PROSPECTUS - The Pew Charitable Trusts
PROSPECTUS - The Pew Charitable Trusts
PROSPECTUS - The Pew Charitable Trusts
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<strong>Pew</strong> Prospectus 2009<br />
Philanthropic Services and Government Relations<br />
29<br />
Thomas Jefferson, at his desk, being<br />
published in a definitive edition at last.<br />
Enabling a half-million foster-care children to find the safe, permanent<br />
homes they deserve.<br />
when those institutions were incubating<br />
America’s civil rights movement.<br />
On this bedrock of enterprise and<br />
accountability, the founders created<br />
an organization that continually<br />
could, and does, evaluate the best<br />
tools and approaches to address<br />
the challenges of the times. <strong>The</strong><br />
decision in 2004 to transition <strong>Pew</strong><br />
from a private foundation to a public<br />
charity—which extended our operating<br />
flexibility, opening new avenues<br />
of collaboration and innovation—<br />
represented an extension of this<br />
evolutionary thinking, and we are<br />
leveraging the change in new and<br />
exciting ways. As a public charity,<br />
we have significantly increased the<br />
number, types and breadth of partnerships<br />
we can undertake. As an<br />
organization with a stable financial<br />
footing and a 61-year reputation of<br />
sound, responsible social investing,<br />
we can be highly strategic in choosing<br />
those partnerships.<br />
<strong>The</strong> results so far have been promising.<br />
In 2008, our partner initiatives<br />
helped secure the passage of several<br />
new federal laws, including a major<br />
foster-care reform package that will<br />
free a half-million children trapped<br />
in a bureaucratic morass and place<br />
them in safe, loving families. <strong>The</strong> year<br />
2009 began with another notable<br />
success when President George W.<br />
Bush established three new marine<br />
national monuments that more than<br />
doubled the area of U.S. ocean protected<br />
as no-take reserves.<br />
Through the life of an initiative,<br />
we constantly monitor our efforts<br />
to make sure they are on track to<br />
achieve our goals. Our partners value<br />
this unblinking focus on our strategy,<br />
our tailored approach to investing<br />
resources and our steadfast commitment<br />
to organizational accountability.<br />
In the <strong>Pew</strong> tradition, as we expand<br />
our partnership base, we seek to<br />
reach out to more constituencies—<br />
child advocates, consumers, voters—<br />
to help them carry their messages<br />
directly to policy makers at the local,<br />
state and federal levels.<br />
Sixty-one years ago, the founders of<br />
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Pew</strong> <strong>Charitable</strong> <strong>Trusts</strong> did not<br />
pretend to presage the challenges<br />
that would face 21st-century America,<br />
much less specific ways to address<br />
them. Instead, they built an institution<br />
that could stand the test of time, both<br />
stalwart in its core values and innovative<br />
in meeting emerging demands.<br />
For <strong>Pew</strong> and our growing number of<br />
partners, it may be that this founding<br />
vision is the investment that has<br />
yielded the most consistent, and<br />
most significant, returns.<br />
Susan A. Magill<br />
Managing Director<br />
Philanthropic Services and<br />
Government Relations