The mandate that Andrew Carnegie gave to Carnegie Corporation of New York when he created the foundation in 1911—to promote “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding”—is broad and focused enough to be always timely. On the other hand, its far-
reaching scope also presents a temptation to try to do too much. Over nearly a century of history, the Corporation’s staff, leaders, and trustees have tried to achieve a balance that builds on our strength as an incubator of ideas, a convener of scholars, educators, policymakers and others, and as a strategic investor in organizations and institutions that can demonstrably contribute to the betterment of our society. Our framework for these efforts has been, and continues to be, the two major concerns that Andrew Carnegie devoted himself to: international peace and advancing education and knowledge, which remain great challenges to our nation and the world.

While faithful to Andrew Carnegie’s interests, we are also mindful of our founder’s understanding that conditions affecting our nation and our world “inevitably change,” and hence, that at different intervals, it is necessary to stop and take stock. When I came to the Corporation in 1997, it seemed a natural time to do just that, and to focus on questions such as those I raised in my first essay for the Corporation’s annual report—a tradition for Corporation presidents—which was entitled Some Preliminary Thoughts. These included: “What are some important new issues facing our nation and the world that we should deal with? Where is our comparative leadership advantage? Should we ‘go it alone’ as we often have in the past or increasingly seek partners?”

Recently, we once again undertook a reassessment of our work. We believed this was necessary because we often have a tendency to equate smoothly running operations with having actually arrived at a great destination. As St. Augustine suggested in musing on the fate of Rome, it may have been a well-run city, but that did not mean—as history clearly proved—that the directions it followed over time were the right ones.

Reexamining our programs at this juncture also seemed appropriate because many of the members of our Board of Trustees have joined us recently, and we were able to take this opportunity to provide them with an in-depth orientation to the Corporation’s mission and its work. Carne-gie Corporation has always had an exceptional Board of Trustees, and we are now privileged to have, as Board members, three university presidents, three former governors (including one who also served as Secretary of Education), two former international cabinet ministers, the president of a major newspaper company, the former editor-in-chief of a national media corporation, a former U.S. ambassador, and an admiral, along with distinguished business and science leaders. It was important to all of us at the Corporation that our dedicated Trustees, who give us not only their time but also the benefit of their many years of experience, share our deliberations about our programs as we go forward.

Our review process, which was carried out over nearly a year and culminated in a Trustee retreat, showed how much we had accomplished in the past decade but also where we could do better. In addition, we gained insight into what new formats and administrative structure were needed to provide strategic integration of our programs as well as a deepened focus and greater coherence in our grantmaking while at the same time, help us to resist scatteration, intellectual isolationism and programmatic silos. We also reviewed the priorities of our sister foundations on both the national and international scene in order to avoid duplicating their work and to enter into collaborate efforts, when possible.

The result of our reorganization had an additional aim: to allow the president of the Corporation to more directly participate with the program staff in the inception, implementation and plans for evaluating the efforts and initiatives we fund. Another outcome—perhaps influenced by my university experience, where institutions are organized into distinct entities and where faculty often see administrators as disconnected from direct involvement with research and teaching, while administrators perceive faculty as completely unaware of how the university is managed—is that we have eliminated artificial divisions. Now, we will have only two major program entities under National and International rubrics. All program staff will have specific program responsibilities, but the new structure will allow them to work together on a closer basis and be better informed about each other’s activities and thus better able to work collaboratively. In addition, all the Corporation’s vice presidents (with the exception of our Vice President and Chief Investment Officer) will also have specific program responsibilities.

Furthermore, an important component of our new structure is systemic evaluation of all our programs. During the past several years, we have worked to refine our evaluation efforts and have learned much about how to go about the process in terms of both our national and international grantmaking. We are concerned with understanding both intended and unintended consequences and in analyzing long-term as well as short-term impact. For example, in the case of scholarship and knowledge, the value of work being done is not necessarily tied to immediate impact or practical utility. On the other hand, in terms of our program goals and the grantees we invest in—because we are not the primary actors in whatever efforts we’re supporting, we are the facilitators—we know the individuals, organizations and institutions on the national and international scene, we know their records and accomplishments and hence, both we (and they) can have realistic expectations about what their work can achieve. In other words, both the Corporation and its grantees can measure the work of grantees based on their objectives, both at the inception and conclusion of a funded undertaking.

Part of our contribution to the work of grantees is to understand that we, like our sister foundations, are in the risk business. All foundations strive to minimize risk, but it simply can’t be avoided—nor should it be. What we can do is work with grantees to strengthen their proposals and their plans, make sure we all agree on the parameters of the work to be done, the goals being aimed for, and then, at the conclusion of the project, to be objective about assessing what has, or has not been accomplished and absolutely transparent about outcomes and results. We will also continue to be vigorous about communicating our grantees’ findings; in doing so, our intention is to highlight their accomplishments, not to showcase
the Corporation.

In concluding this letter, let me remind us all that progress begets progress, and one must keep up—perhaps even get a few steps ahead. That is certainly the case with Carnegie Corporation of New York. We have a long tradition of meeting the challenges of our times and of responding to the constant ebb and flow of issues, ideas, problems and solutions that are the hallmark of the era in which we live. It is by encouraging greater collaboration among those who lead and carry out our programs and by working with our grantees to achieve clear, common objectives that we will best honor the wishes and legacy of Andrew Carnegie. He believed that education was the one true bridge to understanding and to informed citizenship and devoted himself to its advancement. Today, there remains no more relevant or timely aspiration.

Vartan Gregorian
President

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