Seeking New Partners to Sustain and Enrich Our Future

Abstract

Private philanthropy has played an important role in the development of oceanography in the United States. From the engagement of the Scripps family in the establishment of the Marine Biological Association of San Diego in 1905 to a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation that led to the creation of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1930, private gifts and donations helped nurture the growth of a new scientific endeavor. As with today's philanthropy, many donors were actively engaged in the decisions and programs of the new institutions while other donors were content to give unrestricted gifts for the institution's leaders to use as they saw fit. For example, Florence Corliss Lamont, the widow of Wall Street banker Thomas Lamont, gave property as an unrestricted gift to Columbia University, whose officials decided to use the property to create a geological research institute. On the other hand, members of the Scripps family were active in the formation and promotion of the marine laboratory that eventually became the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Keywords

• funding
• partnerships
• endowments
• foundations
• private donors