The Fund was established over thirty-five years ago to help finance new, non-commercial, community radio stations in various parts of the United States.

Over the past few years, the focus of the Fund has shifted. One arm of The Fund has concentrated on literature and the arts, in the form of the late lamented Fessenden Review and the more recent unlamented and still joyful Review of Arts, Literature, Philosophy and Humanities, [RALPH].

Another unit of the Fund has been involved in making funds available to groups and individuals who assist the poor and the disenfranchised.

Thus, recent grants have gone to The Ashram Prison Project in North Carolina, an organization that teaches meditative techniques and provides appropriate literature on non-violent change to the millions of people in the United States who are in prison.

Another of our on-going grantees is the Escuela Piña Palmera, a non-profit school and hospital dedicated to helping the poor and the disabled in Southern Mexico --- teaching them how to survive with reëducative therapy and appropriate orthopædic equipment and how to become independent and productive.

We also seek out individuals who survive major disabilites with aplomb. For years, we made annual grants to the late Mark O'Brien, a polio quadriplegic and poet of Berkeley, California. We also make occasional grants to artists who are not a part of the mainstream, who are usually ignored by other foundations and government agencies.

Over the years, one of our proudest projects was the Tijuana Soymilk Project --- in which volunteers went into the poorest neighborhoods of that city to teach people to make and use soymilk --- a cheap, nutritious alternative to milk.