Hearst Foundations award two Washington organizations with $175,000 in grants

The Hearst Foundations has awarded two Washington organizations with grants.

FIRST Washington, located in Kent, was given $75,000 to support STEM programs for youth in Central and Eastern Washington. The Seattle Aquarium was granted $100,000; that grant will go toward its fundraising campaign for a new Ocean Pavilion. 

Last year, the Hearst Foundations awarded millions of dollars in grants to organizations in Seattle and across the country impacted by the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The Foundations granted $3 million to six Seattle-area organizations: Northwest Harvest, Pacific Northwest Ballet Association, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Opera, University of Washington Medicine and Virginia Mason, and $100,000 to Tacoma's University of Puget Sound. It also granted $100,000 to the Woodland Park Zoo to support the Living Northwest Trail exhibit and $75,000 to YouthCare to support the Education and Employment Program.

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation and The Hearst Foundation Inc. are independent private philanthropies established in the 1940s by William Randolph Hearst, founder of the Hearst Corporation, which owns the SeattlePI. The two foundations act as a unified national philanthropic resource for nonprofit organizations and institutions working in the fields of education, health, culture and social service. The two foundations give the grants together.

In addition to grantmaking, two unique programs are administered and funded by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation: the United States Senate Youth Program for high school juniors and seniors and the Journalism Awards Program for undergraduates at accredited schools of journalism.

The Hearst Foundations have awarded more than 21,500 grants to nearly 6,000 organizations since their founding. Last year, the Hearst Foundations gave 429 grants worth a total of $104 million to 125 organizations. Of that total, $55.5 million was in COVID-19-realted grants, officials said.