Delaware's $950 million children's fund will be run by a five-member committee and publish its grants each year
The first $130 million is due in February 2027 under the agreement announced Oct. 2. Organizations serving Delaware children will be able to seek grants, and a separate nonprofit foundation for the state's children is to be created.
Wilmington. Organizations that serve children in Delaware will be able to ask for grants from a new $950 million fund once a five-member committee is in place, under the agreement the state, the State of Florida, the Alfred I. duPont Charitable Trust and The Nemours Foundation announced on Oct. 2. How the money will be given out was reported on Oct. 23 by the Delaware Business Times; the parties' announcement left most of it out.
The trust will pay the full amount into the Alfred I. duPont Charitable Fund for Delaware's Children over 11 years, beginning with $130 million in February 2027 and continuing with annual payments through 2037, the paper reported. Owen Lefkon, director of the Delaware Department of Justice's Fraud and Consumer Protection Division, told the paper that the fund could invest its assets and use part of its resources for grants, so that returns could pay for future programs. The agreement sets no investment strategy.
Who decides
The committee will have three members appointed by the trust, one appointed by the governor of Delaware and a fifth chosen by those four. Thomas G. Kuntz, the trust's chairman, told the paper that once the committee is formed, it will evaluate requests from organizations serving Delaware children and decide which projects receive support. The agreement requires a public list of the grants awarded each year.
The fund will be housed within Nemours, but its grants are not limited to hospital programs. Mr. Lefkon said they could reach prevention, the social conditions that shape health and workforce development, and pointed to language in the settlement on possible investments connected to Delaware's proposed medical school. Neither the state's announcement nor the paper's report gives an application process or a date when requests will be taken.
“I'm hoping that there's going to be even an increase in not-for-profits in Delaware whose mission is to support children because this new fund is going to be there to help.”
Nemours and a new foundation
The agreement guarantees Nemours at least $237.5 million in grants from the fund by February 2049, with limits on using the money for existing operating expenses. It ends the 1980 requirement that at least half of Nemours' annual distributions from the trust be spent in Delaware, the rule at the center of the decades of litigation, while the trust remains bound by Alfred I. duPont's will.
It also calls for a separate Delaware nonprofit, the Alfred I. duPont Charitable Foundation for Delaware's Children, which could receive grants from the fund. The settlement does not say how much the foundation will receive, the paper reported.
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