The MacArthur Foundation has chosen seven nonprofits for grants up to $1 million to recognize their success and future potential. The groups chosen for the 2014 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions — whose annual grants range from $750,000 to $1 million — are all previous recipients of the Chicago-based foundation’s largess. The work ranges from promoting the rights of Nigerian women to researching anti-crime programs in Chicago.
Five groups will receive $1 million each. They are the Washington-based National Housing Trust, which preserves and improves affordable housing; NatureServe, an Arlington, Va.-based group that promotes environmental conservation; New York-based investigative reporting group ProPublica; the Citizen Lab of Toronto, which helps monitor political activity that could affect human rights; and the University of Chicago Crime Lab, whose focus is on urban crime rates.
Grants of $750,000 each were given to Nigeria’s Women’s Rights Advancement and Protection Alternative, which promotes and protects the rights of women, and the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center, which seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private, independent group that hands out about $230 million in grants annually. It may be best known for its “genius grants,” $500,000 no-strings-attached fellowships that have gone to hundreds of people since 1981.