Current Grantees

When the foundation’s founder, Jack Whiteman, died in 1999, five organizations received $250,000 multi-year commitments. These organizations represent the Whiteman Foundation’s multi-year grantees and the projects supported by the foundation are:

Actors Theatre

Actors Theater was founded in 1981 as a professional not-for-profit theater with the goal of providing stimulating live accessible theater to everyone. Whiteman Foundation dollars supported the theater company’s student matinee program.

Childsplay

The foundation’s support of the New Plays Program at Childsplay helped the company fulfill its mission of creating strikingly original theater for young people. The foundation’s support enabled the company to devote precious time and resources to the “research and development” arm of the theater, which nurtures actors and provides new material for Childsplay and theaters around the country.

Desert Botanical Garden

The Desert Botanical Garden is a world-class facility with a mission of acquiring plants for their collection, conducting research, promoting conservation and educating the public. The foundation helped support a $17 million capital campaign, which funded new buildings to house research, the library, horticulture offices, and the education and visitor services department.

heard_museumThe Heard Museum

The Heard Museum opened in 1929 to share the family’s collection of Native American artifacts and art. The Heard Museum and archives include an extensive array of books, journals, slides and photographs, video materials and archival papers. There is also biographical information on 19,000 Native artists. The foundation supports the student guide program, through which student guides provide hundreds of tours for museum visitors each year.

Phoenix Symphony

The Phoenix Symphony is Arizona’s only full-time professional symphony, entertaining more than 300,000 people annually and producing 275 concerts and presentations throughout the Greater Phoenix area. The Symphony’s Classroom Concert Series, in part funded by the Whiteman Foundation, brings symphonic performances to 14 schools in low-income areas.

Other Current Projects

Child Crisis of the East Valley

The Child Crisis Center is committed to preventing and treating child abuse and neglect — its emergency shelter and other programs have provided aid and comfort to more than 12,000 children over the past 27 years. The organization strives to keep kids safe and families strong. The foundation is currently assisting with a capital project to renovate the shelter.

Arizona Educational Foundation

The Arizona Educational Foundation (AEF) fosters excellence in education by funding programs that enhance the capabilities of Arizona’s school districts to strengthen the teaching profession, design high-quality curricula and stimulate student achievement. Programs sponsored by AEF are statewide in scope and benefit.

Past Grantees

sunshine_acres1Sunshine Acres

Sunshine Acres provides a loving, wholesome, Christian home for children who are separated from their parents, and helps them establish long-term relationships with stable parental figures. The foundation supported and gathered community support to build a new girls’ dorm, which is now home to 20 girls.

The Arizona Museum for Youth

The Arizona Museum for Youth (AMY), a public-private partnership between the City of Mesa and the Arizona Museum for Youth Friends, Inc. (a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the museum), introduces children to the visual excitement and cultural enrichment provided by the fine arts. The environment is specially designed to spark the imagination, stimulate the mind and captivate the eye. A visit to the museum is alive with opportunities for creative expression. In the late 1978, John O. Whiteman founded AMY.

homeward_boundHomeward Bound

Homeward Bound is the largest provider in the state for transitional housing serving homeless families and victims of domestic violence. Their mission is to assist families in achieving economic independence, securing long-term affordable housing, and breaking the multi-generational cycles of homelessness and domestic violence.

marc_center1Marc Center

The Marc Center’s mission is to provide opportunities for people with disabilities to be actively involved in determining where and how they live, work and play. Foundation dollars supported a capital campaign to construct a three-story 29,000-square-foot treatment facility that houses instruction and training in daily living activities, such as self-help skills, social skills and safety orientation.

live_unitedMesa United Way

Mesa United Way is working to bring people together to create lasting change that will improve lives in our community. Lasting community change means improving lives by identifying the root causes of problems and then working to alleviate or prevent them by influencing community attitudes, networks and organizations.

phoenix_art_museumPhoenix Art Museum

Phoenix Art Museum is the Southwest’s premier destination for world-class visual arts. Popular exhibitions featuring artists such as Rembrandt, Norman Rockwell, Annie Leibowitz and Monet are shown alongside the museum’s outstanding collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The foundation supported the creation of Whiteman Hall at the museum.