MENLO PARK, Calif. – A foundation’s grants aren’t the only way it helps solves social problems. As Hewlett Foundation President Paul Brest explains in an essay accompanying the Foundation’s newly-released 2010 Annual Report, a host of less remarked upon activities can make the grant go even further.

In his essay, “Beyond the Grant Dollars,” Brest explores other ways that grantmaking organizations like the Hewlett Foundation routinely increase their impact through the activities of their staffs. Citing examples from the Foundation’s own portfolio of grants, he discusses building new fields, collaborating with grantees and others in solving complex social problems, strengthening grantee organizations with the assistance of program officers and outside consultants, and encouraging peer foundations to join as partners in funding issues of common interest.

“The Beyond the Grant Dollars project has two primary objectives,” Brest writes. The first is to “improve the Foundation staff’s and Board’s decisions about the mix of strategies and the allocation of financial and human resources that can best achieve our goals.” The second is to “determine the skills, experience, and other qualities we should look for in new staff members and ways to improve the development of Foundation program staff.”

Brest adds, “It’s our hope that this approach can be helpful to other organizations that seek to take full advantage of all the tools that foundations can apply to helping to solve social and environmental problems.”

In 2010, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation awarded a total of $205,273,667 in grants and gifts, and disbursed approximately $358,100,000 in grant and gift payments.

View the President’s Statement and the full Annual Report, or see past Annual Reports dating back to 1966.

About The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1967 to help solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education, the environment, global development and population, performing arts, and philanthropy, and makes grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Contact:
Jack Fischer
Hewlett Foundation Communications Officer
(650) 234-4500 x5744
jfischer@hewlett.org