News

During a plenary session at the Independent Sector's annual conference on September 30, 2013, Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, unveiled planning for a "National Purpose Initiative," an effort to reunite Americans around a common purpose. The project aims to engage hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of Americans in a dialogue that will culminate in a broadly shared agenda of national priorities.

For the fourth time, Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is among the honorees of this year's NonProfit Times' Power & Influence Top 50. Recognized as a skilled negotiator, The NonProfit Times highlights his new effort to engage Americans in a conversation about the United States' challenges and priorities in the 21st century.

Last month, the Fund elected Valerie Rockefeller Wayne to chair the Rockefeller Brothers Fund board of trustees. Ms. Wayne is a middle school special education teacher specializing in adolescents with learning differences and emotional disabilities. She first joined the RBF board in 2003. Ms. Wayne succeeds Richard Rockefeller, who had led the Fund since 2006.

Charting Our Progress is an annual report of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s activities over a three-year period. This year's cover story, by Charles Granquist, spotlights The Pocantico Center, which is located on the historic Rockefeller family estate.

Community philanthropy strengthens civil society and should be a priority of development aid practitioners, according to a new report published by the Aga Khan Foundation U.S.A., the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Global Fund for Community Foundations, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The findings are aligned with the trend in the field of community philanthropy; local foundations grew by 86 percent from 2000 to 2010.

Stephen Heintz has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. Founded during the American Revolution, the Academy recognizes the most influential leaders from science, scholarship, business, public affairs, and the arts, and carries out nonpartisan policy research on social, political, and intellectual topics in response to the needs and problems of society.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is pleased to announce the appointment of Mark Adiedo as director of human resources. As director, he will provide leadership, guidance, and professional expertise to senior management and services to staff and the Fund’s affiliates on matters related to human resources and organizational development.

Discerning and communicating the impact of grantmaking and other programmatic contributions are essential to a foundation's mission as well as its commitment to stewardship, transparency, and accountability. A year after a committee of Rockefeller Brothers Fund trustees and staff was established to tackle this issue, their approach to impact assessment has been published in the report, Evaluating Program Impact.

The United States is at its best when there's a shared understanding of its national purpose, Stephen Heintz, president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, wrote in an essay for The American Prospect's November/December issue. In his essay, "A New Pledge of Principles," Heintz argues that the solutions must come from nonpartisan collaboration.

Rockefeller Brothers Fund trustee Justin Rockefeller is part of a new generation of philanthropists leading a shift toward socially responsible investing, according to an article in Institutional Investor. This transition is changing the country's wealth management industry, as Millennials, those born between 1978 and 2000, embrace impact investing, the idea that financial and social interests should go hand-in-hand.