MacArthur Foundation Extends their "Genius" Brand

Established in 1981, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's grants to individuals, commonly known as the "genius" awards, are themselves a stroke of pure...

These awards, just announced for 2006, capture the public imagination in one of the few ways that ever gave visibility to philanthropy in the pre-BG (Bill Gates) era. Couple them with NPR's regular announcements like, "Programming on the environment brought to you with support from the ___________ Foundation" and you've got all the messaging about foundations that really ever got through to significant portion of the American public.

Awards and competitions are a hot concept in philanthropy these days and even MacArthur is expanding on the tradition with its first annual Award for Creative and Effective Institutions which recently recognized nine organizations in five countries. According to the press release:

These non-profit organizations have diverse missions from finding permanent jobs for ex-offenders in Chicago to promoting police reform in Nigeria to saving the lives of mothers and their babies in India.  Still, they have much in common.  All are highly creative and effective organizations that have demonstrated significant impact in their fields.  Each organization will receive up to $500,000, a large sum given that their annual budgets are under $2.5 million.

While mainstream media picked up the genius awards as always, little fuss was made of this new category but these mostly international organizations are worth checking out. 

Susan Herr