Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute (1996-2017). A national adoption research organization based in New York City that closed its doors in 2017 after more than twenty years of operation.

The institute has “decided to wind down its operations,” said Donaldson C.E.O. April Dinwoodie, in a personal statement posted online. “Raising the funds to sustain and grow our organization was no longer possible, and the board of directors made the very difficult decision to close.”

Donaldson was formed in 1996 to serve as a national research, education and advocacy organization focused on issues of domestic adoption. It was named for Evan Burger Donaldson, president of the board of Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children in New York, who passed away in 1994.

Since its inception it has produced surveys, research and reports on a range of adoption issues including education, mental health, race and post-adoption support. In 2016, the institute launched the Let’s Adopt Reform initiative, which aimed to ignite a new conversation about adoption, foster care and the modern family.

According to the organization, its most downloaded product ever is a 2008 report on the role of race and law in adoptions from foster care.

Dinwoodie took over Donaldson in 2014 after the organization parted ways, amicably but in disagreement, with former C.E.O. Adam Pertman, who had led the organization for twelve years.

Pertman said at the time he “absolutely could have stayed,” but told colleagues in a 2014 e-mail that “in a nutshell, DAI and I now have very different visions for the organization’s future, and so I have decided it’s time to move on.”

Dinwoodie, a Donaldson board member at the time and former communications executive at JetBlue, said she was brought in to help the organization’s development.

“We have defined some key areas we’re focusing on for the future,” Dinwoodie said, in an interview in 2014. The moves “set us on a path for growth, which is why I was brought in.”

In 2009, facing the same financial misery as the rest of the country in the wake of the Great Recession, Donaldson forged a strategic partnership with the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) to share staff and resources.

The institute’s revenues topped $1 million for the first time in 2014, up from about $800,000 in 2009. But expenses have increased at an even greater pace. Donaldson ended 2015 with $1.05 million in assets; that had dwindled to $554,000 by 2016 to cover a $500,000 gap between revenue and expenses.