Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Fall 2009: America's Best Idea
Take a walk through San Francisco’s Crissy Field on a weekend afternoon, and you’ll find all kinds of people enjoying the outdoors. It is a park for everyone, a place where we can connect with each other and with nature, a sanctuary that opens its arms to all of us, regardless of age, race or background.
The same can be said of all of the parks in America’s National Park System. Ever since 1872, when Congress established Yellowstone National Park in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming “as a public park or pleasuring-ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people,” America has endeavored to create our national parks as treasured resources for all Americans to enjoy, to nurture and to protect. The only condition attached to our use of the parks, as stated in the 1916 law creating the National Park Service, is that we do our best “to leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”
Fall 2008: A Note on the Economic Downturn
Like practically every other foundation – and investors large and small across the country – the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund has suffered significant losses during the current economic downturn. At this time of enormous challenge, we want our grantees, our funding partners and the broader community to know that we remain firmly committed to our mission and our work, and that we will be increasing total grant payments in 2009.
More than 55 years ago, Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. established this foundation as a means to fulfill their vision of a just and caring society where all people are able to live, work and raise their families with dignity. The Fund has awarded more than $330 million in grants to a range of deeply committed and diverse nonprofit organizations working to strengthen the bonds of community and advance the cause of social justice
Spring 2008: Rights and Opportunities
When Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. created this foundation in 1953, they were motivated by a set of values that still guide us today. They shared a commitment to social justice and equality—and a belief that all people should have opportunities to build a better life for themselves and their families, and a better future for their communities.
Our founders’ vision of a just and caring society has been the guiding light for the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund over 55 years of work. Under the leadership of our founders and our current trustees, the Fund has sought out and invested in organizations and initiatives that work to help people achieve their full potential regardless of economics, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other factors.
At the same time, the Fund’s history also reflects an understanding of the need to adapt our approach as the world around us evolves and as new challenges arise. The vision and the core values have always been the same. But how we get to that vision and how we make those values come alive in our work are questions we must continually revisit, especially during times of significant challenge and change.
Fall 2006: Welcome to the Haas, Jr. Fund's new website
The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund seeks to fulfill our founders’ vision of a just and caring society where all people are able to live, work and raise their families with dignity.
As the Haas, Jr. Fund’s work has evolved and our philanthropic focus has sharpened over the past several decades, we have come to view our own mission and values with greater clarity. At the same time, when we surveyed our grantees in 2004, we learned that they wanted to see a clearer expression of who we are and what we do. In response to that wish, and to our own growth and change, the Fund has embarked on an effort to better communicate about the vision that drives us and the directions we are taking.
In short, the Haas, Jr. Fund—and I, in my work as president and trustee—are driven by the vision of a just and caring society. Like many Americans, I am troubled by the prospect of a society in which the poor are increasingly cut off from avenues of opportunity and in which entire groups, such as gays and lesbians and undocumented immigrants and their families, are irrevocably consigned to the margins. Instead, I envision a thriving democracy in which everyone has a voice, we are connected by bonds of mutual compassion and responsibility, and all people are accorded the opportunity to shape the American dream.
