Xerox Foundation

Since our earliest days, philanthropy has been part of the fabric of the Xerox culture. We invest our money, time and talent in our areas of focus: education and workforce preparedness, science and technology, employee and community affairs, sustainability and environmental affairs, national and cultural affairs, and matching gifts and memberships. In 2007, the Xerox Foundation, the arm of the corporation that manages our philanthropic efforts, invested more than $12.5 million in 555 organizations. That was up 4% over 2006.

Education and Workforce Preparedness

Xerox invested 20.2% of our grants in education and workforce preparedness. We announced a major new effort in this focus area in 2006 – a $1 million grant payable over four years to the National Academy Foundation (NAF). Along with the Gates Foundation and Verizon, Xerox has become a charter founder of an effort to establish pre-engineering programs in more than 100 high schools in 22 urban cities. The goal is to encourage and enable underrepresented minorities to pursue university engineering degrees. Ten pilot Academies of Engineering were opened in 2007, and the initial feedback has been very positive.

At the other end of the education spectrum, we launched the Xerox Fellowship Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over a three-year period, $1 million is being invested to provide fellowships to exceptional doctoral students in engineering.

We also continued to manage three programs with a common theme – providing educational access to underrepresented minorities:

  • Our Black College Engineering Liaison Program provided 13 grants during 2007 to schools such as North Carolina A&T, Howard University and Spelman College.
  • Our Hispanic College Liaison Program provided 23 grants during 2007 to schools such as California Polytech, the University of Texas and the University of Puerto Rico.
  • Our Xerox Technical Minority Scholarship Program provided 122 scholarships to help deserving minority students complete degrees in engineering.

All these programs are part of a larger Xerox Foundation effort to help minorities pursue technical degrees and help the United States address its shortage of scientists and engineers. The programs, in the strategic interest of the company, provide excellent opportunities for Xerox people to be involved on campus and enable us to recruit from a highly motivated and talented pool of technical people. We invested some $800,000 in these three programs in 2007.

Other investments in the focus area of education and workforce preparedness included Teach for America, Prep for Prep, the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering, Monroe Community College, United Negro College Fund, Posse Foundation, Hispanic Scholarship Fund and INROADS. The Xerox Foundation also awarded 21 National Merit Scholarships.