The Foundation’s origins go back to a series of summer seminars on “Joseph Smith and His Times” held at Brigham Young University beginning in 1997 under the direction of Richard Bushman. Private donors funded fellowships for six to eight advanced undergraduates and graduate students under the auspices of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute of Latter-day Saint history. After the termination of the Institute, the Neal A. Maxwell Institute of Religious Scholarship took responsibility for the seminars.
Terryl Givens joined Richard Bushman in co-directing the 2006 summer seminar, and the need for other initiatives began to emerge. In February 2007, the first of a series of “Faith and Knowledge” conferences was held at Yale Divinity School for LDS graduate students in religious studies. The success of that conference stimulated a variety of proposals for similar meetings and highlighted the need for a stable source of funding.
David Davidson and Duane Zobrist, who had assembled the resources for the first summer seminar series, recommended the formation of a foundation to raise funds and oversee the program. On July 24, 2007, the board of directors of the newly organized Foundation held its first meeting.
