Chicago Annenberg Challenge
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC)
was a Chicago public school reform project
from 1995 to 2001 that worked with half of
Chicago’s public schools and was funded by a
$49.2 million, 2-to-1 matching challenge
grant over five years from the Annenberg
Foundation. The grant was contingent on be-
ing matched by $49.2 million in private dona-
tions and $49.2 million in public money. The
Chicago Annenberg Challenge was one of 18
locally designed Annenberg Challenge pro-
ject sites that received $387 million over five
years as part of Walter Annenberg’s gift of
$500 million over five years to support public
school reform. The Chicago Annenberg Chal-
lenge helped create a successor organization,
the Chicago Public Education Fund (CPEF),
committing $2 million in June 1998 as the
first donor to Chicago’s first community
foundation for education.
Annenberg Challenge
In the 1990s, billionaire Walter Annenberg,
former ambassador to the United Kingdom
under President Richard Nixon, was the Un-
ited States’ most generous living philanthrop-
ist. By 1998, Annenberg had given away
more than $2 billion and the assets of the
Annenberg Foundation he had established in
June 1989 with $1 billion had grown to $3 bil-
lion and ranked as the 12th largest in the
U.S. Every weekday from May through
November, Annenberg was driven from his
home in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania to his
Annenberg Foundation headquarters in St.
Davids, Pennsylvania, where as its sole dir-
ector, he reserved virtually every decision for
himself when making grants.[1]
In June 1993, Annenberg announced he
was making the largest individual gift to
private education in history—$365 million to
four schools: $120 million each to the com-
munication programs at the University of
Pennsylvania and the University of Southern
California, $25 million to Harvard College,
and $100 million to his alma mater, the Ped-
die School in Hightstown, New Jersey.[1][2]
In October 1993, Annenberg announced
an
unrestricted
$25 million
gift
to
Northwestern University