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Photo courtesy of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
Dana Creel, director and, later, president of the RBF, pictured here after his 1975 retirement, exact date unknown.
In 1973, the Fund recognized that its longtime support of significant institutions founded or led by RBF trustees had created special obligations to these institutions. The Fund now sought to make grants more strictly in keeping with its programmatic goals. At the same time, it wished to assure that these institutions could face the future on their own, on firm financial footing. To that end, it launched a five-year study led by Dana Creel, former RBF president and vice chairman of the board after 1975. The Creel Committee surveyed 25 of the Fund’s significant ongoing commitments and assessed the organizations for a “payout” grant of at least $1 million.
- More about the Creel Committee
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By 1978, 22 institutions had been selected for Creel Committee grants totaling $100 million as part of the Fund's new strategy.
The organizations were selected after a rigorous examination by RBF staff and associates of their financial stability, needs, and future plans, their significance in the Fund’s historical giving profile, and their ability to make productive use of a large sum of money. The grants, paid over time through 1983, reduced the endowment of the Fund by approximately half. Ultimately, however, they liberated the Fund to become more flexible and to chart new directions. While the Creel Committee grants ended RBF support for these organizations’ general, ongoing expenses, they did not preclude the organizations from seeking or receiving future grants for special projects that were in line with RBF programmatic priorities.
Institutions selected for Creel Committee grants:
- Center for Inter-American Relations
- Japan Society
- Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Metropolitan Opera Association
- Museum of Modern Art
- Riverside Church
- Asia Society
- International House
- Population Council
- Rockefeller Archive Center
- New York Zoological Society
- The Agricultural Development Council
- Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
- Jackson Hole Preserve, Inc.
- Pocantico Estate Plan
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- Rockefeller University
- Sleepy Hollow Restorations
- Spelman College
- Union Church of Pocantico Hills
- and Reserve Funds for: Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center Joint Ventures
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Photo by J. David Penn, Edward W. Barnett Assoc.
MoMA director Rene d’Harnoncourt and John D. Rockefeller 3rd show Japanese Premier Shigeru Yoshida through MoMA's exhibition Japanese house, 1953. The Japan Society was a Creel Committee grant recipient.
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Photo courtesy of Rockefeller Archive Center.
An exhibition of musical instruments from around the world at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, date unknown. The Met received support from the RBF for many years, and was a recipient of a Creel Committee grant.
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Photo by Louis H. Frohman.
Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, was a project of Sleepy Hollow Restorations, Inc., one of the organizations that received a Creel Committee grant.
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Photo courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center.
Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, NY, was a project of Sleepy Hollow Restorations, Inc., one of the organizations that received a Creel Committee grant.
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Photo courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center.
The Rockefeller Memorial Room at Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow, NY, which was a project of Sleepy Hollow Restorations, Inc., one of the organizations that received a Creel Committee grant.
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