Dear Friends,
On behalf of the directors and staff of the S.H. Cowell Foundation, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Foundation’s web site. We invite you to use this site to learn more about our work and the way we invest money and time to support poor children and their families and strengthen the communities where they live, work, study, and play.
Since its creation in 1956, the Cowell Foundation has awarded more than $220 million to 3,700 grantees. These numbers demonstrate our commitment to grantmaking in Northern California and the stewardship of our volunteer board. But in philanthropy, dollars rarely tell the whole story. The real milestones are the personal and community growth that our grantees and the people they serve have achieved.
| At the Cowell Foundation, we invest in communities using a place-based strategy. A place for us can be a neighborhood or a county, a city or a small town. It’s a community defined not by geography alone but by residents, educators, civic leaders, and nonprofits sharing a commitment to help children struggling with poverty to realize their potential at home, at school, and at play. |
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To weave a web of support that addresses most aspects of children’s lives in their community, we hope to invest across all our program areas. We seek opportunities to make grants to support families, to develop leaders, to invest in public education, to promote affordable housing, and to create after-school and summer opportunities for kids.
Like all grantmaking foundations, Cowell gives away money. But our staff gives away much more. By sharing their talent, experience, and technical expertise, our program officers work hard to foster creativity and diversity in our nonprofit partners. To achieve this goal requires not just sustained financial support but opportunities for us to work with our grantees, and for our grantees to work with each other. Partnership requires all of us to be realistic in our goals, circumspect about our successes, and honest about our failures. Together we can listen, question, and collaborate to solve problems.
Our board and staff receive no greater reward than witnessing the success of the individuals living in the communities in which we invest. We see that success in the faces of parents who are engaged on behalf of their children. We see it in the confidence of community leaders as they develop the skills essential to creating long-term change. We see it in the schools that rediscover their potential to support and challenge all their children.
What inspires children to envision a more just and compassionate world? With our partners and allies, we continue to seek answers. There is more seeking and more work to be done. We invite you to explore this web site to see if you are interested in working with us. If you have questions or suggestions, we hope you will share them. Our grants staff looks forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,
Ann Alpers
