Compton Foundation

We ignite change. We support transformative leadership and courageous storytelling, inspiring action toward a peaceful, just, sustainable future.

The status quo is not shifting rapidly enough toward a peaceful, just, and sustainable world. Our new mission highlights a sense of urgency and a willingness to take risks in order to transform the way we live. Bringing forth a positive future requires innovative ways of understanding and naming the problems we face, as well as new methods for collaborating to solve them. Implicit in the mission is support for progressive and democratic social change.

In a world that is increasingly interrelated, the Compton Foundation seeks to foster human and ecological security by addressing contemporary threats to these inalienable rights. We support responsible stewardship that respects the rights of future generations to a balanced and healthy ecology, both personal and global, allowing for the full richness of human experience. The Foundation envisions a world in which humans live in harmony with each other, and in sustainable balance with the earth.

To realize this vision, the Compton Foundation focuses most of its grantmaking in the areas of Peace, Environment, Reproductive Health and Money in Politics, with a special emphasis on projects that explore the interconnections between these categories.

The Foundation seeks to foster positive and sustainable models of change in each of our three program areas. We believe that research and activism should inform each other, and that both perspectives are necessary for productive public debate and effective policy change. The Foundation actively encourages creative collaboration between agencies, institutions and/or foundations, and projects that advance human knowledge by connecting theory with practice.