October–December 2005

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to announce the launch of The James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards, which will recognize individual leaders throughout California who are advancing innovative and effective solutions to significant social issues facing our state. I invite you to visit a special section of the Irvine Web site with more information about this new program, including how you may nominate outstanding Californians for these awards to be announced in mid-2006.

Given the many challenges facing California, this awards program offers the Foundation an exciting and creative way to celebrate and honor the individual ingenuity and creativity that is both a hallmark of California and that will positively influence our shared future. The awards program embodies Irvine's values as an institution and, we believe, will leverage our resources in a way that will advance our mission of expanding opportunity for the people of California. In recognizing leaders from the nonprofit, public, or private sectors who have demonstrated success in addressing some of the intractable challenges for our state, the awards program will both provide direct financial support for the effective approaches implemented by these leaders and highlight the tremendous impact that individuals with vision, passion, and focus can have.

Importantly, the awards program also intends to draw attention to the issues these leaders are working on and the solutions they have identified. Philanthropy can play an important role not only in providing financial resources to address problems, but also in helping to lift up examples of effective and creative ways to solve such problems. Through communications strategies that will supplement the financial support offered by this awards program, The James Irvine Foundation aims to exercise both roles. We were pleased to receive the early endorsement of the leadership awards by both California State Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and Assembly Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, described in the press release.

Finally, the awards program reflects Irvine's unique position as a multipurpose foundation established to benefit the people of California. While we have focused our grantmaking programs in recent years in order to maximize impact, the leadership awards program will be intentionally multipurpose in nature, permitting us to support leaders from a wide range of fields, including those outside of our regular grantmaking priorities.

I invite you to be part of this program by nominating a leader for this award. We have assembled an independent selection committee of distinguished Californians to review nominations and select the award recipients. I hope you will consider helping us to identify the inaugural recipients of The James Irvine Foundation Leadership Awards.

As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions about this new program or any aspect of the Foundation's activity.

Sincerely,

James E. Canales
President and CEO

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