Mission Statement

The Ralph and Eileen Swett Foundation's mission is to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals.  By making grants to other charitable organizations (designated as IRS 501c3 non-profit organizations) the Foundation seeks to fund programs that directly impact the lives of individuals.  The Foundation takes an active role in seeking out these programs by inviting organizations to apply but also depends upon organizations to bring themselves to the attention of the Foundation Board.

Invited applicants may proceed to the Invited Application page to submit the necessary preliminary information.  If your organization has not yet been invited to apply and your organization meets the criteria provided, we ask you to submit an Application Request Form.  Your information will be reviewed by a Trustee and, if found to fulfill the mission of the Foundation in an exemplary way, you may be asked to submit supplementary materials for a formal application.  The Foundation recognizes that we do not have knowledge of all the many creative ways organizations are dedicated to helping people and we expect to find many of our future grant recipients in this manner.  We also expect this information to help us develop areas of interest for future recurrent funding.

Areas of Interest

The Foundation has identified the following as special areas of interest:

-Funding programs which assist orphaned children and promote their adoption (However, the Foundation does this through funding programs at 501c3 non-profits only.  If you are looking for assistance with an individual adoption we suggest you apply for a cash grant from the Gift of Adoption Fund at www.giftofadoption.org)

-intervention in the lives of troubled youths.

However, funding is by no means restricted to the above mentioned areas.  The Foundation remains open to other areas of interest so potential applicants with services in other areas should not feel discouraged from applying or from bringing themselves to the attention of the Board.  The Ralph and Eileen Swett Foundation, as a relatively new foundation, has not limited itself to specific areas of need and expects to evolve its policies and interests with time.   Therefore, we invite you to use this website to submit your application or make your organization known and to return to this website periodically for updated information.

As of the current date, the trustees of the Ralph and Eileen Swett Foundation have made a decision to give priority to projects addressing critical and immediate needs; therefore projects involving medical research are unlikely to be funded.  It is the hope of the trustees that the Foundation's financial and administrative capacity may grow to be able to include such projects as these which will make a future difference on the lives of many.  We invite those involved with medical research to check this website annually for any changes in this policy.

Background

Ralph and Eileen Swett were both born and raised in the same rural community in Western Illinois.   As adults they met, fell in love, and were married in the late 1950's.   Shortly thereafter, the couple moved to Southern California, where they raised four children.  In 1986, the couple moved to Austin, Texas where they remain today.

With the support of Eileen, Ralph pursued a successful career in telecommunications.  During the 1970's Ralph rose through the ranks at Times Mirror to become head of its cable television subsidiary.  Under his leadership, Times Mirror Cable expanded rapidly becoming one of the top ten cable system operators in the nation.

In 1986, Ralph struck out on his own, successfully engineering a leveraged buyout of CTI, a regional microwave transmission company.  CTI, was a predecessor to IXC Communications, Inc., which Ralph founded in the early 1990's.  With Ralph at its helm, IXC financed and built a national fiber optic network (the first coast to coast network to be built in the U.S. in over a decade and the first utilizing next generation fiber).  Rapid growth in the internet traffic fueled demand for capacity on IXC's new network, enabling IXC to capture wholesale business from the likes of AT&T, MCI and Worldcom as well as smaller telecom players and rivals, Level 3 and Qwest.  After seeing IXC through almost a decade of rapid growth, Ralph retired in 1999.  (IXC later merged with Cincinnati Bell to form Broadwing Communications.)

In keeping with their lifelong desire to give something back to those not as fortunate, Ralph and Eileen created a private foundation in 1999.  The foundation bears their name at the insistence of their four children whom serve as Trustees.

Send mail to mswett@swettfoundation.org with questions or comments about this web site.