About The BellSouth Foundation

BellSouth Corporation established the BellSouth Foundation in 1986. The new foundation was created with one purpose – improving the quality of education in the Southeast. The company, itself new, realized that strengthening the South’s economy and improving life chances for all Southerners depended upon a highly-skilled workforce and an informed and active citizenry, and that education was the cornerstone to building this future.

In 1990, the Foundation embarked upon what was to become the first in a series of regular, periodic planning processes, conducted at five-year intervals. At the Foundation we see our work as a dynamic process where assessment is expected and change is embraced. That change is built on experience and the learning that grows out of it.

Corporate Connections

One particularly distinguishing feature of the BellSouth Foundation is our relationship to our parent, BellSouth Corporation. Over the years, the corporation has grown from a local telephone company into a multinational telecommunications firm.

BellSouth Corporation today is very much in the knowledge business. To succeed in this business the company requires knowledgeable employees who can adapt readily to a constantly shifting work environment and knowledgeable consumers whose growing demand for products and services challenges us to do our innovative best. A foundation devoted to improving education can add substantial value to a company that is dependent on effective education systems to produce both workers and future customers.

BellSouth Foundation strives not only to add value to the corporation through its education mission, but also to bring to bear the many skills and valued expertise of BellSouth Corporation on behalf of the educational enterprise. We strive to lead the way in developing a kind of corporate philanthropy that is not only substantive but also connects to the overall corporate mission; engages the interests, energies and creativity of employees throughout the corporation; and applies state-of-the-art corporate practice to our work. We also readily assume a leadership role in education philanthropy, which in turn earns recognition in the community for our parent corporation.

Mission

BellSouth Foundation’s mission is to improve education in the South and other communities where BellSouth operates by stimulating fundamental change in education institutions and systems that will result in active learning and improved life chances for all students.