Atlanta, GA The Reed Foundation was organized in 2007 and focuses on improving international and domestic access to healthcare resources, water and food, and on the arts and animal rescue.
“One of the most exciting things about global health is that if you irrigate a medical desert, it always blooms.”
Paul Farmer
Partners in Health
The Foundation has participated in funding specific projects with several organizations, including MAP International, MedShare International, CARE, Catholic Medical Mission Board, Wells Bring Hope/World Vision, The Rollins School of Public Health/Emory University, Heifer International, Conscience International, Partners for Care and Sudan Relief Fund.
The Foundation’s primary funder and Board Chair, Glen Reed, served as a founding board member and a board chair of MedShare International, which provides healthcare equipment and recovered supplies to under-resourced healthcare providers internationally. More recently, Glen served as a board member and executive committee member of MAP International, which provides medicines and medical supplies to such providers and to medical mission teams.
Working with Ms. Nell Diallo, former Vice President for International Development of MedShare International and international relations consultant, the Foundation has had the opportunity to discuss healthcare and medicines needs in underdeveloped communities over the last five years with the following persons:
The Foundation is partnering with the Sultan Foundation for Peace and Development, of Kaduna, Nigeria, to obtain and send surplus US medicines, healthcare equipment and supplies to areas of extreme poverty in Northern Nigeria. The Foundation is chaired by His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar CFR, mni, the spiritual leader of Nigeria’s Muslims.
The Foundation is supporting ten one-week visits per year by an orthopedic surgeon to the St. Theresa Hospital in Nzara, South Sudan (with Sudan Relief Fund), expenses for emergency medicine residency training for physicians from Mozambique at a hospital in Brasilia, Brazil (with PLeDGE Health), expenses for emergency medicine training for physicians and nurses working in Methodist healthcare in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (with Conscience International and Heal Africa), and expenses for an obstetric fistula repair surgical program in Tanzania (with Americares).
A majority of the Foundation’s contributions relate to access to healthcare resources. Since 2003, the Foundation and the Reed family have partnered with other financial donors in over 100 healthcare related projects, providing an aggregate of 30% of financial support. Leveraging the resources of other charities and healthcare providers, including donated medical items, the total value of medicines, medical equipment, medical supplies, personal mobility devices, water wells and other items provided through the projects has exceeded $175,600,000.
The Foundation has made impact investments with CARE Social Ventures and KIVA.org. The CARE investments helped to capitalize a farmers’ cooperative in the Republic of Georgia and a women’s retail business cooperative in Bangladesh. The funds loaned to KIVA have financed, with other lenders, over 15,000 micro-loans including 466 that are currently outstanding. Since inception, the microfinance funds provided have been loaned, repaid and reloaned by KIVA, providing cumulatively over $2,400,000 to over 75,300 borrowers in 25 countries.
In 2021, the Foundation established a scholarship endowment at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, to be known as the Reed Family Scholarships. The Foundation has contributed to the National Women’s Health Network and the Southern Center for Human Rights. The Foundation is a major contributor to the Atlanta Community Food Bank, the Atlanta Humane Society, the Place of Forsyth County, and the Women’s Community Kitchen of Atlanta Urban Ministries in Georgia, and to the Huntington Museum of Art, Monongalia-County Child Advocacy Center, the WV Highlands Conservancy, The Appalachian Trail Conservancy, Friends of the Cheat River, the Appalachian Prison Book Project and the Morgantown Community Kitchen in West Virginia.
The Foundation’s other trustees are Edith J. Reed, Adam C. Reed, and Alec B. Reed, and its donations selection committee includes Shonda R. Smith and Carly A. Drummond.
The Foundation does not solicit or process grant applications. All gifts are devoted to partnering relationships with other organizations for specific projects selected by the Foundation.
Glen Reed has been the principal financial underwriter for programs on legal and public policy topics presented by The Buckley Institute and the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale University (WFBJP). On September 13, 2022 the first program was entitled Supreme Court Roundup: Dobbs, Bruen and West Virginia. The speakers were Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, and Robert Lieder, Assistant Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University, with Professor E. Donald Elliot of the Yale Law School serving as moderator
On November 16, 2022, WFBJP presented a program entitled Firing Line Debate: The Supreme Court Needs Term Limits. The speakers were Akhil Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale University, and Adam White, executive director of the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University.
On September 12, 2023, WEBJP presented the second annual Supreme Court program, entitled Supreme Court Review: College Admissions, Student loans, Coerced Speech, and More. The speakers were Ed Whelan, former president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Kenneth L. Marcus, board chairman of the Brandeis Center, and Anastasia Boden, Director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute.
On October 5, 2023, WEBJP presented a program entitled The State of K-12 Education in America. The speakers were Manny Diaz, Jr., the Education Commissioner for the State of Florida; Lindsey Burke, the Director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation; and Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute focusing on K-12 education, curriculum, teaching and school choice.
(Above information is as of June 2024.)