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Special Projects
and the Extraordinary Reserve

Meeting exceptional needs.

Although most of the Foundation’s grantmaking takes place within programs, the Foundation values the ability to respond to unanticipated problems and opportunities. Therefore our Board of Directors has established an annual Special Projects budget, for which the President serves as the program officer, and an Extraordinary Reserve that is typically used for special grants of considerable size.

The large majority of Special Projects and Extraordinary Reserve grants respond to opportunities that do not come within any of the programs’ guidelines. Some of them also fit into categories, as described below.

Hosting initiatives that might (or might not) eventually become part of the Foundation’s program structure. An exploratory initiative on nuclear nonproliferation began with the grant to Stanford University for support of the conference Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons.

Supplementing program budgets when unexpected opportunities arise. The grant to the Oberlin Dance Collective to renovate its facilities was made in collaboration with the Performing Arts Program.

Supporting selected national media organizations. This category included grants to National Public Radio and to the Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association for support of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Supporting social science research that informs the Foundation’s strategic pursuit of its goals. We made grants to Harvard University to support applying insights from behavioral economics to improving the lives of the world’s poorest people, and we continued to fund work at Princeton University by Daniel Kahneman, Alan Krueger, and their colleagues on the measurement of well-being.

Supporting think tanks and related institutions, some of which are especially concerned with international relations. This included Special Project grants to Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group, and Pacific Council on International Policy, plus a grant from the Extraordinary Reserve for the China Law Center at Yale Law School.

Supporting key academic and cultural institutions. This included an Extraordinary Reserve matching grant to the University of California at Berkeley for endowed faculty chairs, and a grant to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Supporting evidence-based policymaking and common values. This included support of the Brookings Institution, Heritage Foundation, New America Foundation, and Public Agenda Foundation toward a responsible U.S. fiscal policy, and grants to the Center for Governmental Studies and the Commonwealth Club of California to launch an initiative (now called California Forward) for governance and fiscal reform in California.

In 2007, Special Projects made grants totaling $159,069,100.