The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation is a U.S. private foundation that has focused on improving outcomes for children and youth in poverty, using large, performance-based investments and collaborative funding models.
The foundation directs its philanthropic investments toward improving the lives and long-term prospects of children and families experiencing poverty in the United States.
The foundation’s origins are tied to the Clark family’s philanthropy, rooted in resources built through Avon’s growth. In 1969, Edna McConnell Clark and Van Alan Clark expanded the endowment and asked their sons to staff the foundation and set priorities. Over time, grantmaking evolved from a broad set of areas to a stronger concentration on economically disadvantaged young people and the organizations that support them. From 2000, EMCF’s core Youth Development Fund became its central focus. Later initiatives included the Growth Capital Aggregation Pilot (2007), PropelNext (2012), and the incubation and launch of Blue Meridian Partners (2016).
The foundation’s origins are tied to the Clark family’s philanthropy, rooted in resources built through Avon’s growth. In 1969, Edna McConnell Clark and Van Alan Clark expanded the endowment and asked their sons to staff the foundation and set priorities. Over time, grantmaking evolved from a broad set of areas to a stronger concentration on economically disadvantaged young people and the organizations that support them. From 2000, EMCF’s core Youth Development Fund became its central focus. Later initiatives included the Growth Capital Aggregation Pilot (2007), PropelNext (2012), and the incubation and launch of Blue Meridian Partners (2016).
In 2018, the foundation announced a limited-life strategy and transitioned its staff and operations to Blue Meridian Partners, an independent philanthropic investment organization it incubated, which now supports EMCF in fulfilling remaining commitments and distributing its final grants.
EMCF is associated with advancing performance-based philanthropy and collaborative funding structures intended to scale effective youth-serving programs. It reports leveraging $155 million of its own resources (2007–2017) to help grantees secure additional private and public funding, and using capital aggregation to align co-investors behind shared objectives. EMCF also incubated Blue Meridian Partners and supported the development of capacity-building efforts such as PropelNext focused on nonprofit data and learning practices. As part of its limited-life strategy, EMCF has continued making final grants while transitioning operational capacity to Blue Meridian Partners.
EMCF describes extensive co-investor collaboration through capital aggregation, including partnerships supporting Blue Meridian Partners, the True North Fund, and multi-funder investments in specific youth-serving organizations. It also worked in a public/private partnership context through the Social Innovation Fund, pairing philanthropic co-investment with federal funding requirements.
In October 2018, EMCF announced it was entering the final stage of a limited-life strategy to invest all assets within the next decade and complete final grantmaking while maintaining oversight through a small board. The foundation states that it is no longer soliciting or reviewing inquiries from grantseekers, and that its staff and operations transitioned to Blue Meridian Partners to support remaining commitments and to document lessons learned from its investment approach. Financial reporting indicates operations were conducted from offices in New York, New York.