Succeed or fail? It's up to the members.

What does the NCEW Foundation do? It's a fair question given the mysterious ways people mention the Foundation at conventions. It's as though it were an undercover operation. Shhh, don't tell anyone. Speak only in whispers.

I'm here to break the silence and tell you how the Foundation helps make NCEW click. We raise most of the money so that NCEW can pay for the trips, programs, seminars, and other professional development opportunities our members enjoy. This is hard, gritty, and tiring work, but it is rewarding.

In July an NCEW group of nineteen people toured Thailand, Cambodia, and India to report on the AIDS crisis and attend the fifteenth annual International AIDS conference in Bangkok.

Participants range from an editor at a 35,000-circulation paper in Alabama to an editorial writer from the Los Angeles Times, with a circulation of about one million. What's the significance of this simple statement of fact? The diverse sizes of the newspapers participating in the trip illustrate the value of the NCEW Foundation.

NCEW is indebted to Kate Stanley, an editorial writer for the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis, who raised one hundred thousand dollars from the United Nations Foundation to pay for the conference and potential future foreign travel. She also raised seventy-five thousand dollars from the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation to pay for the Asia trip. The donations meant that writers could travel at virtually no cost to this important world conference.

Kate's work tells editors from medium and small newspapers that they can expand their journalism horizons by traveling to key events and writing about important international issues. Because Kate Stanley is chair of the International Affairs Committee, she has more than a passing interest in offering foreign travel to members.

So when the idea of foreign travel seems impossible to you, stay alert for good news from NCEW and the Foundation.

Recently, the Foundation set out to create an endowment that will support the Minority Writers Seminar, given annually to introduce minority journalists to opinion writing. The seminar takes place at The Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Sixteen journalists took part this year, and already one has landed a job as a deputy editorial page editor. (See page 24.) More than one hundred thirty minority journalists have completed the program over the past nine years.

The NCEW Foundation has just approached a major newspaper foundation about paying for the Minority Writers Seminar for the next five years. The idea would be for the NCEW to raise half a million dollars during that time to endow the program permanently.

We've also begun applying for grants for the permanent endowment. We've asked another major newspaper foundation to provide twenty thousand dollars a year for five years, and we'll soon be contacting other national newspaper chains to make similar contributions towards the endowment.

We believe we can succeed in endowing the seminar in less than five years, and we will be seeking grants to pay for professional help in fund-raising.

Once accomplished, the NCEW Foundation could turn its attention to endowing other high-priority programs. One idea would be to provide permanent financing for regional seminars specifically aimed at editorialists who cannot attend national conventions for lack of funds.

We believe that NCEW has only just begun to tap into charitable foundations that can provide resources to improve editorial pages across North America. Telling the success stories of NCEW is new to us, but there are many wonderful stories to tell.

That brings me to my pitch. Recently, you got a mailing asking you to support the NCEW Foundation with a tax-exempt contribution. These gifts are extremely important to the Foundation when we seek grants from charitable institutions. Most foundations insist that grantees show widespread participation by their own members in giving to their own cause.

Please help us be successful in raising money to benefit your editorial pages by giving to the Foundation. You will ultimately determine whether NCEW succeeds or fails. This wonderful organization deserves to succeed.

Morgan McGinley is president of the NCEW Foundation and editorial page editor of The Day in New London, Connecticut. E-mail [e-mail]