The Pew Charitable Trusts
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The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with an office in Washington, D.C., that is the successor to seven individual charitable funds established between 1948 and 1979 by two sons and two daughters of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew (1848-1912) and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. The trusts' current mission is to serve the public interest by providing information, advancing policy solutions and supporting civic life.
The four co-founders were J. Howard Pew (1882-1971), Mary Ethel Pew (1884-1979), J.N. Pew, Jr. (1886-1963), and Mabel Pew Myrin (1889-1972).
Joseph Pew and his heirs were politically conservative. The J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust had as its mission to "acquaint the American people with 'the evils of bureaucracy' and 'the values of a free market' and 'to inform our people of the struggle, persecution, hardship, sacrifice and death by which freedom of the individual was won.'" Joseph N. Pew, Jr. called Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, "a gigantic scheme to raze U.S businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs."[1] For many years, the Foundation tended to fund local Philadelphia charities and conservative causes. However, under the leadership of Thomas Langfitt, President from 1987 to 1994, and his successor Rebecca Rimel, Pew has shifted its resources dramatically to the left. Arguing that the "political ghosts" of the Pews were gone, Ms. Rimel has sought to "reinfuse the idealism of the Sixties into our work."[2][3]
The Pew Charitable Trusts supports the Pew Research Center. The Pew Research Center is an independent nonadvocacy organization.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- History at the Official Site
- Informing the Public
- Advancing Policy Solutions (based on nonpartisan research, study and policy analysis)
- Supporting Civic Life
- Sustaining the Legacy: A History of The Pew Charitable Trusts (pdf)
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