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Assets: $114,337,653 (2005)
Grants Awarded: $5,767,016 (2005)
The Flora Family Foundation, named after Flora Lamson Hewlett (1914-1977), the wife of William R. Hewlett who co-founded the Hewlett-Packard Company, was established in 1998. (Flora Hewlett was a member of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University; a Trustee of the San Francisco Theological Seminary; and member of the Executive Committee of the World Affairs Council of Northern California.) That year, Walter Hewlett (son of William and Flora, and chair of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation) approached Stanford University psychology professor Herant Katchadourian (a longtime family friend who was a William and Flora Hewlett Foundation board member) with a proposal for a new family foundation he and some of his siblings wished to create. Soon thereafter, Walter Hewlett drew up a constitution for this foundation and designated Katchadourian as its president.
As his first order of business, Katchadourian interviewed Hewlett family members to assess where they might wish to direct their philanthropy. There was no clear consensus on this during the foundation's formative years. To help move the new foundation toward a unified sense of purpose, he proposed the creation of a family council to meet annually and develop specific funding objectives.
During its first four years of operation, the Flora Family Foundation made a total of 351 grants for $19.4 million; these disbursements, however, had no unifying theme. The Foundation finally began to find its purpose when a distressed Esther Hewlett (Walter Hewlett's sister) alerted her family members to a Chicago Tribune article describing the vastly disparate living conditions that existed in wealthy as opposed to impoverished nations. Soon thereafter the Hewlett family agreed to allocate $1 million annually to a "Gap Fund" aimed at closing the "poverty gap" in foreign lands.
The first Gap Fund projects were earmarked for recipients in Africa and then expanded into Latin America and Asia -- thereby becoming the Foundation's first project resembling an identifiable program area. Viewing the United States as a nation whose economic and material wastefulness exacerbates poverty overseas, the Foundation has set up programs to encourage "less impactful consumption habits by Americans." Domestically, the Foundation's concern with poverty is mirrored in its programs to train "teachers for underserved communities," and to provide "after-school educational services for low-income children."
In addition to the foregoing areas, Flora Family Foundation grants today are earmarked mainly for museums, health organizations, environmentalist groups, disaster relief, and social services for women and children. The Foundation tends to focus its philanthropy toward recipients in foreign lands; in 2004 more than 70 percent of its funds were invested in work outside of the U.S., compared to about 60 percent in 2003.
The Flora Family Foundation has recently expanded its activities into anti-war activism movement, and is now a member organization of the Peace and Security Funders Group.
Among the many recent recipients of Flora Family Foundation grants are: the Asia Society; the Ms. Foundation for Women; Earth Institute (Columbia University); the Land Institute ; the Natural Resources Defense Council; Ravenswood Family Health Center; Geohazards International; Global Fund for Women; International Rescue Committee; Oxfam America; Saviya Development Foundation; the Wildlife Conservation Society; Planned Parenthood; the Clarence Foundation Give2Asia; ImagineNations Group American Near East Refugee Aid (in support of the Gaza Women's Loan Fund); the Tides Center; Ashoka; CARE USA; UNICEF; Near East Foundation; the V-Day Foundation; the African Wildlife Foundation; the Institute for Orkonerei Pastoralists Advancement (paid through the Tides Foundation); the Jifunze Project; Pathfinder International; Truckee Tahoe Community Foundation; the Afghan Institute of Learning; the AIDS Resource Foundation for Children; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the California Fund for Youth Organizing; the Center for Health and Gender Equity; the China Care Foundation, Ecotrust; Equal Access; the Funders' Collaborative for Youth Organizing; the Global Heritage Fund; the Hesperian Foundation, Institute for America's Future; the Refugee Council of Australia; Amigos de las Américas; Amistad International; Doctors of the World; EarthRights International, the EastWest Institute ; the Echoing Green Foundation; the Global Footprint Network; the Green Building Council of Australia (Paid through the Tides Foundation); the International Crisis Group; Iranian American Bar Association; Mission for Establishment of Human Rights; Playing for Peace; the Sustainability Institute; the Wildlife Conservation Network; the Wildlife Conservation Society; the San Francisco Foundation; Conservation International; and EarthRights International.
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