Laird founded the Foundation after considerable thought, as "an appropriate way to give back something extra to the comics world," by providing grants for self-publishers. Laird stated that the Xeric Foundation is "actually two foundations in one. One half of it is for charitable organizations, and the other half is for creators who want to
self-publish their comics." The latter half is what the foundation is best known for.
Self-publishing grants The Xeric Foundation supported work of an
alternative or non-"mainstream" nature, reasoning that if a comic had strong commercial appeal, it would be picked up by one of the major publishers. The Foundation was an extremely valuable supporter of "art for art's sake" comics, and helped launch the careers of a number of "literary" cartoonists. The Foundation assisted comic book creators with some of the costs in self-publishing their work; it was not the Foundation's intention to fully support an artist/writer through the entire process of self-publishing, but rather to encourage creators to experience the learning process involved in working towards such a goal. The creative side of the Foundation involved the usual application process, but in addition, the Foundation began with "an advisory committee made up of three ... people working in the industry" whose input is sought on how best to proceed with each application. Submissions were evaluated prior to Laird's involvement, and then he made the ultimate decisions based on their recommendations. == History ==