Joyce Foundation
| Motto | "Working to improve quality of life, promote community vitality and achieve a fair society" |
|---|---|
| Founder(s) | Beatrice Joyce Kean |
| Established | 1948 |
| President | Ellen Alberding |
| Chairman | Roger R. Fross |
| Endowment | $950 million |
| Location | Chicago, Illinois |
| Website | www |
The Joyce Foundation is a charitable foundation based in the city of Chicago, Illinois. It was established in 1948 by Beatrice Joyce Kean, the sole heir of David Joyce, a lumber baron and industrialist from Clinton, Iowa. It has assets of approximately $950 million. It distributes about $45 million in grants each year.[1]
The Foundation primarily funds organizations in the Great Lakes region. The Foundation is notable for its support of gun control measures. U.S. President Barack Obama served on the foundation's board of directors from 1994 through 2002.[2]
History
The Joyce Foundation was established in 1948 by Beatrice Joyce Kean of Chicago.[3] She was the sole heir of the Joyce family of Clinton, Iowa. The family wealth came from the lumber industry, including family-owned timberlands, plywood and saw mills, and wholesale and retail building material distribution facilities located in the Midwest, Louisiana, and Texas. The Foundation was modestly endowed until Kean's death in 1972, when she bequeathed nearly $100 million to the Foundation.[3] Since 1972, the Joyce Foundation has awarded approximately $832 million in grants.[4]
Mission
According to the Foundation, it "supports the development of policies that both improve the quality of life for people in the Great Lakes region and serve as models for the rest of the country." The Foundation makes grants in the areas of education, employment, the environment, culture, democracy, and gun violence protection.[5]
Grants in support of gun control
The Joyce Foundation is one of the few private foundations that considers gun-related research proposals.[6] Since 1993, the Joyce Foundation has paid grants totaling over $54 million to over 100 anti-gun groups.[7][8] The Joyce Foundation has given over $4 million to the Violence Policy Center, which supports an outright ban on handguns and semiautomatic assault weapons.[9] The Joyce Foundation has been frequently criticised by gun rights groups, particularly the National Rifle Association, which calls the Joyce Foundation an activist foundation whose "shadowy web of huge donations" leads "straight to puppet strings that control the agenda of gun ban groups".[10]
The Foundation provided a $400,000 grant to The Ohio State University's John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy to establish a Second Amendment Research Center. The Second Amendment Research Center argued that the U.S. Constitution did not guarantee individuals the right to keep and bear arms.[11] As of 2009, the Second Amendment Research Center is no longer in existence.[12]
The Joyce Foundation has sponsored symposium issues of some law reviews, which are funded by the Foundation. In some cases the law reviews were compiled and edited by an independent external editor and in other cases student law review editors solicited papers for publication from papers presented at a conference funded with Joyce money. Examples of such symposium issues include:
- Chicago-Kent Law Review (Vol. 76 No. 1, 2000, edited by Carl T. Bogus)
- Fordham Law Review (Vol. 73 No. 2, November 2004)
- Stanford Law and Policy Review (Vol. 17:3, Spring 2006
A $250,000 grant to the UCLA School of Public Health resulted in a special edition of Evaluation Review that focused on gun violence.[13]
References
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