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Comments from the CEO The most important advice which we can offer to any prospective applicant for a grant from the Turrell Fund is to carefully review our Vision and Mission Statements. These represent the best efforts of our Board to express our goals and funding priorities. The Turrell Fund has been engaged in a multi-year process of reflecting on how it can be most strategic, with its increasingly limited resources, in order to address this Vision and Mission. These statements are the result of this work. It is in this context that the Turrell Fund committed, several years ago, to direct a much greater proportion of its grant spending to public policy efforts, such as advocacy, strategic initiatives, and direct services with targeted focus on the especially vulnerable birth to six age group, across its catchment area. As with many of our philanthropic peers, we have concluded that this course of action will permit us to address the issues confronting the children of New Jersey, Vermont, and, frankly, the nation, on a basis that is more sustainable. We are happy to report that initial returns from our more focused approach are promising. Our hopes are high that initiatives currently underwritten by the Turrell Fund, in Vermont and New Jersey, will lead to the establishment of robust systems dedicated to serving the needs of the very young. We recognize that the road to policy change is a long one, and will require ongoing commitments from us for a number of years to come. There is growing realization within the funding community that investments in the earliest years of life, and in shaping policies related to this segment, are prudent. This comes on the heels of leading edge research by neuro-scientists and economists, and the dedicated efforts of advocacy organizations around the country which have taken up and advanced this important cause. National funders are increasingly embracing the truth that investments in shaping public early childhood policies, and in programs serving parents-to-be, infants, toddlers, and children of pre-Kindergarten age, yield outsized returns, in the short and long run. An increasing proportion of our funds, over time, will be devoted to programs and policy efforts which serve the very young. That said, the Turrell Fund will continue to provide support, on a selective basis, to programs of exceptional merit, serving children beyond the infant, toddler, and pre-Kindergarten age range. Favored programs for these somewhat older children will be those which operate in parts of our served area where quality educational and developmental alternatives are scarce and the relative concentrations of at-risk children are very high. Successful applicants in this age category must be able to show benchmark results, supported by rigorous measurement and analysis. We invite your ideas, questions and critique as we pursue our Mission and Vision. We encourage all of you, who believe that they see their work within our stated priorities, to seek our support through the Fund’s semi-annual electronic request cycle. By the same token, we are happy to discuss, at any time, the fit we see between our priorities and your respective operations, should you find that helpful.
Curtland E. Fields
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