1990s

In 1988, the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) and Mott Foundation supported an expert assistance program aimed at fostering the growth and development of community foundations in the U.K. Within two years, Mott launched a £1 million challenge grant program to help U.K. community foundations build endowments that would help to ensure their long-term sustainability. CAF raised an additional £1 million that was used for a matching grant program. The partnership between Mott and CAF proved so successful that Doug Jansson, who served as a consultant on the program, referred to it as “one of the great stories in philanthropy, with a multiplier effect that few grant programs anywhere can match.”

A year after establishing Mott’s Civil Society grantmaking program, we opened our first overseas regional office in Johannesburg. Shortly thereafter, our expanded work in Central and Eastern Europe led us to open a second regional office in Prague. That office was relocated to London in 2004. Today, Mott continues to operate offices in Flint and Troy, Michigan, as well as London and Johannesburg.

Through our early Civil Society work, Mott recognized the need to develop global infrastructure for the field. In 1993, we joined with other funders to create CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, which promotes international cooperation among foundations and others in the global nonprofit sector. CIVICUS was followed by the Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support in 1999 and the Global Fund for Community Foundations in 2006. CIVICUS has since grown to include more than 9,000 members from more than 175 countries; WINGS’ global network includes nearly 200 organizations representing more than 15,000 foundations in 57 countries; and GFCF offers grants, technical support and networking to community foundations around the world.

Trustees approved a new grantmaking plan for our Environment program that would strengthen Mott’s efforts to promote global sustainability through reform of international trade and lending practices. Our grantmaking has since helped grantees develop and monitor environmental and social safeguards that provide greater protection for indigenous communities threatened by hydropower dams and other large infrastructure projects. In some cases, those safeguards have empowered indigenous communities to halt construction of high-risk dams. And in 2017, the World Bank announced its plan to stop funding oil and gas projects.

One of the first focus areas of Mott’s newly established Civil Society program was widespread voter education efforts in advance of South Africa’s 1994 general elections. Our funding, including a $1 million grant to the South Africa Free Election Fund, supported groups that registered voters, taught people how to vote and carried out election monitoring. Eighty-seven percent of registered voters cast ballots in the historic election.

When Mott began working in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, there were no community foundations in the region. That’s why we decided to focus on initiatives to introduce and develop community philanthropy there. With Mott support, the Healthy City Community Foundation in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, was established in 1994 as the first community foundation in continental Europe. We have since consistently funded CEE, and there are now approximately 200 community foundations across 13 countries in the region. Mott’s related support totaled nearly $32 million as of 2022.

In the late 1990s, Terry K. Peterson, who served as chief education adviser to Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, approached the Mott Foundation for help. He asked William S. White, who was then president and CEO of the Foundation and chairman of the board of trustees, to grant “a couple million dollars” to support technical assistance and training to help communities launch and operate high-quality afterschool programs through the nation’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers initiative. In addition to an initial $2 million grant, the Foundation committed $55 million to a multiyear expansion effort during the Clinton administration. The 21st CCLC initiative served nearly 1.4 million students at roughly 10,000 sites during the 2022-2023 school year. Mott’s support for afterschool in the U.S. through 2022 totaled nearly $373 million.

We renewed our focus on revitalizing downtown Flint in 1998 with grantmaking that sought to engage local leaders and business owners in bringing new energy and investment to the city center. Efforts gained momentum in 2004 as the transformation of a vacant building into modern loft apartments kicked off a growing list of Mott-supported projects. Those eventually would include construction of commercial, residential and mixed-use properties; expansion of the University of Michigan-Flint and Kettering University campuses; and creation of the city’s Health and Wellness District. In all, the Mott Foundation granted more than $156 million between 1972 and 2021 to help revitalize the city’s core. This grantmaking reflects our hope that such development will continue to attract employers, residents, students and visitors to Flint.