New York Foundation Fills In The Cracks By Funding General Operating Expenses

When a medical institution needs to build a new wing or start a new research project, its officials can turn to a wide range of grantmakers for financial support. Finding funds for general operating expenses, on the other hand, can be very difficult. Most granting agencies will not provide monies for the expensive supplies, equipment, and staff required for day-to-day operations. According to the Foundation Grants Index, issued by the New York-based Foundation Center, general operating support constituted only 11.3 percent of total grant dollars in 1989, versus 46.6 percent for program support. An agency that's bucking this trend, however, is the New York-based Helena Rubinstein Foundation, one of the few private philanthropies willing to provide general funds to help fill in the cracks between projects, smoothing over those financial rough spots with support that is more than just cosmetic. General operating support "is absolutely the hardest [kind of funding] to get and the most valuable to find," says Corinne Curry, executive director of Children's Blood Foundation, which supports the division of pediatric hematology/oncology at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center of New York. Children's Blood received a one-year grant of $60,000 in 1989 from the Rubinstein Foundation for AIDS research and ongoing general support of clinical, training, and research programs involving children's blood diseases. "The Helena Rubinstein generosity gives us the chance to have a few discretionary funds to do some of the necessary things...that come up for the moment, or just [to] support staff," Curry says. "People want to support a project without really realizing that a project can't be done without personnel," she explains, adding, "I don't know how we can educate people to understand that the only things funds can do are pay salaries, build bricks and mortar, or buy supplies." Cosmetic Matriarch's Legacy Helena Rubinstein's international cosmetics empire began with a single face cream first sold in Melbourne, Australia, in 1891. Rubinstein believed that her fortune, which came from women, should benefit them and their children. The foundation, begun by Rubinstein in 1953, makes health care and medical research grants to programs in children's blood diseases, birth defects, breast cancer, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, and several other areas not specifically related to women and children. Grants for health care and medical research began after Rubin-stein's death in 1965, when increased funds from her will permitted the foundation to broaden its scope. The money supplied by the Rubinstein Foundation to Children's Blood goes for general support of one of the first immunology laboratories associated with a pediatric division of hematology that has as a prime focus the study of HIV infection in the multitransfused child. The foundation has supported the program since it was established in 1986. General support from the foundation to Children's Blood goes back to 1962, with major support starting in the 1970s. Says Curry, "Helena Rubinstein has seen us through a one-room, once-weekly transfusion clinic to a division that covers two floors of the New York Hospital, including clinical care and research." In its 37 years of existence, the Helena Rubinstein Foundation has disbursed and committed more than $61 million. Most grants are made to organizations in education and the arts, areas in which Rubinstein took a particular interest. In fiscal year 1989-90, out of a total of almost $5 million disbursed, 44 percent went to education, 23 percent to the arts, 17 percent to community services, and 16 percent to health care and medical research. Grants are made to nonprofit organizations located primarily in the New York area, although several health care and medical research recipients are located here. In 1989-90, the size of grants ranged from $2,000 to $100,000, but miscellaneous grants as small as $100 also were awarded, according to Laurie Shapley, program officer at the foundation. Shapley points out that the foundation's focus on women "is really unusual. If you take out The Foundation Directory, you'll see that, in spite of all the feminism in our land over the last several decades, foundations don't generally tend to target their support to women and children." In addition to funding programs that research and treat women's diseases, the foundation works to advance the careers of women scientists. The Weizmann Institute of Science, a pure research facility located in Rehovot, Israel, received a $300,000, three-year grant starting in 1987 from the foundation to establish the Helena Rubinstein Career Development Chair in Perpetuity for a woman scientist engaged in cancer research. Norman Stein, director of government and foundation relations for the American Committee of the Weizmann Institute of Science, explains that the career development chairs at Weizmann support researchers who are beyond their first or second year at the institute--no longer junior scientists--but are not yet tenured. Says Stein, whose office is located in New York, "They [the Rubinstein Foundation] want their career development chairs [to be given to] women, and that is very important to the institute because 42 percent of our student body are women. "We are not as advanced as we would like to be in terms of having women as senior scientists, but that number keeps growing all the time. About 15 percent of our tenured faculty are now women." Since 1973, the foundation has contributed a total of $976,000 to the Weizmann Institute, mostly to endow career development and professorial chairs. Some $21,000 has been awarded for general support. The Helena Rubinstein Foundation accepts applications throughout the year without deadlines. Proposals are researched by the staff and acted upon by the board of directors, which meets in May and November. Applicants are notified within several weeks of the meetings. For more information, contact Diane Moss, Executive Director, Helena Rubinstein Foundation, 405 Lexington Ave., New York, N.Y. 10174. Bruce Silver is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.

New York Foundation Fills In The Cracks By Funding General Operating Expenses

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