Legacy
The Trust for Mutual Understanding (TMU) was established in 1985 by Sandra Ferry Rockefeller as a private, grantmaking organization dedicated to promoting improved communication, closer cooperation, and greater respect between the people of the United States, the Soviet Union, and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
Sandra believed the greatest good could be achieved by encouraging people – individual citizens – to grow in understanding of each other and to appreciate each other’s languages, cultures, and value systems, both shared and different. She believed the “mutual understanding” resulting from these direct interactions at a human level (largely prohibited by governments at that time) was the essential first step toward achieving peaceful and lasting relationships among nations in the nuclear age. Supporting exchanges between professionals in the arts and the environment was part of her original vision based upon a deep appreciation of the importance of both cultural and ecological cooperation during times of political strife.
Sandra believed that people who are linked in collaborative work across borders and cultures often form long-standing relationships and friendships. They maintain ties over extended periods and form bonds of mutual understanding and support that can be positive and motivating for international relations more generally.
After four decades, the grantmaking of TMU still reflects the conviction that supporting direct, international, person-to person contact and professional collaboration in the arts and the environment can encourage global harmony. Supporting these relationships is no less urgent today within the context of a global pandemic; political division, conflict, and war; a cataclysmic climate crisis; and systemic economic, social, and racial inequities. Nevertheless, there remains relatively little funding for such collaborative work, particularly among people in our region of focus of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe; Central Asia; the Caucasus, Mongolia, and Russia. We remain committed to supporting collaborative, reciprocal relationships to enable people from different countries to come together to freely share ideas and foster creative expression and environmental stewardship.
Brand story
There comes a time in the life of any organization where major milestones cause a natural inclination toward self-assessment. 2020 marked the 35th anniversary of the creation of the Trust for Mutual Understanding. With the weight of our own history, as well as the possibilities presented by entering a new decade, in the forefront of our minds, our Trustees, Advisors, and staff members began thinking about how to intensify existing efforts to advocate on behalf of our grantees and our geographic region of focus to the wider philanthropic community.
This increased interest in advocacy brought about larger questions surrounding how we more clearly articulate our values and priorities both visually and through language, which, ultimately, led us to the decision to rebrand. Through this process, our goal was to articulate our values, engage our constituencies, and tell the story of who we are as a foundation. In examining current political and social trends, we decided it was important to move away from using the TMU acronym as our primary descriptor and, instead, lean heavily on the simplicity and beauty of our name: Trust for Mutual Understanding. These three words serve as the foundational element and anchor of our organization, and all three have deep meaning. In considering how best to embark on the rebrand process, we knew right away this would not be an exercise in raising our public profile.
Consensus was reached that a crucial outcome would be finding internal agreement regarding common language used to describe the work of the foundation as well as our geographic region of focus, which encompasses 30 countries worldwide. Instead of hiring an outside consulting firm, we decided to engage in a process that was reflective of our mission: bringing people together across borders to work on solutions to common issues.
Working with faculty and student teams at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland and at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest, Hungary, Trust for Mutual Understanding staff and board members engaged in a two-year-long series of bilateral encounters. The relationships built over these two years and the skills developed by all participants in this unique process are truly the most significant outcome of the rebrand; although, the brand itself is something to be proud of. With our new visual identity, every element has a story while the brand story itself provides a basis of common language and answers to strategic questions about who we are, what we do, and who we fund.
We’d like to extend our heartfelt thanks to Lee Davis of MICA and Bori Fehér of MOME for deftly and strategically leading this process – if only all collaborators were as thoughtful and talented. And to the MICA and MOME faculty and student teams, we wish to express our deepest gratitude for your hard work, brilliance, and for trusting us to carry out your vision into the future. It has been an honor to work with such dedicated colleagues. It is our hope that this new, refreshed identity will help serve as a platform of understanding and allow for deeper communication between our foundation and other peer funders, our community of grantees, and the pool of potential applicants.
Visual Identity
In examining current global political and social trends, we decided it was important to move away from using the TMU acronym as our primary descriptor and, instead, lean heavily on the simplicity and beauty of our name: Trust for Mutual Understanding.
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