You know somebody is rich when they have a foundation named after them. You know somebody is really rich when their kids have their own foundations. That was the case with Andrew W. Mellon. In 1940 his daughter Ailsa Mellon Bruce established The Avalon Foundation, and in 1941 his son Paul Mellon established The Old Dominion Foundation. In 1969, with the combined value of the foundations at $220 million, the children decided to merge their foundations in honor of their father. That seems to have been a good decision considering that The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which is based in New York City, has assets totaling $6.5 billion in 2007. In case you don’t know who Andrew Mellon was, you can read his story here. The short of it was that he was held in the same esteem as men like Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, Morgan, and Frick, but he differed in that “he excelled in four fields of endeavor: as a businessman and banker; as a politician and statesman; as an art collector; and as a philanthropist.”

Granting Your Wish

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is a grant making organization, which means that most of what they do is giving money away. They typically do this in five core areas: Higher Education and Scholarship, Scholarly Communications and Information Technology, Museums and Art Conservation, Performing Arts, and Conservation and the Environment. You can find all of the details of each of these specific programs here. Grants are made to both organizations at the forefront of their fields and new upstarts that are showing promise. The Foundation’s philosophy “is to build, strengthen and sustain institutions and their core capacities, rather than be a source for narrowly defined projects,” so they don’t seem to nitpick about how their money is spent. If you’d like to have a job giving money away (even if it’s not exactly like what Ed McMahon used to do), then you should check out The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Jobs page on Idealist. Right now they’re looking for a Program Assistant for a Temp to Perm opportunity. It looks like a good fit for a new or recent grad, and you can find application instructions in the job posting.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• Mellon.org
• Jobs at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• About The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s History
• Mellon Foundation News
• The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Grants and Research

If you had a Foundation, what would it give to?

We've identified The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• arts
• conservation
• drama
• education
• foundation
• grant making
• museum
• New York
• non-profit
• philanthropy
• program development
• theater

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