Nongovernmental grants are critical for us to meet our ambitious $1.25 billion IMPACT Campaign fundraising goal.

Nongovernmental grants are given for specific initiatives, research projects, or training programs. While grants from government agencies like the National Science Foundation or National Institutes of Health are vital external funding sources for education and research, nongovernmental grants are equally vital. Some grants go to establish new interdisciplinary research centers and institutes. Others support specific or ongoing projects that the research centers have launched.

The most recent example is the Lilly Endowment's $6.6 million grant to support Indiana University's Public Policy Institute at IUPUI.

The Lilly Endowment funded the formation of the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment in 1992 and has continued to provide grant support for various projects and initiatives through the years. Since 2008, the Public Policy Institute has been the umbrella organization for both the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment and the Center for Criminal Justice Research. John Krauss is the director of the Public Policy Institute, which is housed in the IU School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IUPUI.

The institute's mission is to carry out research on government, public policy, and community safety issues that affect the lives of Hoosiers.

Its nonpartisan, non-ideological research has analyzed land use, teenage drivers, economic development strategies, gun violence, gaming, intergovernmental cooperation, housing concerns, and nonprofit organizations. This research informs public and private sector policy makers about the issues as they make decisions that affect the quality of life in communities throughout Indiana.

In 2007, the Center for Urban Policy staffed the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform, chaired by former Governor Joseph Kernan and Indiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Randall Shepard.

The Public Policy Institute does research for the Indiana Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations and has collaborated with many university entities statewide, including the Maurer School of Law in Bloomington, the McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, and the Center on Philanthropy.

The Lilly Endowment's support of this truly multidisciplinary, applied research institute is recognition of the importance of IUPUI's urban research emphasis and its tradition of translating research into practice.

In the past few years, the Lilly Endowment has made grants to a wide variety of special projects and initiatives at IUPUI. As noted in a previous newsletter, it provided more than $507,000 in support of the Institute for Religion and American Culture's "The Bible in American Life" research project. It has also supported summer youth programs in the IU School of Education and Herron School of Art and Design as well as the work of the Indiana Campus Compact on such projects as "Enhancing Student Learning and Retention through Civic Engagement and Service-Learning."

In 2009, the Lilly Endowment provided $60 million for the IU School of Medicine's efforts to advance translational science. Known as the Indiana Physician Scientist Initiative, the project will capitalize on the distinctive skills that investigators with medical degrees bring to scientific research.

Among its projects are the Indiana Biobank, a project to collect blood and tissue samples to enhance discoveries in clinical health care, and INresearch, an online register for people interested in participating in research studies. Both are jointly supported by the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, IU Health, and the Lilly Endowment—projects that will make a huge difference in improving Hoosiers' health.

The Lilly Endowment's commitment to excellence is matched only by its generosity. Its support raises our expectations of what's possible and stimulates others to support our work. Although a quiet agent of change and progress, it is a powerful one for Indiana's future.