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Harvest Time for The Atlantic Philanthropies – 2013-2014: Final Priorities

Resource type: Research Report

Tony Proscio, Duke University Center for Strategic Philanthropy & Civil Society |

This report is the fifth in a series on the concluding years of The Atlantic Philanthropies, the largest foundation ever to decide to put all its charitable assets to use in a fixed period of time and then close its doors.

Covering late 2013 through the end of 2014, some two years before Atlantic expects to make its final commitments, the report chronicles:

  • implementation of the foundation’s final priorities: integrating and synthesizing the themes and accomplishments of Atlantic’s 30-plus years
  • culminating Global Opportunity and Leverage grants (known as GOAL) that aimed for significant, long-term effects in areas where the foundation had long been involved
  • how the evaluation and communications teams developed plans to capture and share lessons from Atlantic’s experience and distribute them in multiple forms, through different media and for various audiences
  • adjustments in foundation operations resulting from ongoing reductions in staff—from more than 120 full-time employees at Atlantic’s peak to 56 by the end of 2014.

Atlantic commissioned this report.