The Butler Family Fund was incorporated in 1992 with an asset base of $10 million. Our original Board consisted of seven members of one family. Initial program areas were homelessness and at-risk youth, with our first round of program grants in the spring of 1994. From the outset, we have been interested in supporting organizations that address problems through systemic change, advocacy, policy reform, and innovative direct service programs. The Fund places a high value on creativity and risk-taking.
When the Butler Family Fund was founded, it had no required focus, and so its family Board surveyed the philanthropic landscape and decided to focus on two program areas: homelessness and at-risk youth. At that time, our assets were about $10 million and our annual grantmaking budget was about $550,000, or about 5 percent of our asset base, as required by the IRS. As the stock market rose and our understanding of the needs deepened, our Board voted to raise our annual payout to 10 percent, raising our program grants to about $1.2 million per year, double the rate of most foundations. Even after the stock market turned down in the early part of this decade, we reaffirmed our commitment to our grantees by continuing to spend at the same level, thus raising our payout to about 12 percent per year.
In 2001, after much debate and inquiry, we decided to move away from funding at-risk youth, in significant part because we found the area too diffuse for a small foundation like ours to make a difference. We chose instead to shift our second major grants area to the field of criminal justice reform–which we now define as death penalty and juvenile justice. Many of the same people who are caught in the homelessness bureaucracy also cycle in and out of the criminal justice system. We hoped to find a synergy between these two program areas.
When we started, we had some general ideas about alleviating poverty and making a difference. Now we can better articulate what we believe and how we hope to bring about change. We cannot accept that the wealthiest country in the world has a homeless population at all, let alone one that is as huge as ours. Prison should not be a substitute for treating mental illness and drug addiction, nor should it be an alternative to housing. The United States should not be a country where innocent people are executed, and where our criminal justice system is severely skewed against people of color. We believe in a government that supports the production of housing for all, and that offers disadvantaged young people hope and possibility rather than a lifelong relationship with the criminal justice system. Our vision is of a world where being low-income does not mean having to choose between housing and food, and where everyone can have faith in our system of justice.
Identifying what needs fixing is only the first step; our focus has been on how one small foundation can make a difference. Some lessons are clear. First, advocacy matters. We are committed to funding groups that engage in advocacy to change existing systems and policies. We have seen the dramatic impact that our grantees and others have had when they shine a spotlight on unacceptable policies and work to change them. As a result of advocacy and public education, our country is engaged in a public debate about the death penalty that we could not have imagined even a decade ago.
Second, we know that small grants can leverage large public dollars. We support local, regional, and national efforts to increase public resources available for low-income housing. Even in tough economic times, the public sector is still the most important financial player in the low-income housing market. We have repeatedly seen our grantees succeed against seemingly insurmountable odds in campaigns that target and increase the public coffers for these purposes.
Third, we take risks. We invest in promising people and ideas. It has been our privilege to meet and support people with visionary ideas, energy, and commitment.
We have tried to support our grantees, not to micro-manage them. It is they who are the experts. They are the thinkers and doers. It is our job to help them with the resources that they need to accomplish their goals. Where possible, we try to give general operating grants so that our grantees will have the ability to support their organizational infrastructure and obtain a necessary measure of spending flexibility. We also make specific grants for groups that have multiple programs, directing our money for a limited purpose where grantees identify difficult-to-fund projects.
We work with our philanthropic colleagues to support our grantees. Where we can, we try to open doors and publicize the outstanding work that we are privileged to support. We make every effort to communicate and share our ideas with our colleagues. We still have much to learn.