History
The Trusts, a single entity, is the successor to, and sole beneficiary of, seven charitable funds established between 1948 and 1979 by J. Howard Pew, Mary Ethel Pew, Joseph N. Pew, Jr., and Mabel Pew Myrin—the adult sons and daughters of Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew. Honoring their parents’ religious conviction that good works should be done quietly, the original Pew Memorial Foundation was a grantmaking organization that made donations anonymously. The foundation became the Pew Memorial Trust in 1956, based in Philadelphia, the donors’ hometown. Between 1957 and 1979, six other trusts were created, representing the personal and complementary philanthropic interests of the four siblings. The Trusts remains based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with an office in Washington, D.C.
Although today the Pew Charitable Trusts is non-partisan and non-ideological, Joseph Pew and his heirs were themselves politically conservative. The mission of the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust, one of the seven funds, was 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".
Early priorities of the Pew Memorial Trust included cancer research, the American Red Cross, and a pioneering project to assist historically black colleges. Later beneficiaries included conservative organizations such as the John Birch Society, the American Liberty League, and the American Enterprise Institute, as well as environmental organizations such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oceana, and mainstream think tanks like the Brookings Institution The Trusts continues to fund charities in Philadelphia.
In 2004, the Pew Trusts applied to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to change its status from private foundation to non-profit organization. Since the Pew's change to a charitable foundation, it can now raise funds freely and devote up to 5% of its budget to lobbying the public sector.
According to the Pew's 2009 Annual Report, five of the twelve Directors serving on the Board are named Pew. Two of the five are physicians.
Read more about this topic: The Pew Charitable Trusts
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