The Colombe Peace Foundation (or Colombe Foundation) is a private foundation that was established in 1997 by the Proteus Fund and was administered by Proteus staff. ¹

Colombe primarily makes grants to groups that seek to eliminate nuclear weapons, push arms control treaties, and support cuts in U.S. defense spending. ² The group’s name is likely related to its anti-war activism; “Colombe” is French for “dove,” a symbol of peace.

Colombe’s IRS filings beginning in 2002 (the earliest available year) show that the foundation subsists on capital gains income and securities dividends rather than direct annual contributions. In 2017, Colombe reported $18.7 million in capital stock and current funds. ³

Grantmaking

The biggest recipients of Colombe grants since 2002 are the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation ($2.4 million), National Priorities Project ($1.3 million), Center for International Policy ($1.1 million), Project on Government Oversight ($820,000), Institute for Policy Studies ($668,000), Alliance for Nuclear Accountability ($660,000), Tides Center ($610,000), Peace Action Education Fund ($560,000), and the Quaker-run ($ Friends Committee on National Legislation 475,000). ⁴

Colombe has also granted $370,000 to ReThink Media and $319,000 to the Proteus Fund. Colombe is also a substantial contributor to the controversial Ploughshares Fund, which has received $941,000 since 2002 from the Colombe Foundation. ⁵

Colombe’s grantees tend to focus their advocacy efforts on reducing stockpiles of nuclear weaponry and shaping American foreign policy. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, in particular, opposes a “first use” defense policy, meaning the United States will only resort to using nuclear weapons in reaction to a nuclear attack by a foreign state. ⁶ Others, like the National Priorities Project, focus on domestic policy; the group was created in 1983 to attack the Reagan administration’s policies concerning defense spending, favoring federal spending on environmentalist energy, Medicaid, and other programs. ⁷

The Colombe Foundation is also a major supporter of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND), a feminist activist group founded in the early 1980s as Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament and renamed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. ⁸ WAND lobbies Congress for the “eradication of nuclear weapons” and shrinking the national defense budget. The group regularly stages protests and marches in Washington, D.C. criticizing the supposedly “militarized, patriarchal culture” that’s led the United States into “endless war and violence.” ⁹ Since 2002, Colombe has given $1.5 million to WAND, $760,000 to the WAND Education Fund, and another $342,000 to the Georgia WAND Fund, a state-based mobilization group. ¹⁰

Leadership

Edith “Edie” Allen is founder and president of the Colombe Foundation. ¹¹ Allen is also listed as president of the Colombe Foundation in an October 2018 open letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke opposing a proposed rule requiring groups to obtain permits in order to protest on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (Proteus Fund president Paul Di Donato and Piper Fund director Melissa Spatz were also signatories). ¹²

Allen is a board member for WAND Education Fund, a position she’s held since 2009. ¹³ While at WAND Allen reportedly met then-student volunteer Naila Bolus, an activist who later worked as executive director of the Ploughshares Fund from 1997 to 2011. ¹⁴ Allen was a member of the Ploughshares Fund board of directors from 2009 to 2015, a board which at various times has also included Ploughshares president Joseph Cirincione, a former Center for American Progress vice president; Hal Harvey, CEO of the ClimateWorks Foundation; former CIA officer Valerie Plame; controversial media figure Reza Aslan; and former Obama administration Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. ¹⁵

Dini Merz is the Proteus Fund’s program director for the Colombe Foundation. ¹⁶ Merz has previously worked for the center-left Tremaine Foundation in New Haven, Connecticut. ¹⁷ She is a former board member for the New England Grassroots Environment Fund and is a steering committee member for the Peace and Security Funders Group, a donors roundtable whose other members include the Ploughshares Fund, Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, Open Society Foundations, MacArthur Foundation, and others. ¹⁸

Funding

Financial Overview

The Colombe Peace Foundation reported $2.2 million in revenues and $2.7 million in total expenditures in 2017. The following is an overview of the foundation’s finances, including the sum of annual grants paid, between 2013 and 2017. ¹⁹

Grant Recipients

Colombe’s grantees for 2016 included, among others, the Center for Arms Control and Non-proliferation, Win Without War, Fund for Constitutional Government, Georgia WAND Fund, Non-violent PeaceForce, Peace Action Education Committee, and the Ploughshares Fund. ²⁰

The following is a list of grants from Colombe Foundation between 2000 and 2017: ^{21 22}

1. Colombe Foundation. Accessed August 06, 2019. http://temp-proteusfund.gaiahost.net/colombe.
2. “Colombe Peace Foundation.” Colombe Peace Foundation | Find Grantmakers & Nonprofit Funders | Foundation Directory Online. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://fconline.foundationcenter.org/fdo-grantmaker-profile/?key=COLO055.
3. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990). The Colombe Peace Foundation. 2002-2017. Schedule I.
4. Information Provided by FoundationSearch. Colombe Foundation. Accessed, 2019. www.FoundationSearch.com  
5. Information Provided by FoundationSearch. Colombe Foundation. Accessed, 2019. www.FoundationSearch.com
6. “No First Use.” Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://armscontrolcenter.org/issues/no-first-use/.
7. “Our History.” National Priorities Project. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/about/history/.
8. “ABOUT US: WOMEN’S ACTION FOR NEW DIRECTIONS.” Wand. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.wand.org/about-us.
9. “ABOUT US: WOMEN’S ACTION FOR NEW DIRECTIONS.” Wand. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.wand.org/about-us.
10. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990). The Colombe Peace Foundation. 2002-2017. Schedule I.
11. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990). The Colombe Peace Foundation. 2002. Schedule I.
12. “Proposed National Park Service Regulations Would Drastically Curtail Freedom of Assembly in DC.” Proteus Fund. January 11, 2019. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.proteusfund.org/proposed-nps-rulemaking/.
13. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990). Georgia WAND Education Fund. 2009.
14. “Board of Directors: WOMEN’S ACTION FOR NEW DIRECTIONS.” Wand. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.wand.org/board-of-directors.
15. “Edie Allen.” SourceWatch. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Edie_Allen.
16. “(Nandini) Dini Merz.” LinkedIn. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nandini-dini-merz-5a32954/.
17. “(Nandini) Dini Merz.” LinkedIn. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nandini-dini-merz-5a32954/.
18. “(Nandini) Dini Merz.” LinkedIn. Accessed August 06, 2019. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nandini-dini-merz-5a32954/.
19. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990-PF) (multiple). Colombe Peace Foundation. 2013-2017. Schedule A. Lines 12, 25, 26, 31.
20. Colombe Foundation, Return of a Private Foundation (Form 990-PF), 2016
21. Information provided by FoundationSearch. Colombe Peace Foundation. 2000-2017. www.FoundationSearch.org.
22. Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax (Form 990-PF). Colombe Peace Foundation. 2017. Schedule I.