Funder Spotlight: The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations Want to Strengthen Civic Life

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IP Funder Spotlights offer quick rundowns of the grantmakers that are on our radar, including a few key details on how they operate and what they’re up to right now. Today, we take a look at a national funder that significantly ramped up funding in 2020 and places colleges, religious organizations and public media outlets at the center of its grantmaking.

What this funder cares about 

Based in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations (AVDF) are committed to strengthening what they call “the common assets of American life”—inclusive higher education and healthcare, engaged spiritual communities, a robust public media and a clean environment. Since their inception in 1952, the foundations have given over 3,800 grants totaling more than $300 million to colleges, hospitals, medical schools and divinity schools all across the country.

In 2020, 60% of approved grants flowed to private liberal arts universities and public education media organizations. AVDF accepts open submission funding requests in three of its program areas: Private Higher Education, Public Media, and Interfaith Leadership and Religious Literacy. However, AVDF is pausing Public Media for one year, and will resume accepting requests in 2022.

Why you should care 

Leadership of the nationally focused Arthur Vining Davis Foundations understands that we are living in polarized and fraught times, so program officers are always on the lookout for organizations and projects that cultivate a more tolerant, civil and empathetic body politic. Work includes promoting civil discourse on college and university campuses, funding opportunities for multi-faith collaborations, and recognizing the dignity of the individual through health giving, which focuses on issues like palliative care training and building resilience among children with serious illnesses. 

The foundations have also ramped up grantmaking in the public media space. They are piloting a program that provides multi-year organizational support grants to public television production companies rather than requiring project-oriented proposals each year. They also plan to direct more resources to local public radio stations providing high-quality local journalism, particularly in markets that are losing local newspapers.

Where the money comes from 

The son of a Congregationalist minister, Arthur Vining Davis was born in 1867 in a small town outside of Boston and went on to become the president and chief executive officer of aluminum giant Alcoa. At the ripe age of 82, he moved to Florida and embarked on a second career in real estate. In 1952, he formalized his philanthropy by creating a living trust. His first gifts went to theological institutions and colleges like the University of Miami. When he stepped down as Alcoa chairman in 1957, Davis was the third-richest individual in the world. He passed away five years later. Through his will, he established two more charities that, in conjunction with the first, would collectively become the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations—hence the plural. AVDF currently has $306 million in total assets.

Where the money goes 

In 2020, AVDF paid a total of $11 million in grants and approved over $18.2 million in new grants. Public education media has been a big winner recently. Back in 2019, the foundations awarded eight Public Educational Media program grants totaling $2.1 million. The next year, that number rose to 15 grants and a combined $6.6 million in funding—a 214% increase thanks to the organization’s new efforts to support local journalism and the creation of a pooled fund to bankroll educational podcasts produced by public media networks.

The other top program areas for approved grants in 2020 were Private Higher Education ($4.2 million), Interfaith Leadership and Religious Literacy ($2.6 million) and Palliative Care ($2.1 million). Sixty new grants were awarded to 23 states with Virginia, District of Columbia and Massachusetts receiving the higher number of grants. Arthur Vining Davis does not typically fund capital projects or endowments, and generally supports projects with a one or two-year duration.

The foundations also provide support through a constellation of partners, which include the Henry Luce Foundation, the El-Hibri Foundation and the Foundation for Religious Literacy. 

Open door or barbed wire?

The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations have a thoroughly informative website that includes a financial report, grants database, a robust FAQ page, the names of staff and trustees, and a 2020 annual report. 

It’s also worth repeating that the foundations support private institutions of higher education. However, public institutions may find comfort in knowing that they can apply for grants within the Interfaith Leadership and Religious Literacy area. Also note that the foundations do not accept open submission funding requests in their Environmental Solutions and Palliative Care program areas.

Organizations applying for the 2021–22 Review Cycle must first submit a letter of intent through the foundations’ portal by August 27, 2021. AVDF staff will review all LOIs and invite competitive requests to submit a full proposal. The foundations have a relatively stringent vetting process—in 2019, they received 226 LOIs and invited 49 proposals—a 22% invitation rate. On the bright side, trustees approved 77% of invited proposals.

The website’s Grantee Spotlight page will give grantseekers a good idea of what the foundations are looking for in applicants. That said, the News section is somewhat redundant—rather than providing news specific to the foundation itself, it links to posts about how grantees are using funding. Grantseekers may also appreciate being able to access annual reports preceding 2020.

Latest big moves 

AVDF has joined forces with the Teagle Foundation to support a five-year, $6 million initiative to help community college students transfer to a four-year program and complete a liberal arts degree. Rather than facilitating pathways to public four-year institutions—which is where philanthropy typically focuses its efforts—AVDF aims to funnel students to small, independent liberal arts colleges.

The foundations have also announced a partnership with the Rita & Alex Hillman Foundation to promote innovative nurse-driven care to address serious illness and end-of-life needs of vulnerable populations. That includes people who are economically disadvantaged, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people, people experiencing homelessness, rural populations and others.

Looking ahead, the AVDF board announced that it has increased its commitment in the Environmental Solutions area by 150% beginning in 2022. Grantmaking will focus on organizations focused on changing the way people behave. The foundations also aim to extend their relationship with the Center to Advance Palliative Care to support workforce development and other initiatives.

One cool thing to know 

The foundations’ public media grantmaking focuses on the dissemination of ideas. For instance, in 2020, AVDF provided funding for a 10-episode series of the podcast “How Change Happens,” which looks at how American life and culture has evolved across the foundations’ key interest areas, including conversations about higher education, interfaith relations and palliative care. 

The foundations have also supported public media projects celebrating iconic Americans like Ernest Hemingway, Billy Graham and Helen Keller that explore similar social and religious issues. The foundations provided support through its Interfaith Leadersip and Religious Literacy program for “The Universal Title,” a six-part podcast series about the spiritual evolution of Muhammad Ali.

What we hope it does next 

The foundations’ $18.2 million in new approved grants for 2020 represented a hefty 67% and 70% increase in funding over 2018 and 2019, respectively. So while it would be somewhat unrealistic to expect an equally robust jump in 2021, we’re holding out hope that the $15 to 20 million approval range will be the new normal moving forward.

We’re also curious to see how the foundations’ priorities play out across their two largest grantmaking areas. In the Public Educational Media program area, will the foundations continue to mostly fund public media programming? Or will they branch out and join peer grantmakers by backing initiatives to combat misinformation or to boost diversity in the professional ranks? 

AVDF’s Private Higher Education grantmaking will be even more interesting to watch. Remember, many small private liberal arts colleges were struggling with dwindling enrollments, rising costs and increasing competition from more affordable public schools long before the pandemic struck. The crisis exacerbated these trends, and it will be interesting to see the extent to which the foundations address some of the root-cause challenges that imperil these institutions’ long-term viability and solvency.