While living through the challenges of two world wars and the Great Depression, Lilly Endowment founders, J.K. Lilly Sr. and his sons, Eli and J.K. Jr., dedicated themselves and their company to helping meet the immediate needs of their employees, community and country while they continued to plan and build for the future. During the past extraordinarily challenging year, the Endowment attempted to follow their example by working to help meet various urgent needs in our city, state and country arising from the COVID-19 pandemic while continuing to help build brighter futures for individuals, families, organizations and communities through our ongoing grantmaking in community development, education and religion, the areas of focus established by our founders when they created the Endowment in 1937.The Endowment's COVID-19-related grantmaking in 2020, which totaled nearly $208 million, supported the inspirational efforts of hundreds of organizations that worked diligently to help meet urgent needs in Indianapolis, throughout Indiana and across the nation. This grantmaking also included funding for several organizations to make pandemic-related adjustments needed to continue to operate their important programs safely.This annual report also highlights other grants the Endowment approved in 2020 that support promising endeavors to build brighter, more prosperous futures for young children and college students in Indiana and that enhance the future vitality of the community of Indianapolis and communities throughout the state, as well as congregations and seminaries around the country
