Hewlett Foundation November 2007 Newsletter

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November 2007

What You Don’t Know About Unplanned Pregnancy

Sarah Brown, chief executive officer of the National Campaign, speaks at a
symposium on unintended pregnancy. Photo courtesy of the National Campaign.

Let’s start with a quiz.

Since the 1990s the rate of teen pregnancy in the United States has:
A. declined by about a third.
B. stayed about the same.
C. increased by a third.

The group of unmarried women in the U.S. most likely to have used an effective method of contraception the last time they had sex is:
A. teenagers.
B. women in their twenties.
C. women in their thirties.

The group with the highest number of unplanned pregnancies in the United States is:
A. women in their twenties.
B. teenagers.
C. women in their thirties.

The answer to all three questions is “A”: the rate of teen pregnancy has, indeed, dropped by a third; teenagers are most likely to have used an effective method of contraception; and the group with the highest number of unplanned pregnancies in the United States today is women in their twenties.

If you’re like most Americans surveyed, it’s likely you got all three wrong. Read more...

Critiquing the Funder:
Recipients of Hewlett Grants Evaluate the Foundation

Non-profit organizations that receive money from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation say they value the Foundation’s impact on the fields in which they work, but wish its application process were easier and its staff more available.

Those are among the key findings of a survey of more than 500 Hewlett Foundation grantees that the Foundation commissioned the Center for Effective Philanthropy to undertake on its behalf. The resulting report compared Hewlett to other big foundations, to the foundation world at large, and with the responses that Hewlett grantees gave in 2003.

“These surveys give us a chance to hear from grant recipients in a way we never would otherwise,” says Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest. “A grantee might otherwise be reluctant to be candid with its funder, but this tool encourages the kind of candor that lets us improve our grant-making.”

The Center for Effective Philanthropy, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received completed surveys from 504 recipients of Hewlett grants in 2005 -- a 69 percent response rate -- on a broad range of topics. Individual recipients remained anonymous. This is the second time the Foundation has commissioned the survey, the first time being in 2003. Read more...

“Foundations”
A Q&A with Catherine Casserly,
Program Officer, Open Educational Resources

“Foundations” is an occasional series of informal question and answers sessions with employees of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to give them an opportunity to explain their work.

Catherine Casserly is a program officer who directs the Foundation’s work to make educational materials freely available on line. The open educational resources movement, as this effort has come to be known, funds universities and other institutions to make high quality educational materials freely available on the World Wide Web. Innovative use of copyright law allows users to change and augment material to suit their needs. Starting five years ago by funding MIT’s decision to make its curriculum available for online, the MIT effort has evolved into the Open Courseware Consortium, which embraces 170 institutions worldwide that offer a total of 5,000 courses to an estimated 1.9 million unique visitors a month. And the Foundation’s overall support for open educational resources stretches far beyond. Experts in the field estimate that the Consortium’s contributions are only a quarter of the total open educational resources now available online.

Casserly has a Ph.D. in the economics of education from Stanford University and a B.A. in mathematics from Boston College. After college, she taught mathematics in Kingston, Jamaica and tutored in a high security prison. She also has served as a trustee for the San Mateo County Board of Education.

Let’s look back. What was the state of educational resources on the Internet when Hewlett started working in the area?

At the time, there was a lot of educational content on the Web, but it generally wasn’t very high quality and it was hard to find the real gems. People were just beginning to understand how they could use the Web as a tool for education. They were putting things up, but weren’t really harnessing the potential power. It was text, but it didn’t take advantage of the potential for interaction. Now online communities are forming around it. Read more...

Also in this issue:

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

2121 Sand Hill Road

Menlo Park, CA 94025

www.hewlett.org

Last revised: 1/11/2008