More than six years after the death of philanthropist and socialite Brooke Astor, a first round of charitable donations has been made from a fund created with the assets from her estate, representing some of the last New York philanthropic gifts to be made in her name.
Late last week, the New York Community Trust awarded $9.2 million in grants to New York-based organizations in support of education and literacy programs. Some $7 million will be shared among 15 charities favored by Mrs. Astor. That includes grants to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
About $2 million will be shared among six charities to support nonprofit programs that aim to improve reading skills among disadvantaged grade school students in New York. The largest portion of that grant, $586,000, went to the Reading Excellence and Discovery Foundation for a program at three elementary schools in the Bronx.
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Brooke Astor, in 1997 Associated Press
The new grants come from the New York Community Trust's roughly $43 million Brooke Astor Funds for New York City Education, established a year ago as part of Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's settlement of Mrs. Astor's estate. The attorney general's office became involved after a highly publicized saga that surrounded Mrs. Astor's final years and continued after her death in 2007 at the age of 105 years old.
During her lifetime, Mrs. Astor was among the city's best-known philanthropists, giving out more than $200 million through a foundation named for her late husband, Vincent Astor, a son of a John Jacob Astor IV who gave away much of his wealth.
Some $100 million in charitable donations from her estate were locked in legal limbo after her death. A will contest pitted charities and extended family against Mrs. Astor's son, Anthony Marshall, who was convicted in 2009 for stealing millions from his mother in her final years when she had reduced mental capacity to make financial and estate decisions. He was sentenced to one year in prison on 14 counts of fraud, grand larceny and other charges. He served a few months and was released for medical reasons in August.
Ultimately, Mr. Schneiderman's office used a combination of wills, including one from 1997, to settle Mrs. Astor's estate. The agreement ultimately halved her son's inheritance. "We are very pleased to see the Brooke Astor Funds for New York City Education continue Mrs. Astor's long-standing commitment to improving the lives of New York City's students, especially those from disadvantaged communities," said Mr. Schneiderman.
For decades, Mrs. Astor served as a godmother to New York charities and her philanthropic priorities were well known.
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Shawn V. Morehead, a program officer for the New York Community Trust, said the Astor grants are in the spirit of charitable work that Mrs. Astor supported during her life. "She looked for the best programs that had the potential to help as many kids as possible. We worked with our panel of outside experts to do the same," said Ms. Morehead.
Reading was first among Mrs. Astor's philanthropic priorities, said Linda Gillies, a longtime adviser to Mrs. Astor who ran the now-closed Vincent Astor Foundation. Mrs. Astor visited every project she gave money to, said Ms. Gillies, and she "always, always had a book in her hand."
"She loved to read herself and believed that everyone should be able to read" and take the pleasure that she had in reading, said Ms. Gillies.
The organizations selected for the first-round of $2 million in grants specific to literacy programs were chosen from some 40 applications and reviewed by an outside panel of experts in reading and New York City education.
The nonprofit Teaching Matters, which works in roughly half of New York City schools, will use its $120,000 Astor grant to develop a system to help kindergarten through third grade teachers teach reading.
Combined, the Astor grants for early reading programs "focus on a really important spot," said Lynette Guastaferro, executive director of Teaching Matters. "If you don't get early reading right, you're playing catch up for the rest of the child's life.
The remaining money in the Brooke Astor Funds for New York City Education, more than $30 million, will be spent over the next several years on literacy projects.
Write to Melanie Grayce West at melanie.west@wsj.com