The fall of 2008, we celebrate the Foundation’s 20th anniversary.  This occasion has presented us with both a particularly challenging and rich docket, and an opportunity, (to get foreign on you), to not so much reassess our raison d’être, as to contemplate our modus operandi going forward.

 
We received a typical number of pre-applications this cycle, over 130, but made the decision to invite only 7 organizations to provide full proposals.  This represents a sharp departure for us as it is by far the smallest docket in our 20 years of grantmaking. Its size and our delay signal that something is up at the Kongsgaard-Goldman Foundation.  We have this fall taken an intentional time-out to regroup and deliberately chart the course of our community involvement for the next 20 years.  
 
We are aware that this ‘slow down’ comes at a less-than-ideal time for most of our family of grantees and for those whom we have yet to meet.  Strangely, this break is coincident to the global economic melt down and not caused by it.  

We are a pass-through foundation that does not have an endowment, yet.  Each year we have to carefully identify liquid and illiquid assets that can be transferred into our foundation.  This is a process that requires a lot of time and care, especially in a depressed investment environment.

Peter and I feel we need to take the next year to develop a more focused view of our priorities and the financial resources that will take us through the next 20 years.  So we have decided to take the occasion of our 20th anniversary to reassess not so much how much we give – we assure you that number will remain about the same - but rather how we give. We have occupied that niche the experts caution against:  the nearly all things to all people foundation- a role that has fit us well and that has, we firmly hope, been of benefit to our community.  Consequently, as we assess our work going forward, we are suspending our docket process for now.  We anticipate narrowing our focus in all probability to the restoration of Puget Sound, climate change, sustainable forestry and smart growth strategies in the Pacific Northwest.  We want to assure you that we are not closing our doors and, in fact, have significant multi-year commitments going many years out.
 

These are unsettling times.  What is certain is that the work we all do is central to preserving a healthy planet and a decent and democratic society.  We write this on the eve of an historic election, with two wars raging and the economy greatly compromised. The needs of our communities and those of the planet are being drawn sharply and ineffably against an uncertain backdrop. That we might contribute to that uncertainty in the short term troubles us.  But it is our intention and hope that we will be able to emerge from this process a more effective and strategic grantmaker and, therefore, a better partner to our grantees. 

 
Stay tuned to the web and thanks for all you do,

Martha Kongsgaard & Peter Goldman