The American Legacy Case Study

The American Legacy Foundation is a rare example of a public charity being born with a silver spoon. Even before it began operating in 1999, the foundation was bequeathed more than $1 billion from the settlement of a massive lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of 46 states against the country’s major tobacco companies. That money is part of billions of dollars that the tobacco companies paid, basically as reparations, for the damage their products wreaked on the public.
The foundation was conceived as an antidote to that past. Tasked to target teen smoking, its mandated anti-tobacco campaigns were seen as the best way to prevent a heavy tobacco-related health toll in the future.
For the first few years, it seemed a great success. The