Grants | Acton Family Giving

The oldest and largest library association in the world. Its Great Stories Club is a library-led book club model that gives underserved youth the opportunity to read, reflect, and share ideas. Great Stories Club themes and titles are selected by librarians and humanities scholars to resonate with reluctant readers facing challenges like detention, incarceration, addiction, academic probation, poverty, and homelessness.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$75,000	2019	general support	Areas of Exploration
$50,000	2019	support for Great Stories Club (GSC)	Areas of Exploration
$50,000	2018	support for Great Stories Club (GSC)	Areas of Exploration

Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect

A nonprofit that works to create the kinder and fairer world of which Anne Frank dreamed. It offers educational programs, traveling exhibits, theatrical performances, and annual scholarships to bring her message to new generations and honor those inspired to humanitarian action through her words. It treats the diary and spirit of Anne Frank as unique tools to advance her legacy, to educate young people and communities in the U.S. and Canada about the dangers of intolerance, anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination, and to inspire the next generation to build a world based on mutual respect.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$5,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

ASHOKA

A global organization that treats empathy as a critical capacity. It develops resources for the public-at-large, working to give all people the confidence and tools to solve problems for the common good. Its Start Empathy initiative is a community of individuals and institutions dedicated to building a future in which every child masters empathy. It additionally conducts research into and produces toolkits for building empathy and assessing impact.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$10,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

Equal Justice Initiative

A non-profit committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$15,000	2019	general support	Areas of Exploration
$10,000	2018	support for the National Memorial and Legacy Museum	Areas of Exploration

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations

A diverse community of grantmakers working to reshape the way philanthropy operates. Understanding that grantmakers are successful only to the extent that their grantees achieve meaningful results, it promotes strategies and practices that contribute to grantee success.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$7,390	2019	general support, $7,390 per year for two years (payment one of two, total grant amount $14,780)	Areas of Exploration
$4,470	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

Greater Good Science Center

A science center based at UC Berkeley. It provides a bridge between the research community and the general public. Its scholars study the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being and its site provides research-based tools and training to foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$50,000	2019	support for the Greater Good Science Center, $50,000 per year for two years (payment one of two, total grant amount $100,000)	Areas of Exploration
$12,500	2018	to support the work of the Greater Good Science Center and its research fellow(s) to synthesize and analyze scientific research around human empathy, animal empathy, and empathic storytelling; and create an annotated bibliography summarizing the GGSC’s findings and addresses AFGs research questions.	Areas of Exploration

Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center

A museum built around the founding principle: Remember the Past, Transform the Future. It is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Holocaust by honoring the memories of those who were lost and by teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice and indifference. The new Take a Stand Center is an immersive permanent exhibition with a forward-looking emphasis on multiple areas of social justice and an interactive, holographic Survivor Stories Experience.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$10,000	2019	general support	Areas of Exploration
$10,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

Living Room Conversations

An organization that develops and disperses materials to create conversational bridges across issues that divide and separate us. It provides an easy structure for engaging in friendly yet meaningful conversation with those with whom we may not agree. These conversations increase understanding, reveal common ground, and sometimes even allow us to discuss possible solutions. The modern world no longer limits our place for speaking to a physical location and we live our lives in our communities and online: our living room is wherever we find ourselves connecting with others.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$10,000	2019	Living Room Conversations	Areas of Exploration
$10,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

National Civil Rights Museum

A museum in Memphis that shares the culture and lessons from the American Civil Rights Movement and explore how this era continues to shape equality and freedom globally. It is located at the former Lorraine Motel, where civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Through interactive exhibits, historic collections, dynamic speakers and special events, it offers visitors a chance to walk through history and learn more about a tumultuous and inspiring period of change.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$15,000	2019	general support	Areas of Exploration
$10,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

National Museum of the American Indian

A museum with multiple sites that is committed to advancing knowledge and understanding of the Native cultures of the Western Hemisphere—past, present, and future—through partnership with Native peoples and others. The museum works to support the continuance of culture, traditional values, and transitions in contemporary Native life. It offers exhibition galleries and spaces for performances, lectures and symposia, research, education, conservation, and repatriation. Its off-site outreach efforts, often referred to as the "fourth museum," include traveling exhibitions and community programs.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$10,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom

A nonprofit dedicated to growing relationships between Muslim and Jewish women to fight hate, negative stereotyping and prejudice. Participants come together to engage in dialogue, socialization, social action projects, and activities to expand their knowledge of each other’s practices and beliefs. Chapters emphasize respect to build relationships across religious and cultural divides.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$15,000	2019	general support	Areas of Exploration
$5,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

Smithsonian Latino Center

A Cultural Center, not represented in one physical location, rather it works collaboratively with the Smithsonians' museums and research centers, ensuring that the contributions of the Latino community in the arts, history, national culture and scientific achievement are explored, presented, celebrated and preserved. It supports scholarly research, exhibitions, public and educational programs, web-based content and virtual platforms, and collections and archives. It also manages leadership and professional development programs for Latino youth, emerging scholars and museum professionals.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$500,000	2018	for the Latino Gallery at the National Museum of American History	Family Giving
$10,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

Speaking Down Barriers

A team of listeners, healers, artists, researchers, teachers, theologians, and creatives who work together to offer spoken word poetry, transformative dialogue, workshops, and deep listening. Working with communities, organizations, and institutions, it envisions a world where all people can confront and heal the wounds of difference, including race, gender, class, religion, national identity, and sexual orientation. Rather than treating differences as a source of division, it frames them as the source of our collective strength.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$5,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

Tenement Museum

A museum that preserves and interprets the history of immigration through the personal experiences of the generations of newcomers who settled in and built lives on Manhattan's Lower East Side, America's iconic immigrant neighborhood; forges emotional connections between visitors and immigrants past and present; and enhances appreciation for the profound role immigration has played and continues to play in shaping America's evolving national identity.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$25,000	2019	general support	Areas of Exploration
$15,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

The Bias Inside Us, Smithsonian Institution

A Community dialogue project prepared by The Smithsonian Institution. It aims to help people understand and counter their implicit biases and build capacity in communities to convene dialogue that will increase empathy and create more inclusive schools and workplaces. It will uncover the connections between implicit bias and group dynamics, how they can lead to explicit acts of bias and hatred by individuals and whole societies, and what we as individuals can do about it. Selected communities will will work with The Smithsonian alongside community leaders and teachers to develop a customized plan for community initiated programming on these issues. The Smithsonian will then provide the community with a 1,000 sq. ft. temporary exhibition for a pre-determined length of time, free of charge, to be the centerpiece of local activities.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$100,000	2019	support for The Bias Inside Us	Areas of Exploration
$50,000	2018	support for The Bias Inside Us	Areas of Exploration

The People's Supper Initiative

A program out to prove that a group of thoughtful people who differ from one another – politically, racially, religiously, or generationally – can sit down over a shared meal, go beneath the headlines, and understand the real stories that have shaped who we are. Bridging Suppers are an opportunity to escape our echo chambers and to connect deeply with folks of different backgrounds.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$10,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration

We Need Diverse Books

A grassroots organization that produces and promotes literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people. It works to put more books featuring diverse characters into the hands of all children through a partnership with Scholastic Book Club. It also focuses on providing books to Title 1 and other schools with large low-income populations.

Amount	Year	Purpose	Giving Areas
$15,000	2019	general support	Areas of Exploration
$5,000	2018	general support	Areas of Exploration