“The town, itself, is running down and getting tired, but the setting is spectacular. We keep thinking: all it needs is a revitalization of its historic downtown areas and it could grow into a thriving destination”. http://peterberkley.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/spring-trip-bellevue-and-port-angeles/

Interview with Port Commissioner

If only Port Angeles could catch a vision of what she could become! Why can’t she aspire to become the sparkling diamond on the finger of the Olympic Peninsula, just as her sister city has become the jewel of Vancouver Island.

Where there is no vision, the people perish! People leave, taxes go up and the city falls into the abyss of ruin and bankruptcy.

Erin Simmons if the AIA responded with the following:

“The SDAT program is funded entirely by the American Institute of Architects, a professional non profit organization. Funding the SDAT program is a public service of the AIA; in no way is that $15,000 federally funded. The $15,000 is used to pay for the team members travel, room and board, as well as for the materials that are used throughout the visit and for the cost of producing the report. None of the team members are compensated for their time; they are all volunteers who merely believe in the process and are willing to donate their time to communities in need.”

Your “real point” is noted, Chuck, but with a sense of sorrow regarding your pessimism. As Teddy Roosevelt said in his 1899 speech before Chicago’s Hamilton Club, “Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”

I guess you were not necessarily commenting to what I had written when you wrote, “Simply because something is called a “grant” does not automatically mean it was funded by taxpayer dollars,” because I wrote earlier, “A ‘grant’ in the United States almost universally finds its source in tax dollars from citizens.” I’m sharing this because I also wrote “almost universally” which means not 100% of the time. So we agree. But you also wrote, “All that said, this does not mean that the American Institute of Architects SDAT grant was NOT funded by taxpayer dollars.” So we agree again.

Of course, my main point in my article was not the grant or the source of the grant. That was probably the most minor point of the entire article. My real point was that we will not likely see change because the experts came to town. That is the most important point of all.

According to the Foundation Center (http://foundationcenter.org/), whose stated mission is to “strengthen the nonprofit sector by advancing knowledge about U.S. philanthropy,” there are a number of grantmaking sources. The taxonomy (a big word meaning classification) of exempt entities under the tax code designation (T) includes “philanthropy, volunteerism & grantmaking.”

According to the Foundation Center website, there are eight different types of organizations that fall under the (T) category. These are: Named Trusts; Venture Philanthropy; Community Funds & Federated Giving Programs; Non-Grantmaking, Non-Operating Foundations; Philanthropic/Charity/Voluntarism Promotion; Voluntarism Promotion & Assistance Services; Public Foundations; and Private Grantmaking Foundations.

Considering only the last category, T20 Private Grantmaking Foundations has two sub-categories: family and private foundations. Family foundations (http://foundationcenter.org/ntee/) are defined as “Private foundations whose grant funds are derived from the contributions of a single donor who may be an individual or a family and are distributed to other organizations whose work is charitable.”

Similarly, private foundations (http://foundationcenter.org/ntee/) are defined as “Nongovernmental, nonprofit organizations that are established to maintain or aid social, educational, religious or other charitable activities primarily through grants using assets which are usually contributed by a single source such as an individual, family or corporation.”

In other words, organizations other than the Federal Government.

All that said, this does not mean that the American Institute of Architects SDAT grant was NOT funded by taxpayer dollars. This response is only meant to refute the myth that all grants are funded by the Federal Government. Clearly they are not.