About Carnegie Corporation

Carnegie Corporation of New York

In 1911, Andrew Carnegie established Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the last institutions he created and the only U.S. organization he formed as a grantmaking foundation. For Carnegie, who was president during the first eight years of operation, the Corporation represented a final step in his plan to invest most of his accumulated wealth' over 90 percent, or more than $330 millionin doing "real and permanent" good in the world. The Corporation's mission is "to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding"among the people of the United States, in perpetuity, although up to 7.4 percent of the funds may be used for the same purpose in countries that were members of the British Commonwealth as of 1948; the Corporation's current focus in this area is on selected countries in Commonwealth Africa.

Carnegie Corporation has been associated with almost every important development in library service in the United States. Carnegie himself had used much of his personal fortune, beginning in 1886, to establish free public libraries throughout America, which led the Corporation's initial grantmaking to focus on libraries and the opportunities for public education they offer. Early library funding went to the building structures themselves, but by the 1920s, grants in this area began to emphasize the evaluation and strengthening of both public and university librarians' training.

One of the Corporation's most notable efforts was its support of a study of race relations, Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 book, An American Dilemma, which was widely influential; it was cited in a number of successful legal challenges to segregation and continues to draw critical attention in examinations of race and the nationís history.

The support of education and of teachers has also been a continuing theme of the Corporation's work. Shocked by the discovery that teachers, "one of the highest professions," had less financial security than his former office clerks, Andrew Carnegie, through the Corporation, established the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America in 1917 with a $1,000,000 grant. The association managed retirement accounts, which were jointly funded by teachers and their employers. Now called TIAA-CREF and independently managed since 1938, it is one of the worldís largest insurance companies, with about $300 billion in assets.

The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, financed by the Corporation and sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, conducted a study outlining a massive program of higher education federal assistance, which led to the formation of the Federal Pell Grants program. Since 1973, the program, named after Senator Claiborne Pell, has awarded more than $100 billion in grants to an estimated 30 million postsecondary students. The Corporation has been instrumental in helping to establish many other organizations and programs that have made significant contributions to shaping the nationís educational agenda throughout the 20th century, including the Educational Testing Service, which was founded in 1947 to promote the development of ways to measure academic merit irrespective of social or economic background.

Improving the education of children and adolescents has long been a principal concern of the Corporation, which supported school reforms through The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching until 1972 when that organization began working independently.

The Corporation promoted young children's care and education, and it supported research that proved crucial in securing and safeguarding federal funds for the Head Start program. The foundation promoted educational television, helping launch Childrensí Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop), "www.sesameworkshop.org" producer of Sesame Street and other acclaimed programs for children. After the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television promoted TV's educational potential, Congress adopted its recommendations in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1968, which established the public broadcasting system.

In a 1986 response to the federally sponsored study (A Nation at Risk, 1983) that laid bare the sorry state of the nationís schools, a Corporation task force responded with A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century. This report helped focus national school reforms on the critical need to revitalize the teaching profession. Turning Points, another Carnegie-sponsored study published in 1989, accelerated reform of middle schools, including the widely adopted replacement of junior high schools with smaller 5-8th- or 6-8th-grade middle schools.

In recent years, under the direction of president Vartan Gregorian, the Corporation has undertaken several major initiatives aimed at improving the life of the nation in the 21st century and in contributing to international peace and security. Schools for a New Society is a long-term, $60 million grant program aimed at redesigning American high schools, initially in seven cities across the U.S., by involving educators, parents, community leaders and business in creating schools that will prepare all students to participate in a knowledge-based economy. Teachers for a New Era is encouraging bold reforms in current teacher education models; it will provide grants up to $5 million for a period of five years to selected institutions and stresses the importance of formal collaboration between schools of education, traditional arts and sciences faculty and principals and classroom teachers.

The Russia Initiative was an 18-month long endeavor that brought together more than 100 Russian and American scholars in task forces to discuss and analyze issues relating to Russia's security, economy, democratization, social cohesion and state building. The result was a number of reports and a documentary video called Russia: Facing the Future, which, along with a companion volume of the same name, called for a mature reengagement between the U.S. and Russsia in the post-Cold-War world. In Africa, the Corporation is focusing on strengthening selected African universities, and on enhancing women's educational opportunities at institutions of higher education in Africa, as well as on developing the capacity of certain African public library systems, all efforts aimed at contributing toward national development.

In the area of Strengthening U.S. Democracy, the Corporation has been in the forefront of support for campaign finance reform, encouraging voter and civic education and in strengthening democratic institutions, including the electoral process; in that vein, the Corporation recently provided funding to a collaborative project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech to develop an easy-to-use, reliable, affordable and secure United States voting machine that would prevent a recurrence of the problems that threatened the 2000 presidential election.

Since 1911, the Corporation, with its $125 million endowment from Andrew Carnegie, has made grants of more than $1.35 billion. In the words of President Gregorian, "For more than 90 years, Carnegie Corporation has identified and promoted ideas that have shaped positive social change." This is a mandate that continues to resonate throughout all areas of the foundation's work.