2008 PROGRAM GUIDELINES

The Public Welfare Foundation supports efforts to ensure fundamental rights and opportunities for people in need.  We look for carefully defined points where our funds can make a difference in bringing about systemic changes that can improve lives.  We focus on three program areas:  Criminal and Juvenile Justice, Health Reform and Workers’ Rights.

Criminal and Juvenile Justice

The US criminal justice system is failing.  American prisons hold more than two million people -- the largest inmate population anywhere in the world.  And the number is growing daily, largely because of federal and state laws prescribing mandatory minimum sentences, even for non-violent offenders.  Locking up increasing numbers of people, at great expense to taxpayers, and later releasing them with little access to rehabilitation and drug treatment services, has not made our country’s streets safe.  The Foundation’s Criminal and Juvenile Justice Program supports organizations working for a fairer, more effective and more enlightened criminal justice system.  The Foundation seeks out grantees with strategies to lower rates of incarceration and to eliminate disparate treatment of African Americans and Latinos, who constitute disproportionately high percentages of the prison population.

The Foundation makes grants to support:

• Organizations working to repeal mandatory minimum sentence laws and other policies that contribute to the warehousing of offenders and to the disproportionate treatment of minorities.
• Reform of laws and policies that inappropriately bar ex-offenders from employment and social services essential for their successful re-entry into society.
• An end to the practice of trying and incarcerating juveniles as adults. Proposals for funding should offer concrete ideas for effective approaches to change local, state and federal laws, policies and agency regulations that underlie such practices.
• Development and expansion of alternatives to youth incarceration.

A grant proposal should incorporate promising strategies that aim to change specific laws, policies or agency regulations and that are tailored to the specific locale, state or region where the grantee’s work will take place.  We give special attention to proposals from organizations that form partnerships with complementary groups to enhance their chances of success.  We welcome proposals from consortia of organizations that may include both government agencies and independent advocacy groups.

Health Reform

The United States health care system is broken.  Uninsured people comprised 47 million Americans, according to a 2006 report by the U.S. Census Bureau.  People of color are disproportionately affected, millions of children lack health insurance, and the percentage of Americans covered by employer-sponsored health insurance is decreasing.  Even for the over 80 million people who have public insurance, access to health care is by no means assured.  Nevertheless, per capita health expenditures in the United States in 2007 were the highest in the world.  Many developed countries with far lower per capita expenditures have health care outcomes far better than those in the United States. 

Well-informed voices of consumers and skilled advocates can play a major role in developing a health system to which all residents of the United States have access and which affords them high-quality, affordable health care.  The goal of the Health Reform Program is to assure that the voice of the consumer is heard, particularly at the state and local levels.  The program fosters the development and growth of strong, inter-reliant and strategically-arrayed systems of advocacy with expertise in policy, health law, fiscal analysis, issue campaigns, communications, organizing community and interfaith groups and building coalitions.  We encourage collaboration among advocates within states and regions and creative approaches to broadening and deepening the impact of consumer advocacy.  By awarding larger grants to advocacy organizations in a smaller number of states, the Health Reform Program will enable advocates to undertake more thorough and far-reaching advocacy strategies.  Since state health reform builds on and refines successful federal policies such as Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, we support advocacy to improve federal policies, for their own sake and also to demonstrate how effective health policies benefit our society.

The Foundation makes grants to support:

• Expanded state-level consumer advocacy with special emphasis on those states that have access to fewer local and national philanthropic resources.
• Regional efforts by state-based advocates to share strategies and solutions and conduct multi-state issue campaigns. 
• National health policies critical for health reform at the state and national levels.
• Technical assistance by national organizations to state and local consumer advocates to  enhance their capacity to work on health policy, fiscal policy, legal advocacy, organizing, organizational development and communications.

Workers' Rights

Forty million US jobs – roughly one in three non-farm jobs -- pay less than $11.11 an hour, and one job in four pays too little to lift a family of four above the poverty level, according to a report by the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington, DC.  Low-income workers are least likely to receive job-related benefits such as health insurance, paid sick days, retirement savings accounts and family leave.  Contingent workers, who don't have explicit or implicit contracts for long-term employment, face a perennial struggle to make ends meet.  This category includes day laborers, farm workers, temps, contract workers and part-timers.  Most powerless of all are day laborers who, on any given day, number about 118,000 people, according to a 2006 study that added that day laborers were too often insulted, cheated out of pay and exposed to occupational hazards and toxic substances.  Since many day laborers are recent immigrants unfamiliar with US laws and protections, they seldom protest abuses.

The Workers' Rights Program seeks to improve the lives of working people, especially those most vulnerable to exploitation, such as contingent workers, by ensuring their basic legal rights to safe, healthy and fair conditions at work.

Labor Rights for Contingent and Low-Wage Workers

The Foundation makes grants to support:

• Advocacy to establish, at both the federal and state levels, new worker labor standards favorable toward low-income workers, such as portable benefits, expanded paid family leave, paid vacation and access to unemployment insurance.
• Advocacy and other efforts to expand government enforcement of existing state and federal labor laws, including targeted investigations of industries that are known for disregarding these laws.
• Networking and the development of alliances among organizations concerned with passage and enforcement of laws and regulations that protect the rights of low-income workers.
• Emerging partnerships between community and national organizations designed to increase broad organized support for membership among workers in construction, hotel and port industries.
• Promotion of workers’ efforts to organize.
  
  
  

Paid Sick Days

Nearly half of all private-sector workers and three-fourths of the working poor in the US are not afforded paid sick days, according to recent studies.  The Foundation believes that paid sick days should be a minimum labor standard across the American workforce, as is the case in 145 other nations, including nine of the ten most competitive economies.

The Foundation makes grants to support: 

• Organizing at the local, state and national levels for paid sick leave policies.  Proposals should describe the types of activities to be undertaken, such as public education, coalition-building, educational meetings with policymakers and media campaigns.  We encourage work in locations with particular strategic value.
• Assessments of existing sick day policies and laws and development of new policy proposals.
• Efforts to engage the business community by demonstrating the benefits of paid sick days in terms of employee satisfaction, employee retention and public health.  We invite research on ways to accomplish this end more effectively.
• Coordination among organizations promoting paid sick days so that lessons and strategies are shared and successes build upon one another.

Short-cutting the Paperwork Maze:  A Workers’ Rights Program Initiative

Universal benefits applications can create a user-friendly, one-stop shopping application process for government benefits. Innovative designs contemplate using technology to submit applications of eligible people directly to all appropriate government agencies.  As this technology is perfected and deployed in hiring centers and social services agencies around the US, low-income Americans can more readily find work supports they need, information about the benefits to which they are entitled and relief from the burdens of numerous complex applications and  hours spent at benefits offices rather than working.

The Foundation makes grants to support:

• Development and widespread adoption of universal benefits applications so that low-wage workers and others can easily learn about, access and apply for government-sponsored health and human service benefits programs for which they qualify.
• Partnerships between state and/or national governmental agencies and community organizations or others who serve low-income populations to develop information technology models that transform the benefit enrollment process to focus on the needs of low-income people.  The Foundation encourages joint proposals from organizations forming partnerships to make universal benefits applications a reality.
  
  

Special Opportunities

The Special Opportunities Program supports initiatives reflecting the Foundation's underlying values.  These often represent extraordinary initiatives that do not fit within the above program areas.  At times, this program serves as a laboratory for new ideas.  As well, it entertains proposals that combine objectives of several of the Foundation's programs.  Grants made under this program are rare and must be especially compelling.

President's Discretionary Fund

The President's Discretionary Fund offers grants of up to $25,000 to advance the Foundation's priorities.  The application process is streamlined, and the grants are typically given for needs that occur between Board meetings.  There is a high demand for such grants, and relatively few are given.