New World Foundation (NWF)

Over the past 65 years, McCormick Blaine’s New World Foundation has supported hundreds of left-of-center organizations. NWF now operates as a community foundation, taking donations from many prominent Democratic, liberal, and left-progressive donors. Today the foundation’s funding priorities focus on activist training, left-leaning environmentalist policy, support for expansionist immigration policy including legal status for illegal immigrants, and furthering the power of organized labor in the US and abroad.

The NWF uses long term grants to create, fund, recruit, train, and manage locally sourced groups. NWF distributes money from donors through four funds:  New Majority Fund, Phoenix Fund, Climate Action Fund, and Civic Opportunities Initiative Network (COIN).

NWF president Colin Greer has led the New World Foundation since 1985. He also worked for the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on education policy while she was the first lady. Clinton served on the board of the NWF from 1982 to 1988³ and was the director from 1987 to 1988. ⁴

Founding

In 1954 the New World Foundation (NWF) was founded by Anita McCormick Blaine just before her death. McCormick Blaine was the daughter of industrialist Cyrus H. McCormick, who helped invent the mechanical reaper. ⁵ Anita McCormick married Emmons Blaine, a railroad executive and son of James G. Blaine, a prominent politician and Republican candidate for President. ⁶

In her own right, McCormick Blaine was a staunch Progressive activist, even supporting the 1948 Presidential campaign of Communist Party USA-backed Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace. ¹ She was also a contributor to internationalist organizations, including the World Federalist Movement, an organization seeking worldwide political integration. ⁷

McCormick Blaine’s granddaughter Anne Blaine Harrison ran the organization from 1954 until 1977. Blaine Harrison, the spouse of The New Republic editor Gilbert Harrison, continued the left-wing legacy of New World Foundation, providing substantial support to labor organizations. ⁸

Philanthropic Model

The New World Foundation attempts to create and control locally sourced activist to push for left-wing policy preferences. NWF has spent $15 million funding state-level groups since 2007. The group tries to build new or support already existing organizations to integrate them into national-level movements at the direction of the NWF. NWF’s main policy focus areas are combating voter ID laws, reducing economic inequality by supporting labor union issues, expanding public education, and enacting environmentalist regulations. ⁹

Client Relations and Management Model

NWF takes its donors’ public policy objectives and develops strategies, funding, and an overall management plan to direct local, state, and national groups towards funders’ goals. The NWF can create small foundations via a start-up phase or re-designing existing group’s agendas to better suit the donor’s needs. NWF’s oversight is meant to ensure donors long-term controls and specific programmatic goals remain present in a funded group’s actions. ¹⁰

Training

NWF offers grantees selective educational events such as frequent seminars, workshops, and classes. The topics range from “education and community development, political participation, state-based power building, the changing economy, the role of government, global environmental justice, progressive media strategies, and nonprofit leadership development.” ¹⁰

New World Foundation Grantmaking Process

The New World Foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals and attempts to work closely with organizations operated by “people living in the least privileged circumstances.” ¹¹

Grantmaking Philosophy

The NWF’s primary grantmaking principle is called “Base Building” and aims to create local activist groups with long-term technical, policymaking, and financial support from national level donors. NWF has three types of grants: General Support Grants, Regional and Cluster Grants, and Deepening Grantee Partnerships. ¹¹

General Support Grants

NWF prioritizes general support grants over project-specific grants to allow local groups to spend money more freely. NWF supplies multi-year grants to maintain a group’s financial stability in hopes that the grantees will focus on long-term issues and relationship building. ¹¹

Regional and Cluster Grants

These grants are regionally, demographically, or issues focused and fund multiple aligned and coordinated organizations that target people whose “tendency toward single-issue organizing can fragment and divide.” ¹¹

Deepening Grantee Partnerships

Supplies funding for technical assistance to grantees provided by NWF staff or consultants, and covering finances, legal management, media strategy, research, and strategic planning skills. Deepening Grantee Partnerships also funds project-specific groups aimed at taking risks on new groups or exploiting a crisis with the help of a new local-level activist organization. ¹¹

Funds

The New Majority Fund

NWF operates in eight states with funding and support for multiple left-of-center local activist groups alongside the NWF’s Phoenix Fund for Workers and Communities. Both funds support labor union activists’ attempts to organize migrant workers, workers in certain states, and illegal immigrant workers towards the NWF’s preferred policy issues. ¹²

The Phoenix Fund

Created in 1996, it is a globalized and multinational fund that supports mostly non-American workers outside the US. Over the past 23 years, the fund has pushed $10 million grants to labor activist across the globe. The fund also supports “centers for workers” that recruits, trains, and develops activists from workers, legal migrants, and illegal immigrants in many foreign countries and some US states. ¹³

Climate Action Fund

The fund has supported left-leaning environmental activism in the US and abroad with grants made to Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, India, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Industries targeted by the climate action fund are firms in the energy, agriculture, manufacturing, and food processing sectors. ¹⁴

The Civic Opportunities Initiative Network (COIN)

COIN is a cluster of left-of-center leadership and activist development programs who recruit at the high school and college level in the US. The fund provides financial support, mentorship, paid internships, political education, information on careers in social justice, activist training, and “Social Justice Seminars.” Funded by the COIN, NWF worked alongside the Posse Foundation to create the Civic Engagement Posse Program, The Roosevelt Institute’s Campus Network to create the New World Fellows Program, and UCLA Labor Center’s The Dream Summer to work on immigration policy issues. ¹⁵

Seedshed Project LLC

In 2019, the New World Foundation created the Seedshed Project LLC, with the aim of training people in, “stewardship practices that strengthen agricultural, cultural, and biological diversity.” ¹⁶

People

President

Colin Greer has been the President of the New World Foundation since 1985. He was a Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY and worked for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on education policy. ¹⁷

Notable Staff Members

Heeten Kalan is an environmental activist, Senior Program Officer, Director of the Climate Action Fund, the New Majority Fund, the Phoenix Fund for Workers and Communities, and oversees the Fracking Fund.

Anthony Figpenn is a Los Angeles-based political activist and environmentalist. He is the founder and president of the left-of-center voter registration and coalition group California Calls and the Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE), both funded by NWF. ¹⁸

Notable Board Members

Fred Azcarate is a current NWF board member and the executive director of US Action, a left-of-center advocacy group. ¹⁹

Hillary Clinton served on NWF’s board from 1982 to 1988³ and was the director of the board from 1987 to 1988. ²⁰