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- Assets: $198,913,473 (2005)
- Grants Awarded: $7,786,316 (2005)
W. Alton Jones, who was a top executive at Cities Service Company, created the original Foundation bearing his name in 1944, for the purpose of financing artistic and cultural ventures. The W. Alton Jones Foundation changed its funding priorities in the early 1980s when it became interested in the nuclear freeze issue, a Soviet-sponsored initiative that would have frozen Soviet nuclear and military superiority in place, and would have rendered the new American President, Ronald Reagan, unable to close that gap by any appreciable degree. A decade later, the Foundation hired the zoologist John Myers, who had previously worked for the National Audubon Society, to be its Director, and thenceforth began to earmark much of its philanthropy for organizations committed to the anti-capitalist agendas of radical environmentalism, whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner has explained, is "not clean air and clean water, [but] rather . . . the demolition of technological/industrial civilization."
In 2001, the W. Alton Jones Foundation was restructured into three separate foundations. One of these was the Blue Moon Fund, which Diane Edgerton Miller (granddaughter of W. Alton Jones) and Patricia Jones Edgerton (daughter of W. Alton Jones) together established in April 2002. The other two newly created entities were named the Oak Hill Fund and the Edgerton Fund.
The Blue Moon Fund currently ranks as the world's tenth largest financier of international causes; many of its grants are intended to help build the resources, infrastructure, and food production capabilities of Communist China.
The Blue Moon Fund condemns the fact that the U.S. has only 5 percent of the world's population but accounts for 25 percent of all energy consumption and (allegedly) one-fourth of all air pollution: "There is a complex relationship between human consumption, economic advancement and the condition of the natural world that profoundly affects human quality of life. Consumption is the engine of growth, but it can also fuel misery. Demand for cheap food leads to chemical use that can cause human disease; demand for goods leads to natural resource depletion; and demand for energy leads to pollution and global warming. Communities, economies, and the natural world all suffer."
Among the many recipients of Blue Moon Fund philanthropy are: the Energy Foundation; the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; the Sierra Club; Rainforest Action Network (affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund); the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Planned Parenthood; the Natural Resources Defense Council; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the American Friends Service Committee; the Environmental Working Group; Environmental Media Services; Greenpeace; the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy; the Western Organization of Resource Councils; the National Environmental Trust; Conservation International; the Nature Conservancy; the Brookings Institute; EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund; Friends of the Earth; the National Wildlife Federation; the Worldwatch Institute; the Council for a Livable World Education Fund; the Environmental Defense Fund; the Rainforest Alliance; the Earth Island Institute; the World Wildlife Fund; the Western Environmental Law Center; Consumers Union; the League of Conservation Voters; the Rocky Mountain Institute; Physicians for Social Responsibility; the Environmental Law Institute; the Institute for Social Justice; Earth Day Network; the Alliance to Save Energy; the World Resources Institute; the Conservation Law Foundation; the Earth Trust Foundation; the EarthWays Foundation; Focus Project; the Center for Rural Affairs; Clean Water Action; the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights; the Foundation for Global Sustainability; Citizen Action; Lighthawk; Public Citizen; the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG); the Blue Mountain Native Forest Alliance; the Center for Science in Public Participation; Ecotrust; the Center for Environmental Citizenship; and the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.
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