The Wallace Foundation is a national philanthropy based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

that seeks to foster improvements in learning and enrichment for disadvantaged children and the vitality of the arts for everyone. The foundation aims to develop knowledge about how to solve social problems, and promote widespread solutions based on that knowledge, by funding projects to test ideas, commissioning independent research to find out what works, and communicating the results to help practitioners, policymakers and leading thinkers.

History

The Wallace Foundation began with the philanthropy of DeWitt and

Lila Acheson Wallace Lila Bell Wallace (December 25, 1889 – May 8, 1984) was an American magazine publisher and philanthropist. She co-founded ''Reader's Digest'' with her husband Dewitt Wallace, publishing the first issue in 1922. Early life and education Born Li ...

, who together founded

The Reader's Digest Association Trusted Media Brands, Inc. (TMBI), formerly known as the Reader's Digest Association, Inc. (RDA), is an American multi-platform media and publishing company that is co-headquartered in New York City and White Plains, New York. The company was ...

. Drawing on the money they earned from the magazine, which they launched in 1922, the Wallaces contributed to a wide assortment of artistic, cultural and youth-serving causes. They died in the 1980s (Dewitt Wallace in 1981, Lila Wallace in 1984), leaving much of their fortune to four private foundations they had created in their lifetimes. In 2003 a single national foundation, The Wallace Foundation, emerged from the consolidation of these private foundations.

Major initiatives

The Wallace Foundation has five major initiatives underway: * School Leadership: For more than a decade, Wallace has been working with states and school districts to develop better ways to train, hire, support and evaluate principals and other key figures in schools. * Afterschool: Wallace supports efforts in a group of cities to coordinate the work of municipal agencies, schools, youth-serving nonprofits and other institutions vital to afterschool in order to generate ideas about how to improve the quality of programs and make better use of data. * Arts Education: Since 2005, Wallace has been working with school districts and nonprofits to test ways to engage more young people in high-quality arts learning during the school day and beyond. * Summer and Expanded Learning: Wallace seeks to better understand the impact of high-quality summer learning programs on disadvantaged children, as well as how to enrich and expand the school day in ways that benefit students. * Audience Development for the Arts: Wallace supports the development and testing of innovative ideas to reach new audiences so that many more people might enjoy the benefits of the arts.Smee, Sebastian
"Wallace Foundation salutes Gardner Museum and BLO"
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Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'' (January 31, 2012)

References

{{Authority control Educational foundations in the United States Arts foundations based in the United States Non-profit organizations based in New York City Arts organizations established in 2003