December 31, 2009 concluded our fourteenth year of grant-making. Since inception, the Foundation has made grants in excess of $6.0 million to nearly 600 organizations. Our grant-making efforts have improved life in San Diego through the arts, education, health and human services and community development.

The Foundation's Board of Directors - Robert G. Copeland, Kenneth G. Coveney, Joanne M. Pastula, Gail K. Naughton, John G. Rebelo, H. Michael Collins and Christopher C. Calkins, will continue its hands-on approach to grant-making. As part of the evaluation process, one or more of our directors will sometimes visit the offices, facilities and/or management of the organizations submitting letters of intent and grant requests to gain firsthand knowledge about them and their programs. The Board meets quarterly.

In 2005, the Board of Directors decided to implement a new emphasis in its grant-making in the area of education. The Foundation has always been committed to helping youth achieve success in their early education, whether they are college-bound or entering the work force directly after high school. It has been a fundamental precept of the Foundation that a well-rounded kindergarten through twelfth-grade education including music, arts, culture, math and science is essential to helping students fulfill their future roles as parents, professionals and citizens. The new emphasis in our grant-making has been applied since 2005, resulting in more of our grant-making dollars being directed into K-12 education programs, particularly those emphasizing science and math.

One of the effects of the worldwide economic cataclysm which struck in 2008, was to cause the Foundation to significantly reduce its 2009 grant budget.  While it is too soon to predict an economic recovery, it presently appears that the Foundation will be able to establish a 2010 grant making budget in excess of the 2009 grant budget.

The Board of Directors has once again concluded that for 2010, we will generally limit grant-making to formal K-12 science and math education programs and well-established programs which we have supported in the past.

We call your attention to our long held interest in funding collaborative initiatives which address areas of need in which we have made grants in the past.  We are very interested in looking at grant requests involving actual, committed or planned collaboration.  The Foundation may even act to increase a grant conditional upon evidence of a signed agreement setting forth the details of a collaborative effort.
We will also ask organizations wishing to submit a letter of intent, to tell us what the organization has sought to do to be more efficient, any organization they have considered joining with to cut costs, and gain in efficiency.

San Diego does not have a large number of foundations such as ours which historically have had a sweeping grant-making agenda enabling them to benefit organizations across our county and the non-profit sector.  While we retreated from that role in 2009, we believe we are on the road to resuming our historic role in the year to come.

All of us on the Board are proud to have the opportunity to serve the San Diego community through the ongoing activities of The Thomas C. Ackerman Foundation.

Robert G. Copeland, President

January 2010