Hello!

Hello!

Welcome to the eighth year of The Lawrence Foundation.

We received and reviewed 393 grant requests and letters of inquiry this year and made 38 grants. The 393 grant requests we received in 2008 represent an 11% decrease over the 443 grant requests that we received in 2007. The distribution of the grant requests was 29% environment, 29% human services, 19% education, 10% health and 12% other in 2008. We were able to make 38 grants with a value of $185,400 to a mix of large and small organizations. Of the 38 grants made in 2008, 21 or 55% were made to environmental causes, 6 or 16% were made to human services causes and the rest were made to other causes. Of the 38 grants made in 2008, 23 with a total value of $128,900 were made to non-profits that had received grants from us in previous years. Of the 15 grants made to “new” non-profits (i.e. non-profits we had not made grants to before) in 2008, 8 or 53% were made to environmental causes, 2 or 13% were made to human services causes and the rest were made to other causes. For each 10 or so grant applications that we received we were able to make 1 grant. Regular grants this year ranged in size from $1,000 to $10,000 with a typical size of $5,000. We have no geographic restrictions in our grant making. Since the foundation's inception we've made commitments and grants totaling over $3.1 million.

Unfortunately, like most other foundations, our asset value decreased significantly (32%) in 2008. The foundation started the year with an asset value of $5.2 million and ended the year ended with an asset value of about $3.5 million. The foundation's assets decreased in value because of the economic and market crisis that has enveloped the world. Our assets were allocated between U.S. equities and international equities, fixed income securities, alternative investments and cash and cash equivalents. Fortunately, our investment managers perform extensive due diligence of our asset managers so we did not have any assets in any of the funds that made the news because of investment fraud. Even so, our allocations did not insulate us from the problems of the stock market.

Our new grant making budget for 2009 has been set and it will be a decrease over previous years. We will continue to make grants, but at a slower pace until there is some recovery in the stock market. Needs are increasing but we find we have less to give. It is frustrating, but we recognize that this is part of the ups and downs of a market based economy.

Throughout the year we have received a number of visits from grantseekers at our office in Santa Monica. We've enjoyed all of the visits and appreciated the time they've all spent educating us on their issues of importance.

It is clear that the challenges the world faces are not going away. We hope that our activities, in some small way, will make the world a better place for future generations.

Respectfully Submitted,

Jeff Lawrence and Diane Troth
Trustees

Lori Mitchell
Executive Director

The Lawrence Foundation