OUR MISSION
The Joyce Foundation supports efforts to protect the natural environment of the Great Lakes, to reduce poverty and violence in the region, and to ensure that its people have access to good schools, decent jobs, and a diverse and thriving culture. We are especially interested in improving public policies, because public systems such as education and welfare directly affect the lives of so many people, and because public policies help shape private sector decisions about jobs, the environment, and the health of our communities. To ensure that public policies truly reflect public rather than private interests, we support efforts to reform the system of financing election campaigns.
ABOUT THE FOUNDATION
The Joyce Foundation was created in 1948 by Beatrice Joyce Kean of Chicago. The Joyce family wealth, based on lumber and sawmill interests, was left to the Foundation when Mrs. Kean died in 1972. Over the years, the Foundation has continued to respond to changing social needs, contributing approximately $654 million in grants to groups working to improve the quality of life in the Great Lakes region.
PROGRAMS
Our program areas are Education, Employment, Environment, Gun Violence, Money and Politics, and Culture. We focus our grant making on initiatives that promise to have an impact on the Great Lakes region, specifically the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. A limited number of environment grants are made to organizations in Canada. Education grant making in K-12 focuses on Chicago, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee; early childhood grant making focuses on Illinois and Wisconsin. Culture grants are primarily focused on the Chicago metropolitan area, except for the Joyce Awards, which extend to other Midwest cities. We do not generally support capital proposals, endowment campaigns, religious activities, commercial ventures, direct service programs, or scholarships.
The Joyce Foundation is committed to improving public policy through its grant program. Accordingly, the Foundation welcomes grant requests from organizations that engage in public policy advocacy. Federal tax law prohibits private foundations from funding lobbying activities. The Foundation may support organizations engaged in public policy advocacy by either providing general operating support or by funding educational advocacy such as nonpartisan research, technical assistance, or examinations of broad social issues. The Foundation encourages grant applicants to describe the nature of advocacy activities in their grant applications and reports, so the Foundation can ensure that it is in compliance with federal tax laws. For further information on the relevant federal tax laws, grant applicants should consult their tax advisors.
EDUCATION
The Joyce Foundation supports efforts to close the achievement gaps that separate low-income and minority children from their peers by improving the quality of teachers they encounter in school, expanding their access to educational opportunities in early childhood, and exploring such innovations as small schools and charter schools.
Program priorities are:
Teacher quality: The Foundation supports efforts to improve federal, state, and district policies so that high-need schools in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee can attract and retain first-rate teachers. Efforts include research, policy development, model programs, advocacy, and evaluation related to:
- Reform of recruiting and hiring systems
- New teacher support
- Reform of teacher evaluation and tenure systems
- Reform of teacher compensation and pension systems
- Alternative routes to teaching
- Principal quality
Early childhood education: The Foundation supports policy initiatives aimed at making preschool accessible to all three- to five-year-olds in Illinois and Wisconsin through a mixed delivery system that includes schools and community-based settings. Efforts include research, public education, demonstration projects, and advocacy designed to:
- Improve the quality of early childhood teachers and program directors, especially by improving recruitment, support, and evaluation policies
- Identify effective strategies to better integrate early learning and pre-kindergarten experiences with the K-12 education system
Innovation grants: A small portion of program funds is reserved for other outstanding opportunities to close the achievement gap, especially policy-oriented efforts to expand the supply of high-quality charter schools or technological advances in Chicago, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee.
EMPLOYMENT
Major labor shortages are predicted by the end of this decade as baby boomers retire. In part this is due to a serious skills deficit that plagues the existing workforce, especially low-income workers. The Employment Program supports policy analysis and development, research, and advocacy that help low-income, low-skilled individuals connect to the labor market and advance to higher-paying jobs. Effective employer engagement is seen as critical to achieving this goal.
Program priorities are:
Advancing to Better Jobs
The goal of the Employment Program is to help low-income, low-skilled adults acquire the skills they need to advance to higher-paying jobs. Grantmaking includes:
a) Federal and State Policy Advocacy efforts to increase opportunities for low-income, low-skilled adults to acquire the skills needed to advance to better jobs. The Foundation is especially interested in proposals that focus on policy alignment between education and workforce systems; improvements to adult and remedial education; increased access to postsecondary occupational education; effective employer engagement; and the creation of new resources for adult worker occupationally focused education and training.
b) Shifting Gears, a Joyce Initiative launched in 2006 with the dual goal of to strengthening state policies to enable low-income, low-skilled workers to acquire postsecondary occupational credentials, and to move up in the labor market and promote economic growth in the Midwest by addressing critical occupational labor shortages. The initiative is underway therefore new proposals are not accepted at this time.
c) Making the Case for investing in low-income, low-skilled adult workers. This funding will support communications research and strategic communications campaigns to build public and policy-maker support for education and skill building designed to advance low-income, low-skilled adults to higher paying jobs. The Foundation is especially interested in communications efforts that engage employer representatives as spokespeople.
d) Exploratory funding is available to support policy efforts in two areas:
- Access for low-income, low-skilled workers to jobs created in the new energy economy
- Advancement of low-income, low-skilled immigrants in the workforce through English language and skill acquisition
Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration
The Joyce Foundation is funding a research demonstration project to test whether transitional jobs programs are an effective employment strategy for recently released male prisoners. Research findings will be available in 2010. Additional funding will support related dissemination, communications, possible follow-on research, and advocacy. Unsolicited proposals will not be accepted for these activities. Other prisoner reentry projects are not being accepted at this time.
The Foundation does not provide operating support for direct services, such as job training or transitional jobs programs.
ENVIRONMENT
Great Lakes Protection and Restoration
The Joyce Foundation will seek and support funding opportunities to restore and protect the Great Lakes in the following areas:
a) On the ground protection and restoration efforts that can be monitored, documented, and replicated elsewhere;
b) Efforts to drive policy development by combining the work of policy advocates with on the ground practitioners, including nontraditional stakeholders;
c) Efforts to advocate at the local, state, and national levels for these collectively developed policies.
The Foundation will consider proposals at the local, state, regional, and national levels that address the following four areas:
- Reduce polluted, non-point source runoff from agricultural lands and urban/suburban/exurban lands;
- Protect and restore critical habitats such as wetlands through improved hydrology and other means. Critical habitats exist in developed, rural, and undeveloped landscapes, and projects will be evaluated based on their value for demonstrating successful restoration methods, protecting critical areas for wildlife and water quality, public attraction and accessibility, and political significance;
- Improve coastal health particularly through the increased use of green infrastructure and through new means of financing conventional infrastructure;
- Implement the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact.
The Global Energy Transition: The Midwestern Role
The Foundation will consider proposals in three areas:
- Efforts to speed the deployment of advanced coal technologies with carbon capture and storage capability;
- Efforts to support the implementation of local, state and regional climate and energy plans;
- Efforts to improve the design, delivery and evaluation of energy efficiency programs that increase customer participation and per customer energy savings.
GUN VIOLENCE
Gun violence takes approximately 30,000 American lives each year, second only to automobile crashes among causes of injury-related death. But while safety regulations have dramatically reduced highway fatalities, firearms remain virtually unregulated. The Gun Violence Program supports efforts to reduce gun violence through effective public policies that improve the safety of firearms and restrict access to illegal firearms. To promote these objectives, the Foundation supports groups and coalitions that:
- Engage in state-based gun violence prevention policy advocacy in Illinois and Wisconsin
- Participate in activities designed to enhance the capacity of groups to expand their membership, raise funds, and develop organizational capacity to build and mobilize support for meaningful gun policy reform at the state and/or national levels
- Work collaboratively with other public interest groups, law enforcement, medical, academic, and legal experts, and policy makers to advance shared gun violence prevention policy goals within their states or nationally
- Engage in activities necessary for effective advocacy - policy research and development, data collection, public and policy-maker education, coalition building, news media outreach, and participation in official proceedings, including litigation
MONEY AND POLITICS
The overriding goal of the Money and Politics Program is to preserve and strengthen those values and qualities that are the foundation of a healthy democratic political system: honesty, fairness, transparency, accountability, competition, and informed citizen participation. Accordingly, the Foundation seeks to create political cultures in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin which makes it possible for more citizens, not just those who are wealthy and well-connected, to run for public office; offers voters real candidate and policy choices at election time; protects voting rights; respects the independence and impartiality of the courts; promotes the public's right to know about government operations and decisions; guarantees the fairness and reliability of elections; and provides citizens with the information needed to make reasoned decisions.
To promote these ends, the Foundation supports organizations and coalitions in the Midwest that are willing and have the skills to:
- Contribute to the development and promotion of broad, multi-issue political reform agendas within the target states, including improvements in the laws and practices governing campaign finance, elections, government ethics, redistricting, lobbying, judicial selection, government openness, and local news coverage of government and politics
- Engage in activities necessary for effective advocacy--policy research and development, public and policy-maker education, coalition-building, news media outreach, and participation in official proceedings, including litigation
- Work collaboratively with other reform groups, academic and legal experts, and policy makers to advance shared goals within their states and across the region
- Participate in activities designed to enhance their capacities in the areas of strategic planning, organizing, coalition-building, fund-raising, advocacy, and communications
CULTURE
The Culture Program supports the efforts of cultural institutions, primarily in Chicago, to serve and represent the city's diverse populations. The Program is interested in projects that bring diverse audiences together to share common cultural experiences and encourage more of Chicago's people to see the arts as integral to their lives.
Program priorities are:
Access: Encouraging mid-sized and major cultural institutions to increase the participation of people of color in their audiences, boards, and staff
Community-based arts: Strengthening the infrastructure and leadership of culturally-specific and community-based arts organizations.
Creativity: Supporting the artistic development and the commissioning of new works by artists of color. This goal is addressed in part through the Joyce Awards, an annual competition open to major and mid-size cultural organizations in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The Joyce Awards support the commissioning and production of new works in dance, music, theater, and visual arts by artists of color. The hope is that these partnerships will produce important new works of art, strengthen our cultural institutions, and draw people of all backgrounds to experience the deep rewards of participating in the arts. Proposed projects should include substantive community engagement efforts. Collaborations between organizations across the target cities and joint programming are encouraged.
SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES
The Foundation makes some grants to projects outside its primary program areas. Preference is given to projects that encourage debate on timely public policy issues, reflect concern for social equity or regional cooperation, or explore connections among the Foundation's programs.
PRESIDENT'S DISCRETIONARY FUND
The President's Discretionary Fund is used to make small, expeditious grants that advance the Foundation's priorities, and to support other activities of interest to the Foundation. Competition for discretionary funds is very high.
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