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JOHNSON FOUNDATION, ROBERT WOOD

Johnson Foundation, Robert Wood

Contact information:

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
P.O. Box 2316
Route 1 and College Road East
Princeton, NJ 08543-2316
Phone: 877-843-7953 
Website: http://www.rwjf.org  

Type of foundation: Independent

Types of grants: Matching/challenge support; program-related investments/loans; program development; program evaluation; research; seed money; technical assistance.

Description: Incorporated in 1936 in New Jersey, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation became a national philanthropy in 1972. It was founded by Robert Wood Johnson, who built the family firm, Johnson & Johnson (created by his father Robert Wood Johnson, I) into a worldwide health and medical care products company. He endowed the foundation with a $1.2 billion bequest from his personal fortune. The foundation is devoted exclusively to health and health care.

Current priority funding areas are:  

  • Building Human Capital, which seeks to assure that the nation has a diverse, well-trained leadership and workforce in health and health care to meet the needs of all Americans.  
  • Childhood Obesity, which funds projects focusing on research/evaluation to gather evidence about obesity and obesity-prevention programs; engaging partners at the local level and building coalitions; and educating policymakers and building a national constituency for childhood obesity prevention.  
  • Coverage, focusing on increasing access to affordable health care coverage.  
  • Pioneer, supporting transformative, high-return ideas that have potential to drive dramatic change and that may shape the future of people's health, the quality of care they receive, and the systems through which that care is provided.  
  • Public Health, supporting and driving improvement in the public health system.  
  • Quality/Equality, improving the overall quality of health care, including communicating the stories and lessons of work in this area.  
  • Vulnerable Populations, meeting emerging health needs of communities by identifying smarter, cost-effective ways to address problems of the most vulnerable. Between 1997-2006, the Foundation ran Sound Partners for Community Health, a national program that funded efforts by local public broadcasters and their community partners to increase public awareness of health issues and to facilitate citizens and policy-makers in taking a more informed and active role in health issues at the local level. Sound Partners funded 148 collaborations involving local broadcasters and other community organizations. The Foundation notes that Sound Partners stations increased their capacity to produce in-depth health coverage while community partners involved in outreach learned media skills to better present their stories. The Sound Partners program brought forward typically unheard voices of youth, immigrants and the working poor. Stations and community and media partners worked collaboratively to combine programming and outreach to be more effective than either could have been alone. 

Sample grants:

  • $4,446,182 over six years to Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Program in Health and Science Journalism.
  • $2,800,000 over three years to National Public Radio for health and health care reporting.
  • $1,860,000 over three years to Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Association (WETA) for news collaboration with the Health and Health Policy Unit of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
  •  $1,267,990 over 20 months to Burness Communications, Inc. (Bethesda, MD) to produce and distribute television news stories on Foundation-funded projects.

Fit for public broadcasting: The best fit for public broadcasting is to raise awareness of health and health-related issues. It is critical that proposals fit clearly into Foundation priorities. The Foundation has strong interests in collaboration, and in serving underrepresented populations.

Eligibility: Giving is limited to organizations in the U.S. No support for political organizations, international activities, programs or institutions concerned solely with a specific disease or basic biomedical research. No grants to individuals, or for ongoing general operating expenses, endowment funds, capital costs, including construction, renovation, or equipment, or research on unapproved drug therapies or devices.

Deadline: None for unsolicited proposals. There are deadlines for responses to the Foundation's Calls for Proposals.

How to apply: The Robert Wood Johnson awards most grants through calls for proposals (CFPs). All program areas issue CFPs from time to time. View the list of current CFPs.

Three program areas—Building Human Capital, Pioneer and Vulnerable Populations—also accept unsolicited proposals. Unsolicited requests should be initiated with a 3-page electronic proposal.

Giving range: $10,000 - $7,000,000+ Assets: $7,513,307,363 Total giving: $523.26 million awarded in 2008
View 2008 Annual Report: http://www.rwjf.org/files/publications/annual/2008/index.html