The mission of the JPB Foundation is to enhance the quality of life in the United States through transformational initiatives that promote the health of their communities by creating opportunities for those living in poverty, enabling pioneering medical research, and enriching and sustaining the environment.
Program Areas
As such, the Foundation's work focuses in three program areas: Poverty, Medical Research and the Environment. The three programs work in close collaboration pursuing integrated approaches wherever possible and funding issues that reach across program areas.
Poverty
They strive to help low-income populations overcome barriers to opportunity. They support organizations that work to break the cycle of poverty by creating long term positive change for disadvantaged communities, specifically in the areas of health and chronic disease, family planning, and democracy.
Medical Research
Through an innovative collaborative model, they support the medical research of world-class scientists investigating chronic diseases from multiple perspectives. They also support brain research on learning and memory, particularly by studying the mechanisms that contribute to neurological dysfunction.
Environment
They focus on enabling healthy and resilient communities by enriching and supporting the environment because it measurably impacts the well-being of their human and natural systems.
The JPB Foundation utilizes four strategies in its grantmaking:
Building on the successes of The Picower Foundation, JPB remains faithful to their longstanding goal to have as large an impact as possible on pressing societal problems. Toward this end, The JPB Foundation:
Focuses on grants with the potential to transform their understanding of issues, their scientific knowledge, and their communities themselves;
Directs its giving to three program areas— alleviating problems associated with poverty, advancing medical research, and promoting a healthy environment—in which, through The Foundation’s sustained focus over time, it can make a significant difference;
Aggressively explores opportunities to fund initiatives touching on multiple foundation program areas;
Uses knowledgeable consultants and its own research to identify areas where the need for funding is greatest, and where The Foundation’s giving can have the most beneficial effect;
Focuses on prevention rather than remediation;
Seeks collaborations with other foundations and interested parties in recognition that societal problems are too large to solved by a single entity;
Supports research that fills important gaps in their understanding of the problems that face people in the U.S.;
Uses an evidence-based approach to its work, conducting intervention studies in order to identify successful programs and opportunities for improvement and share its gained knowledge; and
Pursues initiatives that if successful can be scaled and expanded by The Foundation, its partners, and others.
