continuity, a principle that has proven durable 

even in tumultuous times. 

For our nation, J. Howard Pew described this principle in 

his belief that “Government can help by safeguarding the 

common man’s right to be himself—all of himself. It can protect 

against monopoly, tyranny, extortion and every infringement 

of human rights. When it shall have done this much, it 

will have served its highest purpose.” 

For The Pew Charitable Trusts, as we seek to both weather 

and capitalize upon the realities of our shifting economic and 

policy landscape, we must ask ourselves how we will serve our 

“highest purpose.” 

We will do so by adhering to our core values of integrity, 

openness to ideas and diversity of opinion; remaining steadfast 

in our dedication to results, accountability and transparency; 

and continually placing our highest standard and 

greatest faith in the power of knowledge. In short, we meet 

the challenges driven by change while we remain grounded 

in continuity. 

Throughout this Prospectus are specific examples of the 

type of projects we are engaged in to improve public 

policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life. To drive our 

mission, we look back into history and forward to the future. 

“America is searching for a better life, not an easier life,” 

observed Joseph Newton Pew Jr., another founder of the 

Trusts. Those words resonate as clearly now as they would 

have at the dawn of the American Century or on the floor of 

the Constitutional Convention at our new nation’s birth. 

No patriots ever took up arms against the British or endured 

the hardships of forging a nation because they thought it 

would be easy. No early-20th-century aviator saw conquering 

the skies as an exercise in simplicity. And no clear-thinking 

leader today would fail to recognize the significant challenges 

that lie ahead. 

At Pew, we are already implementing the types of changes 

that can best position us to meet these challenges. We have 

enhanced our in-house capabilities and streamlined many 

organizational functions. We are reaching out to new partners 

and forging new collaborations to maximize resources. We 

are planning thoughtfully, given the difficult financial circumstances, 

and focusing our priorities in the areas where we can 

have the greatest impact. We are improving efficiencies, learning 

from our successes, addressing our shortcomings and 

remaining nimble, prepared to meet and embrace uncertainty. 

In sum, through the demands and difficulties of change, we 

have strengthened our resolve to stay true to our guiding 

principles and unleash the power of knowledge to address 

the world’s most pressing issues. As we did yesterday and will 

do tomorrow, we remain sound stewards of Pew’s resources 

and commit them to best serving the public interest. 

Sincerely, 

Rebecca W. Rimel 

President and Chief Executive Officer


3 

Table of 

Contents 

1 Message from the President 

4 IMPROVING PUBLIC POLICY 

6 Economic Policy 

8 Health and Human Services Policy 

10 Pew Center on the States 

12 Pew Environment Group 

14 INFORMING THE PUBLIC 

16 Information Initiatives 

18 STIMULATING CIVIC LIFE 

20 Culture 

22 Pew Fund for Health and 

Human Services in Philadelphia 

24 Civic Initiatives 

26 PHILANTHROPIC SERVICES AND 

GOVERNMENT RELATIONS 

30 PLANNING AND EVALUATION 

34 2008 MILESTONES 

43 FINANCIAL INFORMATION 2008 

44 PEW LEADERSHIP

4 

The designation of a marine sanctuary in the 

waters off the Commonwealth of the Northern 

Mariana Islands was an accomplishment for the Pew 

Environment Group, which had long advocated such 

a step. The islands, reefs and underwater trenches 

will offer permanent protection to sea birds and 

marine mammals, and a huge, unique and fragile 

ecosystem will be preserved.


IMPROVING PUBLIC POLICY 

5 

Improving 

Public Policy 

Pew is a knowledge-based advocate for policy solutions 

in the areas of the environment, state issues, economic 

concerns, and the health and financial security of the 

American people. From a base of rigorous, nonpartisan 

research, study and analysis, we support focused, 

well-considered initiatives when the case for change 

is compelling and the facts are clear. The goal is to 

educate decision makers and help them form consensus 

on policies that will serve the public good.

6 

Economic Policy 

It was almost precisely a century ago that the United States 

experienced an economic cycle characterized by prosperity, 

financial crisis and recession—all within the space of a few years. 

Eerily mirroring current economic 

developments, the Panic of 1907 

began when New York banks lent 

more than their assets could cover, 

leading to the failure of state and 

local banks and businesses nationwide. 

Responding to the gravity of 

the situation, Congress created the 

Federal Reserve System in 1913, 

overcoming vigorous opposition by 

the banks. 

While the Federal Reserve is widely 

recognized as providing critical 

stability and security to the nation’s 

banking system during periods of 

economic uncertainty, the fierce 

debate over government regulation 

that preceded its establishment has 

continued to echo across the intervening 

century. 

As J. Howard Pew, one of The Pew 

Charitable Trusts’ four founders, 

observed in 1938, when the nation 

was still climbing out of the Great 

Depression, “It is proper for government 

to lay down general rules to 

preserve competition, to prevent 

monopoly, to enforce sound 

business ethics. Having laid them 

down, government should enforce 

them.” The problem, he cautioned, 

occurs when government exercises 

so much control that it is “paralyzing 

to initiative, invention, adventure 

and enterprise.” 

Today, after more than two decades 

of steady deregulation across most 

sectors of the economy, we are now 

beginning to see the pendulum of 

government regulation swinging 

strongly back. The question is, how 

fast and far will it swing? At the same 

time, the current financial crisis has 

weakened our economy and exacerbated 

our nation’s already alarming 

fiscal condition. 

In response to our founder’s concerns, 

which find particular resonance 

in today’s political and economic climate, 

Pew recently expanded its Economic 

Policy department to address 

two areas that have never been more 

relevant to the United States. 

The Fiscal and Budget Program 

elevates fiscal responsibility as a 

primary element of federal executive 

and legislative leadership, promotes 

reforms to the budget process that 

enable greater transparency and 

supports policies that are critical to 

ensuring the nation’s long-term financial 

health. And the Markets Program 

will investigate and document the full 

extent of government involvement 

in markets through such measures as 

subsidies and regulation. 

Both ventures seek to reveal how 

government resources are used to 

support a range of interests in the 

national economy—with the goal, 

ultimately, of helping policy makers 

make more informed and engaged 

decisions about how these scarce 

public assets should be allocated. 

As its first undertaking, the Fiscal and 

Budget Program last year created 

US Budget Watch, a partnership 

between Pew and the Committee for 

a Responsible Federal Budget.




7 

Seeking a bipartisan consensus on 

reforming the federal budget process. 

Subsidies to agriculture and other sectors: a key government economic 

tool but little understood by the American public. 

The initiative produced a pre-election 

voter’s guide to the presidential 

candidates’ major policy proposals 

and their costs. The objective was not 

to sway public opinion in favor of one 

candidate over another, but rather to 

inform the national debate and make 

voters more aware of the fiscal implications 

of various policy alternatives. 

The program’s next undertaking 

involved the creation of a high-level 

national commission, in partnership 

with the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 

to make recommendations 

for improving the congressional 

budgeting process. This process, 

last updated in 1967, lays the foundation, 

and establishes the rules of the 

game, for all policy decisions. 

Without sound methodology and 

rules, meaningful action on critical 

policy reform will be far more complicated. 

Yet the process has become 

fundamentally mismatched with 

many of the budgetary needs of the 

country. In fact, most of the federal 

budget is now on automatic pilot 

and does not receive regular oversight. 

The Peterson-Pew Commission 

on Budget Reform will develop 

targeted recommendations for 

legislation, resulting in substantive 

improvements to the budgeting process 

and enhancing the transparency 

of an exercise that deserves greater 

public scrutiny. 

In a society that holds the free market 

in such high regard, the undercurrent 

of suspicion about government 

intervention is strong. Recent events 

in the financial markets, however, 

have created a growing backlash 

against loosely regulated or unregulated 

industry. Through our Markets 

Program, Pew will launch a series of 

initiatives aimed at forging a middle 

ground that strikes the appropriate 

balance in regulatory policy. 

The first major project is Subsidyscope, 

which seeks to focus public 

and policy-maker attention on the 

size and scope of federal subsidies by 

aggregating information on direct 

payments, loan guarantees and tax 

expenditures from multiple sources 

into a comprehensive, searchable, 

high-quality database. By increasing 

the public’s understanding of the 

extent to which our nation’s markets 

are managed, Subsidyscope can 

encourage a truly informed debate 

about how best to deploy increasingly 

scarce government resources. 

Our nation is already engaged in 

debates over appropriate levels of 

government spending, debt, subsidies 

and regulation, and good data 

will surely be critical to informing 

these discussions. We believe that 

the Economic Policy department is 

poised to make significant contributions 

by providing understandable, 

unbiased research that will engage 

the public and policy makers, and 

lead to meaningful policy change. 

John E. Morton 

Managing Director 

Economic Policy

8 

Health and Human 

Services Policy 

The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act were 

rightly considered landmark legislation when they were passed by 

Congress more than a century ago. 

Until that point, protections against 

the sale of poor-quality food were 

mostly state-based, and federal 

action was fragmentary—on 

imported adulterated medicines, for 

example. By comparison, the two 

laws enacted in 1906 were broad. 

They provided federal inspection of 

meat products, required food labels 

and banned “the manufacture, sale or 

transportation of adulterated or misbranded 

or poisonous or deleterious 

foods, drugs, medicines and liquors.” 

Change was overdue. New technologies—canning, 

refrigeration 

and chemical preservatives, for 

instance—had increased the kinds 

of foods available; and consumers, 

increasingly urban and shopping 

in the emerging self-service markets, 

knew less and less about what 

they were buying. Historians credit 

another factor in gaining congressional 

support for food-safety legislation 

after years of delay: The public 

wanted information to make good 

purchasing decisions. They were outraged 

about abuses, such as those in 

the meatpacking industry described 

in The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s 1906 

novel; and they were increasingly 

interested in applying science—that 

is, hygienic codes—to food safety 

and other aspects of home economics, 

a term coined in 1899. 

Today, we can look back on a century 

punctuated with advances in food 

safety, including stronger legislation 

and the evolution of regulatory agencies 

such as the U.S. Food and Drug 

Administration (FDA). Yet we are not 

in the clear. Currently, nearly 20,000 

new food products are launched 

each year; globalization challenges 

our ability to trust our food sources, 

which are literally worldwide; and 

specific outbreaks—for instance, 

E. coli O157:H7 and hepatitis—have 

worried the public. 

The figures are staggering. Foodborne 

illnesses caused by microbial 

pathogens annually account for some 

5,000 deaths in the United States 

and more than 76 million illnesses 

and 325,000 hospitalizations, plus 

serious, life-long health problems 

in many. Further, we are seeing 

more and more of these dangerous 

bacteria becoming resistant to 

life-saving pharmaceuticals. In fact, 

agricultural overuse of antibiotics has 

been directly connected to resistant 

Campylobacter, E. coli and Salmonella, 

which are among the leading 

causes of food poisoning in humans. 

Every outbreak costs the economy 

dearly, with thousands to millions 

of dollars in lost productivity and 

medical costs. 

Our nation’s capacity to protect 

consumers cannot be met by the 

structures we have in place. A decade 

ago, the National Academies of Science 

called for reform of the nation’s 

food safety system, and in a series of 

reports since then, the Government 

Accountability Office, the investigative 

arm of Congress, has endorsed 

that goal and made specific recommendations 

for improvement.



Health and Human Services Policy 

9 

Salmonella and other bacteria, causes 

of food-borne illness. 

On large industrial farms, nontherapeutic antibiotics even for healthy 

livestock—a practice that poses a public health risk. 

The Produce Safety Project of Pew’s 


program is approaching this problem 

by focusing on improving the FDA’s 

oversight of domestic and imported 

produce through the adoption of 

mandatory, enforceable safety standards 

from farm to fork. The project 

is advocating for regulations based 

on prevention, scientifically sound 

risk assessment and management, 

and integrated data collection. Last 

September, the project released the 

results of a survey of likely voters: 

By a 3-to-1 margin, respondents 

wanted the federal government to 

establish new safety standards for 

the growing, harvesting, processing 

and distribution of fresh fruits and 

vegetables—even if the measures 

would increase costs. 

The project’s report on the handling 

of the Salmonella Saintpaul outbreak 

in the summer of 2008 exposed 

weaknesses in the government’s 

response to food-borne illness. The 

project recommended organizational 

reforms throughout the public health 

system for a more coordinated outbreak 

response; timely and effective 

data-sharing among public health 

agencies; and establishment of unified 

risk-communication plans prior 

to an outbreak. 

In a related effort, our Campaign 

on Human Health and Industrial 

Farming is working to reform U.S. 

policies to protect human health by 

eliminating antibiotic abuse on large 

industrial farms, where most of the 

meat consumed in the United States 

is raised. Health experts agree that 

the misuse of these life-saving drugs 

by humans and on factory farms is 

contributing to the rise of antibioticresistant 

infections among Americans 

and jeopardizing the public’s health. 

The campaign achieved an important 

goal in July 2008 when Congress 

passed legislation requiring standardized 

annual reporting to the FDA on 

non-human pharmaceutical use. This 

will help the FDA determine which 

antibiotics important to humans also 

are being marketed for farm animals. 

The campaign is championing further 

reforms, including legislation that 

will require the FDA to phase out the 

use of antibiotics in livestock when 

disease is not present. 

By offering research and commonsense, 

achievable remedies, Pew’s 


program is working to safeguard 

our food supply—and, in our other 

projects, the pharmaceuticals we take 

and the financial instruments we use 

to ensure our overall well-being. It is 

our hope that through these efforts, 

we can contribute to making Americans 

healthier, safer and more 

financially secure. 

Shelley A. Hearne 


Health and Human Services Policy

10 

Pew Center on the States 

Election reform swept the country in the early 1900s. One by one, 

states adopted primaries that bypassed party bosses and smoke-filled 

rooms, enabling voters for the first time to choose their own delegates 

to presidential conventions. 

With popular interest growing, 

states began to document elections 

by publishing volumes of data, 

including statistics on turnout and 

election returns. 

In the decades that followed, however, 

many of the changes instituted 

by the good-government reformers 

of the Progressive Era unraveled; 

the primary system faded away, 

partly for lack of interest, and did not 

make a comeback until the 1970s. 

Other efforts to make voting more 

transparent and inclusive also made 

progress slowly. It was not until the 

presidential election of 1920 that 

women in all states were allowed to 

exercise their right of suffrage. And 

the poll tax, widely used in the South 

after the turn of the 20th century in 

combination with other measures 

to bar blacks and poor whites from 

voter registration and voting, was 

finally outlawed with a Constitutional 

amendment in 1964 and the Voting 

Rights Act of 1965. 

Today, with the right to vote—in primaries 

as well as general elections— 

extended to all Americans, those 

particular struggles are a matter for 

history. Voting, the most basic right 

in a democracy, is widely accessible 

to our citizenry. Yet that very success, 

along with improved technology, has 

created new challenges. These are 

among the many state-based issues 

that Pew is working hard to address. 

Through on-the-ground experiments 

in half the states, we are testing several 

promising election innovations— 

from streamlined voter registration 

processes to online portals that help 

voters find out whether they are registered 

and where to vote. The Voter 

Information Project, a joint effort 

by Pew, Google Inc., and state and 

local election officials, is substantially 

improving states’ ability to deliver 

official voting information via the 

Internet. And electionline.org, 

housed on the Pew Center on the 

States’ nonpartisan Web site, is conveying 

up-to-the-minute news and 

analysis of election administration 

to policy makers, election officials, 

advocates and the public. 

In the past year, we took a particular 

interest in one sector of the electorate 

that has struggled to vote for 

decades: the nation’s military men 

and women serving overseas. Of 

the one million ballots mailed to 

these voters in 2006, only one-third 

were counted—the equivalent of 

losing all the voters in the state of 

Nevada. Working with the Overseas 

Vote Foundation, Pew supported 

the creation of new voter-friendly 

Web applications designed to help 

the estimated six million members 

of the uniformed services and other 

overseas voters negotiate the legal 

and logistical hurdles they confront 

when trying to register to vote and 

cast a ballot in their home states. In 

2008, 4.5 million visitors (1.25 million 

in October alone) took advantage of 

this new online tool. However, over-



Pew Center on the States 

11 

A voter in Ohio filling out a provisional 

ballot in November 2008. 

High-quality prekindergarten, a way to prepare children 

for success later in school as well as in life. 

seas voters still must find their way 

through a complicated and time-consuming 

patchwork of state and local 

regulations, a problem that will be an 

important focus for Pew this year. 

Helping states respond to extraordinary 

fiscal stresses and learn from 

each other’s best practices is also 

a core component of the work 

of the Pew Center on the States. 

Stateline.org, our online state policy 

news site, reports on daily developments 

by state governments; 

Trends to Watch, also online, tracks 

long-term economic trends and 

other topics across all 50 states; and 

upcoming center reports will provide 

more in-depth analysis of financial 

issues affecting the states, ranging 

from their pension fund liabilities to 

the potential benefit of investments 

in the green economy. 

Faced with a $200-billion budget 

deficit over the next two years, state 

policy makers are proposing painful 

cuts in human capital programs, 

including prekindergarten, which are 

essential to develop the nation’s workforce 

and ensure long-term economic 

success. For the past three years, 

Pew has been working intensively 

in one sector—corrections—where 

states can spend less and improve 

outcomes. The national price tag for 

corrections is now over $50 billion a 

year, but the country is not getting 

an adequate return on this investment. 

With recidivism rates at nearly 

the same level of 20 years ago, when 

states spent far less on incarceration, 

it is time to focus on more cost-effective 

alternatives. Pew is assisting several 

states, including Texas, Kansas, 

Pennsylvania and Arizona—states 

led by Republicans and Democrats 

alike—in taking a hard look at who 

is going to prison and how long they 

are staying, and identifying those who 

can be safely supervised in the community 

at far lower cost. 

In recent years, states have made 

significant gains funding programs, 

such as high-quality early education, 

that have been proven to deliver 

vital, long-term social and economic 

results. As they navigate the current 

economic turbulence, the Pew Center 

on the States is committed to providing 

the guidance that will help states 

make wise budget choices—cutting 

unnecessary spending while creating 

and preserving programs critical to 

our nation’s future. 

Susan K. Urahn 


Pew Center on the States

12 

Pew Environment Group 

We live on a blue planet—71 percent of the earth’s surface is covered 

by ocean. The world’s oceans play a critical role in sustaining life. 

They help regulate the earth’s climate, generate much of the oxygen 

we breathe, detoxify and recycle pollution and absorb vast quantities 

of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. 

Yet the unrestrained impact of 

human activity—particularly industrial 

fishing—is imposing fundamental 

changes on the world’s oceans. 

Recent studies suggest that 90 percent 

of the world’s large fish have 

disappeared and close to one-third 

of all commercial fisheries have collapsed. 

Unless current trends are 

reversed, the world’s remaining 

commercial fisheries are likely to 

fail by 2048. 

For more than 15 years, the Pew Environment 

Group has been promoting 

solutions to problems affecting the 

world’s oceans. We ground our 

work in up-to-date, accurate and 

peer-reviewed science, the findings 

of which we convey to the public, the 

media and policy makers, including 

resource management agencies and 

regulatory bodies. Our goals for the 

coming five years are both specific 

and ambitious. Within the United 

States, we are committed to ending 

overfishing in federal waters by 2012. 

Internationally, we seek to improve 

governance of high-seas fisheries 

and create at least four large-scale 

marine reserves in areas of the 

oceans that require comprehensive 

protection from fishing and other 

extractive activities. 

In addition, we are committed to 

developing model standards for 

marine aquaculture that will lessen 

the detrimental impacts of fish 

farming on the marine environment; 

ensuring the sustainable management 

of krill, the basis of the marine 

food web in Antarctica; securing 

permanent bans on bottom trawling 

and other destructive fishing practices 

in both national and international 

waters; strengthening fisheries 

conservation in the European Union; 

increasing protection for whales; 

and continuing to sponsor critically 

important research aimed at informing 

and guiding the responsible management 

of ocean resources. 

Preserving the Earth’s outstanding 

wilderness is no less important. 

Merely 17 percent of the world’s 

terrestrial surface remains essentially 

unspoiled, and extinction threatens 

innumerable animal and plant species 

on land. Consequently, we have also 

campaigned for more than 15 years 

to protect some of the world’s largest 

and most important remaining 

wilderness areas; during that time, 

we have safeguarded well over 200 

million acres in the United States and 

Canada, equivalent to twice the size 

of California. 

Over the next five years, we are 

seeking the long-term protection of 

millions of acres in the United States, 

Canada and Australia. All three 

nations have vast wilderness areas 

that are biologically and ecologically 

rich. Moreover, all benefit from 

functioning democracies characterized 

by the rule of law, together with 

a citizenry that places a high value 

on conservation. As a result, once




13 

Saving endangered species from 

extinction through marine reserves 

and other measures. 

Seeking greater fuel efficiency to reduce 

global pollution. 

Protecting the Canadian boreal forest by 

joining with environmental groups, corporations 

and aboriginal First Nations. 

an area has been protected in these 

countries, restrictions on extractive 

activity and development are likely 

to be enforced. 

The Pew Environment Group recognized 

the serious implications of 

climate change in the early 1990s, 

and we have made global warming— 

which is arguably the foremost 

environmental challenge of the 21st 

century—a central focus of our work 

since then. We have made major 

investments in energy and climatechange 

research and policy design, 

public and policy-maker education, 

and the promotion of innovative 

policy solutions. These efforts have 

not only produced significant results 

but also laid the foundation for the 

adoption of strong climate policies by 

the United States in the next several 

years as well as U.S. participation in 

global climate accords. 

We are committed to continue 

working with our colleagues across 

a number of different sectors to gain 

passage of a national policy that will 

constrain greenhouse gases in ways 

that will have demonstrable economic 

as well as environmental benefits for 

the United States and the world. In 

addition, we are engaged in efforts 

to promote a post-Kyoto agreement 

in which key developed countries, 

together with the major developing 

ones, agree to substantial reductions 

in greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, 

including explicit reduction 

commitments for each nation. 

Our work is undertaken in concert 

with other environmental groups that 

recognize, as we do, that multiple 

organizations working together can 

often accomplish far more than a 

single entity on its own. In addition 

to the conservation community, we 

partner with a diverse set of other 

constituencies, including businesses, 

the philanthropic community, hunters 

and anglers, outdoor enthusiasts, 

religious leaders and native peoples. 

The 21st century brings the greatest 

environmental challenges that 

civilization has ever faced. The 

consequences of not addressing the 

destructive trends that threaten to 

transform the Earth’s natural systems 

will be severe. Moreover, the window 

of opportunity in which we can act is 

small and closing. An estimated half 

of all species of life on Earth could 

be extinct in 50 years. Human society 

has never experienced species loss 

at this level—and there will be no 

second chances to fix the situation. 

We will not have an opportunity, once 

they are gone, to bring them back. 

Joshua S. Reichert 


Pew Environment Group

14 

By continually taking the pulse of the American 

public—and, for its Global Attitudes surveys, 

of people worldwide—the Pew Research 

Center monitors evolving views on a vast range 

of issues that are shaping the United States 

and the world.


Informing The Public 

15 

Informing 

the Public 

Pew’s Information Initiatives are principally carried out by 

the Pew Research Center, a Washington-based subsidiary. 

It comprises seven projects that use public opinion 

polling and other research tools to produce nonpartisan, 

unbiased reports and timely commentary on important 

issues and trends, both in the United States and 

worldwide. In an era defined by virtually limitless access 

to information, the center applies a rigorous, analytical 

approach to provide highly credible information on 

topics that shape, and reshape, our world.

16 

Information Initiatives 

In 1916, the venerable Literary Digest sent out millions of 

postcards asking Americans to express their preferences in the 

upcoming presidential race. 

It was the first known example of 

public opinion polling on a national 

level, and it allowed the magazine to 

correctly predict Woodrow Wilson’s 

re-election that year and the winners 

of the four elections that followed. 

Alas, the Digest’s winning streak 

ended spectacularly in 1936 when, 

relying on more than two million 

returned postcards, it asserted that 

Alf Landon would handily defeat 

Franklin D. Roosevelt. It turned out 

that the Digest’s approach was 

fatally flawed. Its list of postcard 

recipients—Depression-era Americans 

with telephones and cars—was 

biased in favor of the affluent. In 

that same election a young ad man 

named George Gallup conducted a 

more scientific survey of a representative 

sample of 50,000 Americans 

and correctly predicted Roosevelt’s 

landslide victory. The era of modern 

polling was launched. 

Like Gallup back in 1936, the Pew 

Research Center, a nonpartisan “fact 

tank” that is one of America’s 

premier polling organizations, still 

relies on face-to-face interviews for 

its Global Attitudes studies in much 

of the developing world. But in the 

United States the norm has long 

been to survey people at random by 

telephone. What was new last year 

is that a significant proportion of 

interviewees—particularly the young 

and the mobile—were reached on 

their cell phones. In its final survey 

on the eve of the 2008 presidential 

election—based on a combination 

of 2,551 landline and 851 cell-phone 

interviews—the Pew Research Center 

correctly forecast Barack Obama’s 

six-point victory over John McCain. It 

was the second straight presidential 

election in which the Pew Research 

Center predicted not only the winner, 

but also the exact margin of victory. 

Predicting the outcome of a presidential 

election two days before 

the voters weigh in is an exercise of 

limited value in its own right. But preelection 

polls amount to a crucial final 

exam for polling organizations—a 

straightforward way to assess whether 

“scientific” surveys of tiny percentages 

of the population are indeed an 

accurate reflection of public opinion. 

In acing the test once again, the Pew 

Research Center added to the credibility 

of the many surveys it conducts 

each year that cannot be validated in 

such a direct fashion. 

The nature and complexity of those 

surveys vary widely. In 2008 the Pew 

Research Center’s Forum on Religion 

& Public Life released the results of 

a mammoth 35,000-person survey of 

Americans’ religious practices and 

beliefs. Serving as a de facto religion 

census—the official U.S. census does 

not include any questions about matters 

of faith—the forum’s U.S. Religious 

Landscape Survey found that 

religious affiliation in this country is 

both very diverse and extremely fluid: 

More than one in four Americans are 

no longer affiliated with the faith in 

which they were born.


Informing THE PUBLIC 

Information Initiatives 

17 

A landmark Pew Forum survey measures 

religious beliefs and practices in the U.S. 

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism assesses 

the day-to-day performance—and the future—of the press. 

The center’s Social and Demographic 

Trends unit tackled a similarly huge 

topic in seeking to produce a definitive 

portrait of the American middle 

class. Released months in advance of 

the crisis in the financial markets, it 

reported that nearly 8 in 10 respondents 

said it was now more difficult 

than five years ago for people in 

the middle class to maintain their 

standard of living. Nonetheless, 

the American middle class—more 

than half the public put itself in that 

category—expressed optimism 

for the future. 

The Pew Research Center’s Internet 

& American Life Project produced 

a definitive study of a very different 

nature—the first national survey on 

teenagers and video gaming. It found 

that virtually all American teens play 

computer, console or cell-phone 

games, but that, contrary to the 

stereotype of the lone, alienated 

gamer, there was a significant amount 

of social interaction and potential for 

civic engagement. 

Much of the research center’s work 

in the past year focused, not surprisingly, 

on the election campaign. The 

Pew Hispanic Center tracked the attitudes 

of Latinos, the fastest-growing 

group of voters. The Pew Research 

Center for the People and the Press 

went beyond the horse race to identify 

key trends in the electorate, such 

as a generational shift in party affiliation 

that favored the Democrats. The 

Pew Global Attitudes Project confirmed 

that Barack Obama was wildly 

popular in Europe even before he 

secured the Democratic nomination. 

An important addition to our portfolio 

this past year was the groundbreaking 

media content analysis of 

the Pew Research Center’s Project for 

Excellence in Journalism. The project 

monitored the work of a representative 

sample of 48 news outlets, 

producing weekly reports on how 

the election was being covered. In 

doing so, it provided hard numbers 

to inform the raging debate over the 

fairness of the media’s handling of 

the candidates. 

In today’s turbulent economic and 

political climate, the one certainty 

is that the nation will grapple with 

innumerable challenges in the year 

ahead. Through its surveys and 

in-depth reports, the Pew Research 

Center will continue to give policy 

makers and the public a “plumb line” 

of objective information on a broad 

array of issues—and thus help ensure 

a robust democracy. 

Donald Kimelman 


Information Initiatives and 

the Philadelphia Program

18 

The Star-Spangled Banner is open for visitors 

again. Newly conserved and placed in a customdesigned 

enclosure in the Smithsonian’s National 

Museum of American History in Washington, 

D.C., the flag that prompted Francis Scott Key 

to write the national anthem is inspiring new 

generations to cherish it as both historical 

artifact and national symbol.


STIMULATING CIVIC LIFE 

19 

Stimulating 

Civic Life 

Through the Philadelphia Program, Pew supports 

institutions that create a thriving arts and culture 

community, enhance the well-being of the region’s 

neediest citizens and revitalize key public spaces. 

We also produce research on important issues facing 

the city and, when possible, identify promising 

solutions. Our national civic initiatives contribute 

to an increased understanding and appreciation of 

American democracy.

20 

Culture 

Throughout history, people have turned to music, dance, visual 

images and theater to mark important life passages, from birth to 

marriage to death. Artistic expression has always helped humans 

to grapple with extreme emotions and circumstances, whether 

those be occasions for joy, the beginnings of important tasks or 

moments of crisis. 

Just think of the prehistoric cave 

paintings in France and the rock 

carvings in the American Southwest 

that depict scenes of armed men 

and fleeing animals as a means of 

calling for good fortune in the hunt. 

Or consider how eloquently music 

captures the deep emotions felt at 

weddings and funerals. 

The ability of art to satisfy humans’ 

urge for expression at these moments 

is one of its most enduring 

and universal characteristics. The 

specific ways in which the arts are 

manifested, on the other hand, vary 

dramatically from culture to culture 

and from age to age. In the 20th 

century, the American cultural sector 

grew exponentially and became 

more diverse and complex than ever 

before. Today, for example, some 

artistic forms such as gospel music 

carry the message of religious faith 

to larger audiences, and some artists 

and organizations are driven by a mission 

to make the world a better place. 

At the same time, many new forms 

of cultural expression, including 

film, television, pop music and most 

recently computer gaming, have 

developed as part of our consumer 

culture. Artistic expression occurs 

along a continuum, from work that 

survives through pure competition 

for market share to activity that is recognized 

and supported philanthropically 

as a benefit to society. 

The rapid pace of technological 

advancement over the past century 

has offered both challenges 

and opportunities to the arts, while 

steadily increasing public access 

to all sorts of cultural experiences. 

Philadelphia, where we concentrate 

our work with cultural institutions and 

artists, has a long-standing reputation 

as a city of firsts. In the arts, for 

example, the Philadelphia Orchestra 

was the first symphonic orchestra to 

make electrical recordings and to 

give a live cybercast of a concert, and 

the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine 

Arts was a pioneer in recognizing and 

exhibiting photography as a legitimate 

art form. 

Today, technology gives artists 

and cultural organizations, both in 

Philadelphia and beyond, powerful 

new tools to reinvent the traditional 

forms of music, theater, dance and 

the visual arts, and to reach everbroader 

audiences with their innovations. 

Yet it also increases competition 

for audience share. Anyone 

possessing an Internet connection, a 

decent set of headphones and a little 

bit of leisure has virtually unlimited 

access to the world’s cultural riches. 

It is already clear that the live arts will 

increasingly be challenged to reinvent 

themselves, both to incorporate 

the powerful tools offered by new 

technologies and to compete for the 

engagement of audiences that can 

access their offerings electronically. 

To help Philadelphia cultural organizations 

respond, the Pew Culture



Culture 

21 

The Pig Iron Theatre Company's Chekhov 

Lizardbrain: entertaining—and acclaimed. 

Pew fellow in the arts Losang Samten creates mandalas, or diagrams of the cosmos, 

using watercolor-dyed sand. 

program is investing in continued 

artistic innovation; creating tools for 

smarter management, marketing and 

planning in the current environment; 

and providing new knowledge about 

the nonprofit cultural sector that can 

demonstrate both its social and economic 

value and its needs. 

The Cultural Data Project, which Pew 

manages on behalf of donors and 

partners throughout the country, is 

a national program that uses Web 

technology to gather, analyze and 

disseminate reliable information on 

cultural organizations in participating 

states. Organizations use their 

own data to improve their management 

practices, and researchers and 

advocates are gaining better understanding 

of the true story of the arts’ 

impact in communities. 

Engage 2020, a Pew-supported 

research initiative of the Greater 

Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, aims 

to double cultural activity in the 

Philadelphia region by the year 2020. 

Its Cultural Engagement Index will 

track and measure how the region’s 

citizens, both amateur and professional, 

participate in a wide variety of 

commercial and nonprofit arts events. 

These new initiatives are collaborative 

efforts by Pew and donor partners to 

use 21st-century resources to support 

positive change in the cultural community. 

They enhance the Culture 

program’s established efforts here 

in our home city, including the Pew 

Center for Arts and Heritage, which 

supports initiatives in dance, music, 

theater, the visual arts and historic 

heritage, as well as fellowships for 

artists; and the Philadelphia Cultural 

Leadership Program, which, through 

technical assistance for management 

and grants for general operations, 

assists organizations to be more 

effective and creative in their work. 

While much has changed in the 

past century, and even in the past 

decade, one thing remains constant: 

People crave and need opportunities 

to explore their deeper selves and 

connect with one another and the 

world through all of the arts. Pew 

and our partners seek to ensure that 

a vibrant cultural community accessible 

to all is a reality that will continue 

to enrich Philadelphia and the nation 

in the years to come. 

Marian A. Godfrey 

Senior Director 

Culture Initiatives 

Gregory T. Rowe 

Director 

Culture Initiatives 

Deputy Director 

Philadelphia Program

22 

Pew Fund for Health and 


In 1908, residents of Massachusetts voted in favor of a new 

state law requiring its most populous cities and towns to provide 

playgrounds for their youngest citizens. 

The legislation was the culmination 

of a decade-long effort by a coalition 

of child advocates who were urging 

municipal governments to construct 

spaces where children could play 

under supervised conditions. Proponents 

believed that in addition to 

being safe spaces for children, supervised 

play areas offered opportunities 

for young people to learn important 

life skills such as good manners, 

moral conduct and sportsmanship. 

By 1910, the playground idea had 

become a national movement involving 

55 cities and towns, including 

Philadelphia, and 113 colleges and 

universities were giving courses on 

playground design and operation. 

Today, after-school and out-of-school 

programs continue to provide opportunities 

for youth to nurture the skills 

necessary to become productive 

citizens. The need has never been 

greater. A 2002 report estimated that 

young people spend approximately 

80 percent of their waking hours—the 

time before and after school, weekends, 

the summer and other school 

breaks—outside a formal education 

setting. According to the Pennsylvania 

Statewide Afterschool and Youth 

Development Network, close to 

340,000 young people in the commonwealth 

regularly spend time 

after school without adult supervision, 

making them susceptible to 

risky behavior. 

In 2008, the Pew Fund for Health 

and Human Services in Philadelphia 

helped 26 organizations provide 

high-quality out-of-school activities 

for approximately 9,000 disadvantaged 

children and youth in the 

Philadelphia region. Certainly, the 

activities have progressed considerably 

from the pioneering days of the 

playground movement. Pew Fund 

grantees involve young people in 

such endeavors as the creation of 

community murals, filmmaking, playwriting, 

composing and, of course, 

sports. Seven of these programs 

offer intensive, year-round academic 

classes to improve school performance 

and prepare young people 

for college and other postsecondary 

opportunities. This year, nearly 

200 students from these programs 

are going on to college. Recognizing 

that high-quality early-education 

experiences are key to a child’s later 

success, the Pew Fund is helping 

improve the ability of local child-care 

and early-education programs to prepare 

children for school. As a result, 

more than 2,000 children are attending 

programs with higher-quality 

learning environments, more developmentally 

appropriate curricula and 

more qualified teachers. 

The Pew Fund also supports efforts 

that help parents and other caregivers 

with children exhibiting early 

signs of potentially harmful social and 

emotional problems. These youngsters 

have often been exposed to 

violence, show difficulty paying attention, 

frequently lose their tempers or 

defy their parents. With Pew support, 

caregivers—both parents and professionals 

such as child-care workers 

or Head Start teachers—receive 

counseling and training on how to 

correct problem behaviors. In view



Pew Fund for Health and Human Services in Philadelphia 

23 

In Philadelphia, the Big Picture Alliance's 

media program, helping young people 

learn self-expression and job skills. 

Eighth-grade graduation through Project Forward Leap, which helps middle-school 

students from the inner city with disadvantaged backgrounds. 

of the challenges parents have in finding 

treatment for children with more 

serious diagnoses, the Pew Fund 

works with agencies that directly 

assist these families to obtain appropriate 

services for their children in a 

timely way. Nearly 2,000 children and 

families are receiving needed mental 

health services. 

In addition to efforts for poor children 

and families, the Pew Fund provides 

operating and project support to 

nonprofits serving frail, low-income 

elderly who are at risk of institutionalization 

and adults who face significant 

barriers to independence, including 

substance abuse, homelessness or 

chronic mental and physical health 

problems. With Pew support, in 

2008 approximately 18,000 seniors 

obtained benefits and services that 

helped them to overcome isolation, 

depression and other health-related 

conditions that threatened their ability 

to remain safely in their homes. 

The Pew Fund also seeks to bolster the 

effectiveness of these organizations 

in challenging times through support 

to the OMG Center for Collaborative 

Learning. With financial and technical 

assistance from OMG, 27 health 

and human service organizations in 

the Philadelphia region are making 

improvements in such areas as program 

assessment, financial management 

and analysis, new program 

development and leadership-transition 

planning and preparation. 

Finally, the Pew Fund addresses 

important public policy issues that 

affect vulnerable individuals and 

families in the Philadelphia area. In 

July 2007, Governor Edward Rendell 

signed legislation that, for the 

first time, authorized the establishment 

of standards for assisted-living 

residences in Pennsylvania, a significant 

development in the state’s 

provision of long-term-care services. 

With operating support from Pew, 

the Pennsylvania Health Law Project 

assembled the Pennsylvania Assisted 

Living Consumer Alliance, a network 

of 29 statewide organizations representing 

seniors and those with disabilities. 

During the last year, alliance 

members have provided significant 

comment on proposed assisted-living 

regulations to ensure that the needs 

of elderly and disabled consumers 

are safeguarded. 

Over the next year, the Pew Fund 

will continue to provide vital support 

that enables local health and human 

services organizations to help 

young people grow into productive 

members of the community; assists 

those with long-standing disabling 

conditions to function more effectively; 

and helps frail elderly people 

to live independently. 

Frazierita D. Klasen 

Director 

Pew Fund for Health and 


Deputy Director 

Philadelphia Program

24 

Civic Initiatives 

A dynamic city is always a work in progress, and Philadelphia— 

one of the oldest cities in the United States—has had more than its 

share of highs and lows over the past century. 

“Corrupt and contented” was the 

doleful label that muckraking journalist 

Lincoln Steffens slapped on it in 

his famous 1904 book, The Shame 

of the Cities. Yet 50 years later, under 

the consecutive mayoralties of 

Joseph Clark and Richardson Dilworth, 

elected by a populace demanding 

the end of boss politics, Philadelphia 

became home to one of the nation’s 

most vibrant reform efforts of the 

postwar period. A civil service system 

replaced decades of patronage, 

government was reorganized under 

a new home rule charter, and an energized 

planning commission worked 

to ensure that the modern city would 

not always look back longingly to its 

colonial past. 

While reform arguably took one step 

back for every two forward in the 

years that followed, in 2007 Philadelphia 

again elected a reform-minded 

mayor who vowed to curtail influence 

peddling at City Hall and run a more 

responsive, transparent and costeffective 

city government. 

Now Pew is seeking to do its part 

to improve the city’s prospects by 

shining a bright light on important 

issues that must be addressed. It is a 

relatively new role for Pew in Philadelphia, 

but one that—like all of Pew’s 

endeavors—is driven by the power 

of knowledge. 

Pew has been a consistent supporter 

of its hometown since it was founded 

in 1948, underwriting cultural and 

civic projects and providing assistance 

to those most in need. In 

2008, under its newly created Philadelphia 

Program, Pew established 

an in-house unit—the Philadelphia 

Research Initiative—that will produce 

timely and authoritative reports on 

critical issues facing the city. 

This work is not without precedent 

at Pew. When there were open races 

for the mayor’s office in 1999 and 

2007, Pew funded major reports that 

assessed Philadelphia’s strengths and 

weaknesses relative to six comparable 

American cities. In addition to 

covering predictable topics such as 

education and crime, the 2007 

report identified a “sleeper” issue— 

the soaring costs of pension and 

health benefits for city workers. 

In 2008, Pew, in partnership with the 

Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, 

followed up with a report, 

“Philadelphia’s Quiet Crisis: The 

Rising Cost of Employee Benefits.” 

The study found that Philadelphia’s 

city budget was shackled by current 

and future pension obligations that 

would impede any administration 

from improving municipal services or 

reducing taxes. By 2012, the report 

projected, pension and retiree 

health-care costs could devour 28 

percent of the city budget. 

More recently, Pew and the William 

Penn Foundation commissioned a 

study of the city-owned gas utility, 

Philadelphia Gas Works. Researchers 

concluded that it is “hobbled by 

byzantine government oversight” and 

urgently needs to address an array of




25 

In-depth reports on vital issues facing 

Philadelphia: raising the level of civic 

dialogue. 

Newly landscaped and beautified, Philadelphia’s Logan Circle, 

the site of the Swann Memorial Fountain. 

structural problems. The study noted 

that improving the utility’s current 

condition would not only benefit its 

customers and the city’s economic 

competitiveness but also enhance the 

Gas Works’ value for potential sale or 

other conveyance. 

Pew plans to apply the same unflinching 

analysis to other topics through 

the Philadelphia Research Initiative. 

The project expects to produce three 

or four in-depth reports each year 

that get to the bottom of complex 

issues, often drawing comparisons 

with other cities. When possible, 

the reports will describe policy 

approaches that have been tried 

elsewhere, objectively listing their 

pros and cons. 

In addition, the initiative will release 

annual state-of-the-city reports that 

will rely on a wide array of data to tell 

the tale of where Philadelphia stands 

today on such important fronts as 

jobs, taxes, crime, population growth, 

poverty, cultural participation, public 

health and housing starts. 

These reports will seek to answer a 

fundamental question: How is the city 

doing? The research initiative will also 

conduct an annual poll of Philadelphians 

that will track their attitudes 

on the most important issues facing 

the city, their views of elected leaders 

and their sense of whether the city is 

headed in the right or wrong direction. 

In short, it will answer a related 

question: How does the public perceive 

the city is doing? 

The Philadelphia Research Initiative 

comes at critical time for the city. 

Even as its downtown and surrounding 

neighborhoods have thrived, 

its universities have prospered and 

its tourist economy has blossomed, 

Philadelphia continues to lag behind 

other cities and metropolitan areas 

on core indicators of economic, 

personal-income and population 

growth. Its continuing population loss 

and high crime rate have blotted its 

image, and the economic crisis that 

is intensifying nationally has already 

forced cutbacks in some of the local 

services that raise the quality of life 

for residents. Strong leadership and a 

supportive citizenry will be needed to 

tilt the balance in the right direction. 

Through the Philadelphia Research 

Initiative, Pew will seek to better 

inform the public debate—homing in 

on issues that should be addressed 

and pointing the way toward solutions. 



Information Initiatives and 

the Philadelphia Program

26 

When glaciers melt, they crack and parts fall into 

the sea, a process called calving—as here, at 

the Dawes Glacier in Alaska. Although this is a 

natural process, global warming is causing glaciers 

to shrink at an accelerating pace. Only multiple 

organizations working together with a common 

strategy can address an issue as complex and 

multifaceted as climate change.


Philanthropic Services and Government Relations 

27 

Philanthropic 

Services and 

Government 

Relations 

Pew partners with individuals, foundations and 

corporations that want their charitable investments to 

achieve significant and measurable returns. With more 

than six decades of experience, we are able to identify 

critical issues and offer a variety of approaches to donors 

who share our commitment to fact-based solutions and 

results-oriented philanthropy. When our projects can 

benefit from effective advocacy, we tap our government 

affairs expertise to advance policy.

28 

Philanthropic Services and 

Government Relations 

Even before our country declared its independence, the 

transformational power of philanthropy was a strong force for 

change in the evolving American landscape. 

With other resources generally 

scarce and a government thousands 

of miles away, civic participation 

became a cornerstone of the emerging 

society, and charity was one of 

the duties of an engaged citizenry. 

Probably the colonial who embodied 

this behavior best was Philadelphia’s 

favorite son, Benjamin Franklin, 

inventor, entrepreneur, patriot and 

philanthropist extraordinaire. 

In addition to his many good works 

during his lifetime, Franklin left 

bequests to both Boston, where 

he was born, and Philadelphia, his 

adopted home. “I wish to be useful 

even after my death, if possible in 

forming and advancing other young 

men, that may be serviceable to 

their country,” he wrote. In fact, so 

farsighted was Franklin that his sense 

of personal service was the philanthropic 

model for many decades 

after his death. 

In the 20th century, the nonprofit 

world in the United States benefited 

from two new governmental incentives: 

tax deductions for philanthropic 

contributions and an income 

tax law that exempted any corporation 

and association “organized and 

operated exclusively for religious, 

charitable, scientific or educational 

purposes.” Even more important, 

individuals began to amass great 

wealth, which many used to serve 

the public good. Business titans such 

as Andrew Carnegie and John D. 

Rockefeller raised the bar for grantmaking 

that was both strategic and 

on a scale without precedent. 

Philanthropy matured in many other 

forms as well. In 1907, the first private 

family foundation, the Russell Sage 

Foundation, was established, and 

exactly a century ago, the National 

Association for the Advancement of 

Colored People, the nation’s first 

organization devoted to civil rights, 

was formed. In 1914, the first community 

foundation was created in Cleveland, 

leading the way for countless 

locally based charitable initiatives. 

Step by step, the American ideal of 

creating a “more perfect union” was 

being advanced through a melding of 

social activism and charity. 

In 1948, members of the Pew family 

consolidated their individual personal 

charitable efforts by creating The 

Pew Memorial Foundation, known 

today as The Pew Charitable Trusts. 

The family believed that the entrepreneurial, 

collaborative, priority-based, 

results-oriented approaches that had 

served them well in other aspects of 

life could be applied to pressing societal 

issues. Thus was the foundation 

a social innovator from its first days. 

Early on, it launched a pioneering 

initiative to support historically black 

colleges and universities at a time


Philanthropic Services and Government Relations 

29 

Thomas Jefferson, at his desk, being 

published in a definitive edition at last. 

Enabling a half-million foster-care children to find the safe, permanent 

homes they deserve. 

when those institutions were incubating 

America’s civil rights movement. 

On this bedrock of enterprise and 

accountability, the founders created 

an organization that continually 

could, and does, evaluate the best 

tools and approaches to address 

the challenges of the times. The 

decision in 2004 to transition Pew 

from a private foundation to a public 

charity—which extended our operating 

flexibility, opening new avenues 

of collaboration and innovation— 

represented an extension of this 

evolutionary thinking, and we are 

leveraging the change in new and 

exciting ways. As a public charity, 

we have significantly increased the 

number, types and breadth of partnerships 

we can undertake. As an 

organization with a stable financial 

footing and a 61-year reputation of 

sound, responsible social investing, 

we can be highly strategic in choosing 

those partnerships. 

The results so far have been promising. 

In 2008, our partner initiatives 

helped secure the passage of several 

new federal laws, including a major 

foster-care reform package that will 

free a half-million children trapped 

in a bureaucratic morass and place 

them in safe, loving families. The year 

2009 began with another notable 

success when President George W. 

Bush established three new marine 

national monuments that more than 

doubled the area of U.S. ocean protected 

as no-take reserves. 

Through the life of an initiative, 

we constantly monitor our efforts 

to make sure they are on track to 

achieve our goals. Our partners value 

this unblinking focus on our strategy, 

our tailored approach to investing 

resources and our steadfast commitment 

to organizational accountability. 

In the Pew tradition, as we expand 

our partnership base, we seek to 

reach out to more constituencies— 

child advocates, consumers, voters— 

to help them carry their messages 

directly to policy makers at the local, 

state and federal levels. 

Sixty-one years ago, the founders of 

The Pew Charitable Trusts did not 

pretend to presage the challenges 

that would face 21st-century America, 

much less specific ways to address 

them. Instead, they built an institution 

that could stand the test of time, both 

stalwart in its core values and innovative 

in meeting emerging demands. 

For Pew and our growing number of 

partners, it may be that this founding 

vision is the investment that has 

yielded the most consistent, and 

most significant, returns. 

Susan A. Magill 


Philanthropic Services and 

Government Relations

30 

The road to a goal is rarely 

straightforward. At Pew, planning 

and evaluation are crucial elements 

in honing our programmatic 

objectives and helping determine 

the best way to reach them.


Planning and Evaluation 

31 

Planning and 

Evaluation 

Pew’s programmatic work begins with a deep 

understanding of the problem and a focused strategy 

to reach solutions, and it concludes with a rigorous 

analysis of results. The Planning and Evaluation 

department supports the organization’s efforts by 

providing thoughtful guidance and critique on initial 

program design, objective measurement of progress 

against benchmarks, identification of lessons that 

can be applied to Pew’s work, and assessment of our 

ultimate return on investment.

32 

Planning and Evaluation 

The bronze front doors of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the 

Library of Congress contain bas-reliefs in the Beaux-Arts style. 

One door, celebrating knowledge, depicts allegorical figures of Truth 

and Research. Installed in 1896, it encapsulates the thinking of 

that era—principles that still ring true today. 

The turn of the 20th century opened 

the possibilities of gaining insight 

about the world through observation 

and experimentation, and then 

applying the knowledge gained 

to solve theoretical and practical 

problems. We are familiar with the 

advances that ensued in the basic 

sciences of physics, chemistry and 

biology, and in industry, where 

applied knowledge spurred changes 

with far-reaching technological and 

social consequences. 

The fields of planning and evaluation 

are another legacy of that era, even 

though they were not formalized or 

professionalized for many decades 

afterward. They involve science in 

the sense of approaching problems 

or issues systematically to encourage 

insight. They rely on observation 

and study, require discipline and 

rigor, and thrive on clarity of thought, 

including a firm awareness of what is 

not known or can only be assumed. 

Yet there is also room for exercising 

judgment and intuition in the practice 

of both—planning and evaluation are 

part science and part craft. 

One misconception about planning 

is that creative solutions to complex 

problems can reliably emerge from a 

structured planning process. Creativity 

cannot be planned, except 

perhaps in the sense of giving people 

the freedom to experiment, innovate 

and learn from their mistakes and 

successes. Planning, however, can 

contribute to problem solving by 

testing, refining and clarifying ideas; 

bringing to bear the most relevant 

prior experience; and providing 

opportunities to adapt ideas to 

changing conditions. 

As an example, the Planning and 

Evaluation unit recently engaged 

with the Pew Environment Group in 

its efforts to clarify several key crisis 

areas in ocean conservation and 

propose possible approaches to 

solving them. The Environment staff, 

along with their partners, brought 

deep field and campaign expertise to 

bear in diagnosing these problems. 

Planning and Evaluation contributed 

a different set of skills. 

We urged the Pew Environment 

Group to examine the root causes of 

the issues to better ensure that the 

solutions proposed were relevant and 

feasible. We promoted discipline in 

setting and articulating objectives so 

that these would be as unambiguous 

as possible. We encouraged clear 

statements of strategy that outlined 

how each objective would be pursued. 

We helped our colleagues 

identify intermediate milestones so 

that, in the course of each individual 

project, we could all gauge progress 

toward the appropriate objectives. 

With a large and complex program 

like ocean conservation, not every 

aspect of the strategy was fully envisioned. 

Recognizing this, we asked 

staff to determine the steps needed


Planning and EVALUATION 

33 

Enhancing the design and management 

of programmatic work through the light of 

planning and evaluation. 

It’s not enough simply to determine the best path for a project to reach its goal—the 

initiative must also stay on course. 

to bring the embryonic aspects of 

the strategy to maturity. Finally, we 

shared the insights gained from 

Pew’s previous experience, including 

earlier evaluations, concerning the 

effectiveness of various strategies. 

In the end, the planning effort 

contributed to an ambitious and 

thoughtful strategy for Pew’s marine 

program for the coming decade. 

Eventually, of course, we will evaluate 

the performance of Pew’s ocean 

conservation work, bringing the same 

combination of science and craft that 

went into the ocean program’s planning. 

In essence, the planning effort 

provides the framework we will use 

later to evaluate the program. Having 

clarity on a project’s objectives, 

strategy and milestones allows us 

to frame thoughtful and incisive 

evaluation questions. 

At the evaluation stage, we team with 

external consultants to apply multiple 

methods, drawing from several data 

sources to search for evidence that 

responds to our evaluation questions. 

For each specific program objective, 

the evaluators collect data on baseline 

conditions—the state of the issue 

before the project’s initiation; document 

any changes observed over 

time toward our objectives; determine 

the actions of Pew’s projects 

and their consequences; and, finally, 

assess whether these actions can be 

linked to the observed changes. 

There is no one best way to evaluate 

all programs or strategies, nor do we 

seek definitive answers to our questions. 

Thus, evaluation results are 

typically nuanced (“the strategy performed 

well under these conditions 

and faced challenges under others”) 

rather than unequivocal (“the strategy 

worked”). In addition to assessing 

a project’s performance, we also 

seek to learn from our successes and 

mistakes, so that the institution as a 

whole can learn from the initiative. 

As an organization driven by the 

power of knowledge and committed 

to achieving concrete results, Pew 

has a threefold goal for planning and 

evaluation: to strengthen the design 

and implementation of the program 

initiatives; to inform critical institutional 

and programmatic decision 

making; and to advance our understanding 

of how we can be effective 

in our work. While the nature of the 

issues that Pew is addressing may 

change over time, we believe the 

rigor with which we approach them 

must remain constant. 

Lester W. Baxter 

Director 

Planning and Evaluation

34 

2008 Milestones 

Each year, we join with excellent organizations to produce work that 

exemplifies exactly what we mean in stating that Pew serves the 

public interest. On these pages, we highlight the results of Pewsupported 

work that made a difference in 2008. 


The Economic Mobility Project releases 

reports exploring the roles of federal 

government investment, family 

structure and other social influences, 

such as education, health and access 

to financial resources, in determining 

economic mobility, or the ability 

to improve one’s economic standing. 

One of the reports finds that intragenerational 

mobility rates—those within 

one’s lifetime—have changed little 

since the 1980s, and that educational 

attainment continues to be a key driver 

in advancing people who are on the 

lower rungs of the economic ladder. 

With support from Pew, US Budget 

Watch elevates the debate on fiscal 

responsibility and the federal budget 

during the campaign season. Its “Fiscal 

Voter’s Guide” analyzes the impact 

on the deficit of the two major presidential 

candidates’ proposed policies 

on health care, an economic stimulus 

package, taxes and Social Security. 

Data from US Budget Watch are widely 

cited by the media, including CBS 

News anchor Bob Schieffer while moderating 

the third presidential debate. 

Pew partners with the Peter G. Peterson 

Foundation and the Committee for a 

Responsible Federal Budget to build 

bipartisan consensus for a core set of 

reforms to an outdated congressional 

budget process. The Peterson-Pew 

Commission on Budget Reform 

will convene the nation’s preeminent 

experts to make recommendations for 

how best to strengthen the budget 

process used by federal lawmakers. 

Pew launches Subsidyscope, a new 

initiative designed to make government 

subsidies more transparent to the 

public and policy makers through the 

development of a comprehensive online 

database of all federal subsidies. By 

aggregating information across sectors 

of the economy, Subsidyscope, in 

a nonpartisan manner, seeks to inform 

the debate over the creation of new subsidies 

and the efficacy of existing ones. 


Services Policy 

The most sweeping reform of the 

U.S. foster care system in more than 

a decade is signed into law. The 

legislation, called the Fostering 

Connections to Success and Increasing 

Adoptions Act of 2008, includes 

core recommendations of the Pew 

Commission on Children in Foster 

Care, making it easier for relatives to 

become guardians of children and also 

facilitating adoptions of children—especially 

those who are older and those 

with special needs—from foster care. 

The Pew Campaign on Human Health 

and Industrial Farming achieves an 

early objective in its effort to ban the 

nontherapeutic use of antibiotics 

when President George W. Bush signs 

into law new reporting requirements for 

drug manufacturers marketing antibiotics 

to the animal-agriculture industry. 

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination 

Act, which prohibits 

health insurers and employers from 

asking or requiring a person to take a 

genetic test, becomes law. The Pewsupported 

Genetics & Public Policy 

Center at Johns Hopkins University 

has urged the passage of this landmark 

piece of consumer protection. 

Hailed by Senator Edward Kennedy, 

chair of the Health, Education, Labor 

and Pensions Committee, as “the first 

civil rights bill of the new century of

Pew Prospectus 2009 milestones 2008 35 

the life sciences,” it also prevents the 

use of genetic information in setting 

insurance rates or making employment 

decisions. 

The Federal Reserve, the Office of 

Thrift Supervision and the National 

Credit Administration announce 

reforms to credit card regulations. 

The new rules restrict punitive interest-rate 

charges and ban double-cycle 

billing (in which the interest is figured 

not only on the credit card’s current 

balance but also on the average daily 

balance from the previous billing 

period). These practices were identified 

as predatory by the Pew Credit 

Card Standards Project, and the 

changes represent important consumer 

protections for families. 

Several recommendations by the Pewsupported 

Project on Student Debt 

regarding student loans are incorporated 

in Congress’s reauthorization of 

the Higher Education Act. In particular, 

Congress authorizes the Department of 

Education to move forward on the project’s 

proposal to simplify the federal 

financial aid form by giving students 

the option of using data from their tax 

forms to complete the application. 

Several major medical-device companies 

withdraw product videos from 

YouTube, the video-sharing Web site, 

following a petition from the Prescription 

Project to the Food and Drug 

Administration that the videos lack 

federally mandated warnings or provisions 

required of such advertisements. 

One company declares that it will add 

safety information to online ads for a 

heart device it sells. 

Pew Center 

on the States 

Despite a troubled economy, state 

funding for preschool programs 

grows by $319 million for fiscal year 

2008–2009, due in part to the efforts 

of groups such as Pre-K Now, a public 

education and advocacy organization 

supported by Pew. On January 1, 2009, 

Pre-K Now merges with Pew Center on 

the States, as part of Pew’s renewed 

campaign to show the proven benefits 

of early investment in children. 

In addition, Pew launches two new 

initiatives on behalf of young children. 

One seeks to improve access to dental 

care; the other uses home-based 

parent coaching to improve outcomes 

for severely at-risk families. 

The Partnership for America’s 

Economic Success, which encourages 

the private sector to make children 

a top economic priority, draws 350 

participants to its annual Economic 

Summit on Early Childhood Investment; 

it also cosponsors the second 

annual Telluride Economic Summit 

on Early Childhood Investment. The 

Partnership’s first state affiliate, the 

Partnership for Wisconsin’s Economic 

Success, is established. 

The Public Safety Performance Project 

publishes the widely acclaimed report 

“One in 100: Behind Bars in America 

2008,” which finds that more than 

one in 100 adults is incarcerated and 

boosts state and federal efforts to find 

more cost-effective corrections strategies. 

The project and its partners help 

advance reforms in Arizona, Pennsylvania, 

Rhode Island, Vermont and Michigan 

that will control crime and reduce 

prison spending in those states by a 

projected $383 million over the next 

several years. Policy changes include 

performance-based funding for community 

corrections agencies, which

36 

will receive a portion of the savings 

achieved from fewer incarcerations. 

Make Voting Work publishes a series 

of studies comparing the performance 

of state election systems and analyzing 

innovative solutions to election 

administration problems. Make Voting 

Work’s advocacy efforts contribute to 

the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s 

decision to deliver $10 million 

to five states seeking to improve the 

collection of data needed to expand 

assessments of election performance. 

The Voting Information Project, 

a partnership of election officials, 

Make Voting Work and Google Inc., 

is adopted by 10 states and Los 

Angeles. This Internet-based application 

allows voters in those jurisdictions 

to find out more easily how 

to register, check their registration 

status, locate polling places and see 

what is on their ballots. According to 

Google’s figures, 7 to 10 percent of 

all of the people who voted in 2008 

used a poll locator with data from the 

Voting Information Project. 

The Overseas Vote Foundation, a 

Make Voting Work partner, launches a 

set of Web applications to help military 

and overseas voters register 

and cast absentee ballots. During the 

year, 4.5 million online users—1.25 

million in October alone—access the 

suite of services. The tools are offered 

through the foundation’s Web site 

and 17 other sites hosted by diverse 

groups including state election 

offices, both major presidential campaigns, 

leading corporations and civic 

groups such as the League of Women 

Voters and Rock the Vote. In another 

step toward modernizing the election 

system for voters overseas, the 

Uniform Law Commission, a nonprofit 

working toward uniformity in state 

laws, accepts a Pew recommendation 

to begin the process of drafting 

a military and overseas voting law to 

cut through conflicting state rulings 

and ensure that proven solutions are 

enacted in all states. 

Kicking off a series of 50-state assessments 

on fiscal challenges facing 

states, Pew releases reports on the 

bill coming due for pension and 

health care benefits for retired 

public sector employees and on 

states’ outmoded tax structures. 

“Promises with a Price” is highlighted 

in news stories in more than 35 states 

and broadcast interviews that reach 

nearly nine million people nationwide. 

“Growth and Taxes,” released in Governing 

magazine, generates significant 

interest from policy makers: The 

National Conference of State Legislatures 

uses the report in a meeting on 

tax policy for state lawmakers, staff 

and business executives from around 

the country; and leaders in four states 

ask Pew staff to help them assess 

their tax structures. 

The Government Performance Project 

releases its “Grading the States 

2008” report in partnership with 

Governing magazine. For the first 

time, the project publishes in-depth 

management briefs tailored to each 

of the 50 states, including specific, 

practical and actionable recommendations 

for state leaders. The project 

has another first: It convenes top 

managers from 30 states to hear from 

state innovators themselves about 

best practices identified through the 

yearlong report-card process. Participants 

use this information for a range 

of activities, from providing extensive 

in-state training to shaping a statewide 

management agenda.


At the Capitolbeat Conference 

sponsored by the professional 

association of statehouse reporters, 

Stateline.org captures seven honors 

across four categories in online 

journalism: first and second place for 

a single report, second place in commentary, 

second and third place for 

in-depth reporting, and second and 

third place for beat reporting. 

Pew Environment 

Group 

President George W. Bush announces 

the designation of three marine 

national monuments, including the 

waters surrounding the Northern 

Mariana Islands and Mariana Trench. 

The president’s proclamation is a significant 

accomplishment for the Pew 

Environment Group’s Global Ocean 

Legacy program, which has worked 

toward this goal over the past two 

years with the administration as well 

as with citizens and elected officials 

in the Commonwealth of the Northern 

Marianas. 

The U.S. House of Representatives 

passes a “fins-attached” shark 

fishing policy, a measure that closes 

a gaping loophole in domestic law. 

Pew initiates key research supporting 

the legislation through the Lenfest 

Ocean Program and is the only 

nongovernmental organization asked 

to provide congressional testimony 

on the subject. The Council of the 

European Union adopts a sciencebased 

proposal to ban the retention 

and mandate careful release of some 

increasingly rare marine types, including 

angel sharks, common skates 

and undulate rays—a conservation 

measure recommended by Pew’s 

Shark Alliance. 

Pew’s efforts to improve management 

of the krill fishery result in several 

key decisions at the Commission for 

the Conservation of Antarctic Marine 

Living Resources. Pew is instrumental 

in the passage of a standardized 

method for reporting the volume of 

krill catch and spearheads the effort 

to require krill fishing vessels to carry 

onboard observers. 

Following vigorous public-education 

and advocacy efforts by Pew and its 

partners, the National Marine Fisheries 

Service withdraws draft regulations 

that would have made it more difficult 

to improve fisheries management, 

including ending overfishing, by limiting 

the application of the National 

Environmental Policy Act. Internationally, 

several regional fisheries 

management organizations, as well as 

parties to the Food and Agricultural 

Organization, adopt protective policies 

to conserve deep-sea fisheries. 

Using information supported by the 

Lenfest Ocean Program, Oregon bans 

the commercial harvest of bull kelp, 

a large marine plant that grows in 

coastal waters and is an important habitat 

for many fish and wildlife species. 

The International Boreal Conservation 

Campaign is instrumental in protecting 

33.3 million acres of boreal forest 

wilderness in more than a dozen new 

parks and wildlife refuges, bringing 

the campaign total to 125 million acres 

protected since 2000. Pew’s boreal 

conservation efforts continue to hold 

great promise, as the government of 

Ontario announces its intention to protect 

at least another 55 million acres 

in its boreal forest region and Quebec 

states a goal of protecting another 142 

million acres.

38 

The Pew-supported Heritage Forest 

Campaign and its allies continue to 

thwart efforts to undo the Roadless 

Area Conservation Rule, the landmark 

measure that protects almost 60 

million of the country’s undeveloped 

national forestland. In Idaho, where 

new rulemaking threatens to reduce 

safeguards for its nine million acres of 

backcountry forests, Pew and its allies 

succeed in keeping the state’s roadless 

areas largely off limits to roadbuilding 

and other industrial development. 

In Colorado, Pew persuades 

the governor to seek additional time 

from the U.S. Forest Service in order to 

preserve 4.4 million acres of the state’s 

best backcountry. 

The Pew Commission on Industrial 

Farm Animal Production issues a 

comprehensive report examining the 

impact of industrial farm animal production 

on public health, the environment, 

farm communities and animal 

welfare. California voters pass Proposition 

2, which prohibits farmers from 

confining veal calves, egg-laying hens 

and pregnant sows in cages and crates. 

The measure is strongly supported by 

the commission, which opposes such 

practices as not only inhumane, but 

also a danger to public health because 

they require the nontherapeutic use of 

antibiotics, which is a direct contributor 

to growing antibiotic resistance. 

The House Natural Resources Committee 

passes an emergency resolution 

to require the U.S. Secretary of Interior 

to withdraw approximately one million 

acres of federal lands around the Grand 

Canyon from new mining claims. The 

vote is a victory for the Pew Campaign 

for Responsible Mining and its allies, 

which seek to reform the antiquated 

1872 law that gives hardrock mining priority 

on most public lands in the West. 

Information 

Initiatives 

In its final pre-election poll, the Pew 

Research Center for the People 

and the Press accurately predicts the 

outcome of the 2008 presidential 

race down to the percentage point 

—52 percent for Barack Obama and 

46 percent for John McCain. Remarkably, 

this is the second presidential 

election in which the Pew Research 

Center has predicted the winner’s 

precise margin: Its 2004 survey that 

showed George Bush defeating John 

Kerry at 51 to 48 percent was also an 

exact estimation of the result. That 

precision draws praise from many 

national print and broadcast media 

outlets, with one National Public 

Radio commentator calling the center’s 

polling “gold-plated.” 

The Campaign Coverage Index, 

released each week by the Pew 

Research Center’s Project for Excellence 

in Journalism, monitors media 

reporting on the closely watched 

presidential race. Paired with the News 

Interest Index by the Pew Research 

Center for the People and the Press, 

which analyzes the public’s response 

to these stories, it shows the interplay 

between news coverage and the public’s 

perceptions of the race. The two 

indexes agree that candidate Barack 

Obama receives far more coverage, 

as well as more favorable coverage, 

than does opponent John McCain. 

The News Interest Index also finds that 

the public follows news about the 2008 

presidential campaign more closely 

than any presidential election in the 

past 20 years. Americans rely primarily 

on television news for information


about the campaign, and cable TV is 

the dominant medium. 

The Pew Global Attitudes Project 

surveys 24,000 people in 24 countries 

and reports that not only are people 

around the world following the U.S. 

presidential election closely but, 

except in countries with an extreme 

anti-American bias, public opinion is 

generally optimistic about the direction 

U.S. foreign policy will take 

under a new president. A separate 

study finds rising anti-Muslim and 

anti-Jewish feelings in several major 

European countries. 

The Pew Hispanic Center projects 

that, if current trends continue, the 

U.S. population will grow to 438 million 

in 2050, with most of that increase 

due to immigrants arriving between 

2005 and 2050 and their U.S.-born 

descendants. The center reports that 

Latinos have accounted for more than 

half of the overall population growth in 

the United States in this decade, and 

it provides details through interactive 

online maps and databases for 

all 50 states and their 3,141 counties. 

Another study finds that, for the first 

time in a decade, the inflow of immigrants 

who are undocumented has 

now fallen below that of immigrants 

who are legal permanent residents. 

Stepped-up law enforcement and the 

worsening economy are both seen as 

playing roles. 

The Pew Internet & American Life 

Project conducts the first nationally 

representative study of teens and 

video gaming and the role of teen 

videogame play in civic engagement. 

Research shows that video games 

are ubiquitous in the lives of American 

teens and—contrary to popular 

belief—offer a significant amount of 

social interaction and potential for 

civic engagement. Another study 

reports that nearly half of technology 

users need help from others in 

getting new devices and services to 

work, and many encounter electronic 

breakdowns from time to time, with 

home Internet connections being the 

most problematic. 

The Pew Research Center Social 

and Demographic Trends project 

issues several reports monitoring the 

pulse of the American public. One 

study finds that fewer middle-class 

Americans now than at any time in 

the past half-century believe they are 

moving forward in life. Another survey, 

conducted prior to the election, 

reports that Republicans are consistently 

happier than Democrats—a 

trend unchanged since the question 

was first asked in 1972, although the 

current gap is among the largest on 

record. Another study examines the 

role that gender plays in decisionmaking 

and finds that women are the 

bosses when it comes to four major 

activities in the typical American 

home: weekend-activities planning, 

household finances, major home purchases 

and TV watching. 

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public 

Life, polling 35,000 Americans for its 

U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, finds 

that worship is strong in this country, 

with more than half of those surveyed 

saying that they attend services regularly 

and pray daily. At the same time, 

religious affiliation is extremely fluid— 

more than one in four American adults 

no longer observe the faith in which 

they were raised—and tolerance of 

diversity is high: The majority of those 

who are affiliated with a religion do 

not believe that theirs is the only way 

to salvation. In addition to conduct-

40 


1948 experienced a major environmental catastrophe, a yellow killersmog 

over the Monongahela River, caused by a byproduct of steelmaking 

at a factory in Donora, Pa. Nearly half of the town’s 14,000 residents were 

affected, with 22 dying within days. It led to the Air Pollution Control Act of 

1955, the nation’s first piece of federal legislation on this issue. In addition, 

there was an oil crisis that year, with calls for voluntary reductions in the use 

of gasoline, fuel oil and natural gas. 

ing this survey, the forum, as part of 

Pew’s election-year coverage, creates 

religious profiles of all presidential 

contenders, including religious biographies 

and interactive tools, so that 

users can compare the candidates. 

Culture 

The Cultural Data Project grows to 

include more than 2,000 organizations, 

80 grants programs and 57 funders in 

Pennsylvania, Maryland and California, 

with plans to launch in New York, 

Massachusetts and Illinois in 2009. 

The project also garners support 

from national funders and arts service 

organizations and gains recognition 

for providing reliable, comprehensive 

information about the cultural sector. 

Data gathered from organizations 

in the Philadelphia region is used in 

“2008 Portfolio,” published by the 

Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, 

providing compelling analyses of 

topics such as arts attendance by 

children and school groups, healthcare 

costs and Internet fund raising. 

The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage 

funds over 800 performances, 

exhibitions and events attended 

by more than 500,000; and its six 

Artistic Initiatives in dance, historic 

heritage, music, theater, visual arts 

and discipline-specific fellowships, 

plus the Cultural Management Initiative, 

give grants to approximately 100 

artists and organizations. The center 

also helps strengthen arts groups 

and provides marketing support to 

increase audiences. An example of 

innovative programming supported 

by the center is an exhibition by Pennsylvania 

artist Mark Dion at Bartram’s 

Gardens, in Philadelphia, the home 

of America’s first great botanist, John 

Bartram; Dion retraces one of Bartram’s 

famous trips through colonial 

America and, like his predecessor, 

gathers artifacts and draws pictures 

of what he experiences. Some 1,200 

people attend the show, and more 

than 7,000 people from around the 

world participate via the Web. 

Technology also extends the audience 

for a series of short films on 

Pew’s 2007 arts fellows. After the 

movies debut at the Philadelphia 

Museum of Art, more than 46,000 

individuals view them on a DVD 

included in the program’s annual 

catalogue, on its Web site and on 

YouTube. 

In addition, technological innovation 

helps give immediacy to history 

in two projects supported by the 

Heritage Philadelphia Program. 

The Rosenbach Museum and Library 

launches 21st Century Abe, a dynamic 

online exhibition interpreting Abraham 

Lincoln’s legacy for teenagers 

and young adults. And the Preservation 

Alliance of Greater Philadelphia 

begins a survey of important historic 

sites in the city with a process that 

pairs the latest mapmaking software 

with the expertise of leading historians; 

the project will lay the groundwork 

for a more strategic approach to 

preserve the city’s historic treasures. 

Among the excellent reviews of 

Pew-supported exhibitions and 

performances, the play Chekhov 

Lizardbrain by the Pig Iron Theatre 

Company of Philadelphia is “the gem 

of the Off Off Broadway season,” 

according to New York Times theater 

critic Charles Isherwood, who puts 

it on his list of the top theater events 

of 2008. 

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance 

launches Engage 2020, which 

aims to double audience participation 

in arts and culture over the next


12 years. With additional support from 

Euisit, the Wallace velisi tis Foundation augiat. Put lut and ut augueraese the Philadelphia 

Foundation, the alliance conducts 

research on the shifting trends 

in audience demographics and consumer 

behavior, creates tools to help 

organizations measure participation 

and enhances marketing support. This 

includes upgrades to the successful 

PhillyFunGuide, an online calendar of 

events, and Funsavers, which features 

discounted tickets. 

Pew Fund for 


Services 

in Philadelphia 

The Pew Fund provides servicedelivery 

funding to 122 nonprofit 

organizations in the Philadelphia 

area, allowing them to help more 

than 65,000 individuals and families 

throughout the region. In addition, 

the program helps 27 agencies make 

a number of important organizational 

adjustments. These include strengthening 

staff’s ability to assess program 

performance, putting in place new 

technologies that improve agency 

financial-management and monitoring 

capacities, ut vullum and delismolor the planning for 

Vullaortisit 

retirement of senior management and 

other leadership transitions. 

The Pennsylvania Health Law Project 

uses operating support from 

Pew to ensure that state regulations 

for assisted living, a newly created 

category of long-term care in Pennsylvania, 

adequately protect consumer 

health and safety. 

The Pew Fund’s Programs Adjusting 

to a Changing Environment continues 

to offer timely information and 

technical assistance to local agencies 

on critical trends and developments 

in health and human services. One 

session enables the leadership of Pew 

Fund organizations and other nonprofits 

to engage with key appointees 

of Philadelphia’s new mayor regarding 

the direction of crucial services for 

vulnerable individuals and families. 


The Philadelphia Program launches 

the Philadelphia Research Initiative 

to produce reports about critical 

issues facing the city. A model for the 

kind of studies it will carry out is the 

report released by Pew, in partnership 

Adelent with the alis Economy am, si euisi.quat League ipsum of Greater iuscill 

ametumsandre 

Philadelphia, on pension and healthcare 

costs for municipal workers. It 

finds that rising costs are outpacing 

increases in Philadelphia’s revenue, 

threatening the city’s ability to meet 

future pension and health-care obligations 

and squeezing resources for 

other city priorities. 

Pew partners with public and private 

funders to develop a plan for extensive 

landscape and roadway improvements 

on Philadelphia’s Benjamin 

Franklin Parkway, home to many 

of the region’s most important cultural 

institutions. 

The Star-Spangled Banner Preservation 

Project culminates in the 

re-opening of the Pew-supported 

permanent viewing gallery at the 

Smithsonian’s National Museum 

of American History. The gallery is 

part of a two-year renovation of the 

building’s core. The new exhibition 

uses multimedia displays and historic 

artifacts to tell the story of the nearly 

200-year-old flag that inspired our 

national anthem.

42 

Legislation passed by Congress and 

signed by the president contains all 

of the major stipulations sought 

by Pew for the Founding Fathers 

Project. The goal is to speed up the 

online publication of the papers of 

the nation’s founding fathers and 

make their writings more accessible 

to the public. 

Philanthropic 

Services and 

Government 

Relations 

Pew forms partnerships with more 

than 225 organizations and individuals 

who contribute to projects that 

include conserving pristine lands 

and waterways, helping ensure that 

children grow into successful adults, 

modernizing our election system, 

supporting the nation’s arts and 

heritage, and preserving some of 

the world’s most magnificent marine 

sites for future generations. Among 

the beneficiaries of sizable collaborations 

with donors are the International 

Boreal Conservation Campaign, the 

Global Ocean Legacy project and the 

Northeast Land Trust Consortium. 

Philanthropic Services staff members 

speak at regional, national and global 

conferences on how individuals, foundations 

and corporations can make 

charitable investments that achieve 

significant and measurable returns. 

In addition, Pew’s advocacy efforts 

help secure significant public policy 

improvements in at least 14 areas. 

Pew’s policy experts and government 

relations team are involved in the passage 

by Congress of laws that include 

reforms to the nation’s foster care 

system and measures that will expedite 

the completion of the papers of 

our founding fathers. 

Planning and 

Evaluation 

The planning team assists program 

staff with the integration of Pre-K 

Now into the Pew Center on the 

States, supports the development of 

a multiyear business plan for the Cultural 

Data Project, informs the creation 

of a strategy for the Ocean Conservation 

Program and works with Make 

Voting Work to shape a new strategy 

for the coming year. 

The department completes evaluations 

on: 

• bottom-trawling fishing, addressing 

whether the initiative succeeded 

in its effort to put the protection 

of marine biodiversity and oceans 

governance as a whole on the international 

fisheries agenda; 

• Pre-K Now, focusing on whether this 

effort’s advocacy strategy for universal 

prekindergarten was effective 

and should be continued; and 

• the Project on Student Debt, 

assessing its role in the education 

policy debate and in advancing 

policy changes to help make college 

more affordable.


43 

Financial Information 

STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION June 30, 2008 

ASSETS 

TOTAL ASSETS $ 5,884,748,058 

LIABILITIES AND NET ASSETS 

TOTAL LIABILITIES 371,468,966 

TOTAL NET ASSETS 5,513,279,092 

TOTAL LIABILITIES AND NET ASSETS $ 5,884,748,058 

STATEMENT OF ACTIVITIES Year ended June 30, 2008 

REVENUES 

Contributions $ 91,113,391 $ 14,670,872 — $ 105,784,263 

Contract revenue 418,124 — — 418,124 

Rental income 972,640 — — 972,640 

Other income 12,067 — — 12,067 

Investment loss (4,0 47,890) — — (4, 047,890) 

Distributions from supporting trusts 213,165,788 46,282,650 — 259,448,438 

Changes in the fair value of the 

beneficial interest in trusts — — (368,801,862) (368,801,862) 

Net assets released from restrictions 59,591,121 (59,591,121) — — 

TOTAL REVENUES 361,225,241 1,362,401 (368,801,862) (6,214,220) 

OPERATING EXPENSES 

Grants 142,268,588 — — 142,268,588 

Program 93,964,128 — — 93,964,128 

General and administration 12,352,068 — — 12,352,068 

Fund raising 1,743,237 — — 1,743,237 

TOTAL OPERATING EXPENSES 250,328,021 — — 250,328,021 

NON-OPERATING (income) / EXPENSES 

UNRESTRICTED 

TEMPORARILY 

RESTRICTED 

PERMANENTLY 

RESTRICTED 

TOTAL 

Bond interest income (78,203) — — (78,203) 

Bond interest expense 694,757 — — 694,757 

Change in fair value of interest rate swap 

and swap interest expense 3,933,401 — — 3,933,401 

Interest expense, other 469,005 — — 469,005 

TOTAL NON-OPERATING EXPENSES 5,018,960 — — 5,018,960 

CHANGE IN NET ASSETS 105,878,260 1,362,401 (368,801,862) (261,561,201) 

NET ASSETS - BEGINNING OF YEAR 136,489,319 68,418,395 5,569,932,579 5,774,840,293 

NET ASSETS - END OF YEAR $ 242,367,579 $ 69,780,796 $ 5,201,130,717 $ 5,513,279,092 

The financial information presents the consolidated information of The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Pew Research Center, 

a wholly-owned subsidiary. Audited financials are available upon request.

44 Pew Prospectus 2009 

Pew Leadership 

THE BOARD OF THE PEW CHARITABLE TRUSTS 

Robert H. Campbell (Chair) 

Susan W. Catherwood 

Gloria Twine Chisum 

Aristides W. Georgantas 

J. Howard Pew II 

J.N. Pew IV, M.D. 

Mary Catharine Pew, M.D. 

R. Anderson Pew 

Sandy Ford Pew 


Robert G. Williams 

Ethel Benson Wister 

ADMINISTRATION 

OPERATIONS 


President and Chief Executive Officer 

PROGRAMS 

Marian A. Godfrey 

Senior Director, Culture Initiatives 


Managing Director, Information Initiatives and 

the Philadelphia Program 

Shelley A. Hearne 

Managing Director, Health and Human Services Policy 

Henry B. Bernstein 

Managing Director, Finance, and Treasurer 

Michael J. Dahl 

Managing Director and General Counsel 

Susan F. Haindl 

Managing Director, Operations 

Deborah L. Hayes 

Managing Director, Communications 

Susan A. Magill 

Managing Director, Philanthropic Services and 

Government Relations 

John E. Morton 

Managing Director, Economic Policy 

Joshua S. Reichert 

Managing Director, Pew Environment Group 

Susan K. Urahn 

Managing Director, Pew Center on the States

Photography Credits: 

Page (left to right, where relevant) 

1 Peter Olson 

4 Enric Sala 

7 David Gilliland 

© Juan Silva/Getty Images 

9 Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy 

and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health 

© Dynamic Graphics/Creatas Images/Jupiterimages 

11 © Chris Hondros/Getty Images 

James Kegley 

13 Enric Sala 

© Corbis/Jupiterimages 

© Hemera Technologies/Photos.com/Jupiterimages 

14 © moodboard/Corbis 

17 © Tony Hutchings/Getty Images 

© PhotoAlto/Hardy James/Jupiterimages 

18 National Museum of American History 

21 Courtesy of the Pig Iron Theatre Company 

© Scott McClaine 

23 Jared Martin/Big Picture Alliance 

Michal Smith/Project Forward Leap 

25 travelif/iStock 

George Widman for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism 

Marketing Corporation 

26 © Paul Souders/Corbis 

29 © Bettmann/Corbis 

Erin Fogarty/Kids Are Waiting 

33 © Fancy/Veer/Corbis 

© Alan Schein Photography/Corbis 

35 © Colin Anderson/Getty Images 

VisualField/iStock 

Peter Olson 

36 © Grant Faint/Getty Images 

© James W. Porter/Corbis 

© Comstock Images/Jupiterimages 

37 © Sami Sarkis/Getty Images 

© Hemera Technologies/Photos.com/Jupiterimages 

© Jeff Nadler 

38 Chuck Pezeshki 

© Javier Pierini/Getty Images 

Image99/Jupiterimages 

39 © Tony Rocco 

© Simon Smith 

© Corbis/Jupiterimages 

40 Paul Sirochman 

PhillyFunGuide.com 

Rosalie O'Connor/Pennsylvania Ballet 

41 Image Source/Getty Images 

Bob Krist for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism 

Marketing Corporation 

Corbis/Jupiterimages 

42 E.F. Smith Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 

University of Pennsylvania 

Brakefield Photos/Jupiterimages 

Comstock Images/Jupiterimages 

Photo research by Anahi Baca 

30 © Bob Krist/CORBIS 

The official registration and financial information of The Pew Charitable Trusts may be obtained 

from the Pennsylvania Department of State by calling toll-free, within Pennsylvania, 1.800.732.0999. 

Registration does not imply endorsement. 

Copies of these documents are also available by contacting Pew at 2005 Market Street, Suite 1700, 

Philadelphia, PA 19103-7077, or by calling 215.575.9050. 

The Pew Charitable Trusts is registered in additional states as required by law. For a list of other states 

with charitable solicitation disclosure requirements, go to www.pewtrusts.org, click on About Us and 

then click on Accountability.

The Pew Charitable Trusts 

2005 Market Street, Suite 1700 

Philadelphia, PA 19103-7077 

215.575.9050 

901 E Street NW, 10th Floor 

Washington, DC 20004-2037 

202.552.2000 

www.pewtrusts.org

PROSPECTUS - The Pew Charitable Trusts

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