The Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation was incorporated in New York in 1959 by Joyce Mertz and her parents, LuEsther and Harold, who six years earlier had founded Publishers Clearing House, the largest multi-periodical subscription agency in the magazine industry. The Foundation, which added the Gilmore name upon Joyce's 1964 marriage to Robert Wallace Gilmore, currently identifies its principal funding priorities as: "human rights [in the United States], the environment, and New York City cultural, social, and civic concerns." Due to financial circumstances, at the end of 2004 the Foundation discontinued grant-making in four areas toward which it had previously directed considerable sums of money: international human rights; immigrant rights in the U.S.; lesbian and gay rights in the U.S.; and Israel and Palestine.

Mertz Gilmore's funding priorities, past and present, betray the premise upon which many of its grant-making decisions are predicated: that the United States is a nation rife with injustice against minorities and women; a place where human rights are routinely violated by the government. To address this alleged defect in the American character, the Foundation in 2004 launched a "Human Rights in the U.S." program "in response to" what it called "the growing number of social justice organizations interested in using human rights as a framework or tool."

The Mertz Gilmore Foundation declares its "recognition" of what it calls "the U.S. government's historical antipathy toward applying human rights standards within the U.S."  The Foundation further expresses its support for "recent efforts to hold the U.S. accountable to human rights standards and law, efforts which range from the grassroots to the Supreme Court; that encompass human rights organizations traditionally focused internationally; and include the nation's pre-eminent civil rights organizations."

In 2004 Mertz Gilmore gave a $100,000 grant to the U.S. Human Rights Network, whose stated mission is "to promote U.S. accountability to universal human rights…" That same year, the Foundation gave $100,000 to the Women's Economic Agenda Project: Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. The Foundation describes this as "a national effort led by poor and homeless women, men and children of all races to raise the issue of poverty as a human rights violation."

Similarly, Mertz Gilmore contends that America's allegedly inherent, deep-seated racism must be closely monitored as well -- lest the nation's white majority resurrect the civil rights injustices of times past. Guarding against such presumed possibilities, the Foundation strongly supports race-, ethnicity-, and gender-based preferences for minorities and women in the business world.

The Mertz Gilmore Foundation is a member organization of both the Peace and Security Funders Group and the International Human Rights Funders Group (IHRFG); the latter is a network of more than six-dozen grantmakers dedicated to funding leftist groups and causes. (For a complete list of IHRFG grantmakers, click here.)

In addition to the grantees named above, the following organizations are also among the many recent recipients of Mertz Gilmore Foundation support: Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation; the Brennan Center for Justice; the Border Network for Human Rights; Betselem-Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories; the Center for Economic and Social Rights; the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions; the Community Resource Exchange; the Consumer Policy Institute; the Council on Foundations; Earth Island Institute; the Energy Foundation; the Environmental Action Coalition; Environmental Defense Fund; the Environmental Working Group; Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues; Green Seal; Greenpeace;  the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition;  Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights; Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights; the National Audubon Society; the National Council of La Raza; the National Immigration Forum; the National Lesbian and Gay Community Funding Partnership; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the New Israel Fund; the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance; the Palestinian Center for Helping to Resolve Community Disputes; the Palestinian Center for Peace and Democracy; Physicians for Human Rights; the Environmental Action Coalition; Public Citizen; the Sierra Club; the Tides Foundation and Tides Center; the Union Of Concerned Scientists; U.S. Public Interest Research Group; and the Urban Justice Center's "Human Rights Project."