What Happens When a 30-Year-Old Corporate Foundation Shuts Down

When a longstanding grant-maker sunsets, what happens to its signature programs? Can a final round of grants sustain them by transferring the work elsewhere? The Hitachi Foundation, closing up shop by the end of the year, hopes so. Following a three-year planning process around the shut-down, it’s going out with a bang: $11 million grants to three separate organizations. The beneficiaries will continue parts of Hitachi’s work, and take on members of the foundation’s staff to lead the programs.

It's always interesting to watch when foundations pull the plug on years or decades of grant-making. The grandest example of this lately, of course, is Atlantic Philanthropies, and we've closely followed an endgame that's involved a series of big "culminating grants" as the funder tosses large chunks of money overboard in a push to meet its 2016 deadline for ceasing new grant-making.