Dear Friends, The J. M. Kaplan Fund has always been a New York organization. Our office is here, most of our trustees live here, and for more than fifty-five years most of our grants have gone to local programs. We continue to offer significant support for New York parks and waterfronts and historic preservation. Over the past five years, we have also launched new programs on people and places that cross national frontiers, most particularly the frontiers of the United States and its neighbors. In doing so, we have tried to be good New Yorkers: cosmopolitan, pragmatic, and alive to new opportunities offered by major changes in the way people live.

To a degree, this cross-border interest stems from a desire to stretch our grant dollars. But there are some values involved too. The Kaplan trustees believe, as my grandfather did, that Americans serve their country by engaging the world. That engagement, he said, should be respectful and friendly, for both idealistic and practical reasons. In 1954, he wrote: In all of this we must employ not only perception and intelligence, but tolerance and good will. If I were to draw the one most significant lesson from my own experience, it is that good will in human relations is a stronger force than similarity of background, education and experience, and far stronger than all of the rules, regulations, procedures and formalities that people may invent.

We were also prompted by one of the big stories of our time: the unprecedented movement of people around the world. We decided that human migrations — as an issue and as a reality — should be a common theme of our grantmaking. In New York, that means support for new immigrant communities in general and for their access to public facilities in particular. Worldwide, it means creation of the best source of authoritative migration data anywhere. And in North America, it means an effort to build a left/right coalition for sensible US immigration reform that reaffirms this country's historic support for immigration and the restorative power of immigrants for the American economy and American culture.

We welcome your advice, thoughts and comments.

With all best wishes,

Peter W. Davidson

Chairman