1939: Sloan Foundation

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Inc., during 1939 continued its policy of aiding educational institutions in strategic centers to develop new 'patterns' in economic education. Its grants to this end for the year totaled $264,212.

Chief among the projects it helped to initiate during the year was the establishment by New York University of an Educational Film Institute to explore the potentialities of motion pictures as a device for the dramatic and stimulating presentation of economic problems. The Institute is to produce, distribute and evaluate sound films in this field for the benefit both of adult groups and high school and college students.

At the same time, the Foundation increased its support of several other departures in economic education which it had previously sponsored. These include the University of Chicago Round Table of the Air, a weekly radio discussion of the economic phases of national and international questions; an Institute for Consumer Education connected with Stephens College, a junior college for women, at Columbia, Mo., which distributes study aids in consumer economics throughout the country; and a series of pamphlets containing popular digests of recent economic research issued continuously by the Public Affairs Committee of New York.

In addition, both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the University of Denver, the Foundation maintains a special group of ten fellowships, offered to college graduates in national competition. At M.I.T. these are awarded to young industrial executives for a year's study of social and economic conditions which bear upon their work. At Denver the fellowships provide the recipients with training for a new profession — appraiser of local government — through an 18-month course in taxation and public expenditures leading to the degree of Master of Science in Government Management.

The Foundation was organized under its present name in 1936. It is a non-profit membership corporation organized under the laws of Delaware. Though the Foundation's charter allows it wide latitude to carry on activities of an educational or philanthropic nature, the Trustees have confined its operations to economic education and research.

The Foundation undertakes no projects directly, but makes grants to fully accredited educational institutions for this purpose. To date it has made grants amounting to $631,732. Its income comes from an endowment established by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., the motor car magnate, and from other gifts made by him and his wife.