Donors large and small can amplify their impact with more intentional, strategic approaches to their philanthropy.  This was the major takeaway from a recent webinar with Lauren Katzowitz Shenfield, founder and principal of Philanthropy Advisors, LLC.  The webinar was moderated and hosted by Sam Marks, Chief Executive Officer of FJC – A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds.

The webinar is first in a series in which FJC, a boutique foundation of Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) and other philanthropic accounts, provides access to expertise from seasoned philanthropic consultants.  As a commitment to making philanthropic dollars more effective and meaningful, FJC allows its donors to pay for limited engagements with philanthropic consultants using funds in their Donor Advised Fund (DAF) accounts.

Ms. Shenfield’s consultancy works with individuals, families, and private foundations at the intersection of personal, family, and philanthropic goals.  “The conversation always starts with values,” she explains, “because that underlies the entire practice of philanthropy.”  This is true whether she is working with donors who want to begin their philanthropic journey or with long-time donors who have amassed significant assets, the conversations always start with values.

The webinar presented some case studies of client relationships that resulted in more meaningful and effective philanthropy.  These included a family with multiple siblings who needed support aligning their priorities in the wake of a patriarch’s passing, and an individual who benefited from both focus and skill-building in developing a strategy.

Mr. Marks spoke of the way Ms. Shenfield’s practice complements the resources and expertise at FJC.  “Our staff and our board members are always happy to brainstorm and bring our expertise and relationships to our donors,” observed Mr. Marks, “but sometimes donors need a more sustained, strategic engagement, and that’s where you really can add some value.”  

In terms of advice that donors can use to start their journey immediately, Ms. Shenfield suggested that donors:

• Seek truth – about yourself, your family and others who might be involved.
• Prioritize – make your plan important in your life, and don’t let it sink to the bottom of your to-do list.
• Avoid Distraction – engage in a giving practice that draws on your skills and expertise.

Finally, building on her early career as a journalist, Ms. Shenfield recommends that donors start with the “5 W’s”: Who should be involved your giving? What do you care about? When do you want to make grants, in your lifetime or do you want them to last in perpetuity? Where do you want to have an impact?  And why?

Ms. Shenfield’s long history working with FJC includes customized philanthropic solutions for clients.  In consultation with Ms. Shenfield, FJC hosted for several years an awards program on behalf of Anonymous Was a Woman, which provides grants that enable women artists, over 40 years of age and at a significant juncture in their lives or careers, to continue to grow and pursue their work.  FJC also acted as the fiscal sponsor for Toby Perl Freilich,producer of “Inventing Our Life,” a documentary film about the kibbutz movement.

For more, view the full webinar here.  The recording includes the full Q&A session that covered topics such as: the use of DAFs compared with private foundations, impact investing, the mechanics of succession for DAFs, and more.

An FJC donor is putting philanthropic dollars to work by investing in economic mobility for low-income workers. The initiative is called the UP Fund, a $50 million pool of catalytic capital raised by the national impact investing nonprofit Social Finance. The goal of the UP Fund is to help low-wage earners secure good jobs in a changing economy, using a model called the Career Impact Bond (CIB).

Through the CIB, impact investors fund training programs that enable students to enroll free of charge. Students complete their training with the aid of wraparound supports, like an option to finance living expenses. If their salary after the program exceeds a certain threshold, they repay program costs as a fixed percentage of their income, capped at a set dollar amount and fixed number of months. Those who don’t obtain meaningful employment following graduation pay nothing.

Social Finance partners with high-quality training programs that upskill workers and help place them into good-paying jobs. One such program is American Diesel Training Centers, a for-profit training company based in Columbus, Ohio, that offers a short, intensive course to train entry-level diesel technicians, mostly for trucking companies and dealerships. (See the New York Times story featuring this partner here). Another partner is Alchemy Code Lab, which increases access to software development careers for those who have traditionally been locked out. The program also aims to increase diversity in the technology sector, particularly for people of color, women, and LGBTQIA+ individuals.

Longtime FJC donor Ted Huber invested in the UP Fund through his Donor Advised Fund account at FJC. “I like how the UP Fund aligns incentives to give people a leg up,” explains Huber. “Workers looking for better skills and higher paying work, the schools that can train them, and us funding the education are all pulling in the same direction. The UP Fund is helping people who otherwise couldn’t afford these training programs.” 

A longtime investment professional, Huber has been interested in supporting initiatives that anticipate recycling philanthropic dollars, providing both social and financial returns. Huber recommended an investment in the Fund via his DAF account, and following approval by FJC’s board committee, the staff at FJC worked with him to execute the investment through Social Finance’s recoverable grant structure. This approach allows DAF account holders to participate in the UP Fund with the same terms as institutional impact investing foundations like Blue Meridian Partners, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and many others.

“The DAF market represents a significant pool of assets already earmarked for charitable purposes—currently more than $170 billion—that largely remain in traditional market-rate investments without a mandate to generate social and/or environmental outcomes,” says Tracy Palandjian, CEO and co-founder of Social Finance. “We’re proud to work with creative DAF sponsors like FJC, who make it easy for their donors to invest for measurable social impact.”

For students looking to sharpen their skills and earn more, the time and expense of training programs can be risky. One of the critical aspects of the UP Fund is that it shares risk among the participants: students, training program providers, and impact investors. As Devon, a participant in the Alchemy Code Lab program, explains, “I was looking for places that had really generous scholarships—something where the funding was significant because there was no way I was going to make that choice without a clear financial path for myself. What was really heartening about the Career Impact Bond was…the safety net. If this all goes wrong, I’m protected.”

When the City of New York launched DemocracyNYC, a nonpartisan initiative to increase voter participation and civic engagement, they turned to the city’s vibrant nonprofit and arts community for inspiration.  Among the civic partners that responded to the urgent call to action was F.Y. Eye, a nonprofit media agency that builds campaigns that call people to take action, donate, share, advocate and move their causes forward. “F.Y. Eye was created to democratize the town square,” said Jessica Toledano, Executive Director. “Too often in expensive media markets like New York City, the most important community voices are never heard. F.Y. Eye was created to change that fact.”  

Founded and initially funded by FJC donors, F.Y. Eye has tackled numerous issues including nutrition and food insecurity, workers’ rights, voting, immigrant health services, and participation in the U.S. Census.  Its strategies include creative services to design campaigns, paired with media planning and buying to strategically place its messages in high-traffic locations.

Voter turnout is a particularly daunting challenge.  New York consistently ranks as one of the states with the lowest voter turnout rates in the country. In the 2016 general election, New York State ranked 41st in the country for voter turnout. In the 2018 midterm election, voter turnout increased, but still, less than 50% of all eligible voters participated. 

There was no shortage of voter engagement advertising leading up to the 2020 election. However, most of the ads in high circulation were partisan in nature or offered simplistic motivational messages from big name nonprofits aimed at the general population. F.Y. Eye identified a need for more nuanced campaigns that both provided specifics on how to vote safely during the pandemic, and came from trusted community messengers targeting voters of all backgrounds.

F.Y. Eye’s most recent campaigns have engaged artists and designers who are particularly rooted in immigrant communities.     

In advance of the general election this November, F.Y. Eye engaged Sol Aramandi to build a bi-lingual, portrait-based campaign, encouraging New Yorkers to cast their votes based on issues that affect their communities. Ms. Aramandi’s advertisements have been placed in community newspapers such as El Diario, Bronx Free Press and Brooklyn Times, as well as traditional media spaces around the city such as bus shelters and LinkNYC. Sourced through F.Y. Eye’s Impact Artist Network, Sol Aramandi is a celebrated photographer and activist specializing in portraying immigrant communities. Ms. Aramandi works as a solo artist and the principal of Project Luz, which empowers new immigrant New Yorkers with photography as a tool to explore the city and tell its stories, as well as their own.

“It’s important to us to hire artists for our campaigns that have an organic connection to the communities we’re representing,” explains Calder Zwicky, Programs and Creative Director of F.Y. Eye. “Sol’s portraits express her love and organic connection within this community.”

This most recent campaign builds on work F.Y. Eye launched during the June 2021 primaries to educate all New Yorkers about Ranked Choice voting, through guerilla building projections, diverse artist partnerships and community events. New York City had its highest voter turnout for a primary election in 3 decades during this year’s primary election.

On September 24, FJC donors Leonard Polonsky CBE and Georgette Bennett joined New York City’s civic community to celebrate the opening of The Polonsky Exhibition of The New York Public Library’s Treasures.  

[UPDATE: view coverage of the Exhibition in The New York Times, “A Cabinet of Wonders Opens Wide” (12/28/21).]

A significant portion of the $12 million grant that made the exhibition possible was generated from the sale of Dr. Polonsky’s and Dr. Bennett’s vacation home in Aspen, CO.  The family fund donated the property to FJC in 2018, which then sold the real estate, generating the proceeds that covered a portion of the grant.  (See our previous story, “Private Home Transforms Public Library”).

This permanent exhibition at the iconic 42nd Street branch library showcases over 250 rare items from the Library’s renowned research collections, giving visitors a unique opportunity to see and explore objects and stories that have helped shape our world. 

The objects—spanning 4,000 years of history—represent key moments, movements, and stories. They continue to inspire curiosity, conversation, and a stronger understanding of the past to inform a better future. The exhibition draws exclusively from the Library’s research collections, which contain over 45 million objects including rare books, manuscripts, photographs, prints, maps, ephemera, audio and moving image, and more, collected over the institution’s 126 years.

Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence
• Manuscript page of Maya Angelou’s poem I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
• The set model for the Off Broadway production of In The Heights
• The stuffed animals that belonged to the real-life Christopher Robin and inspired the Winnie-the-Pooh stories

Admission to the exhibition is free, and timed tickets are available at the New York Public Library web site.

“The New York Public Library is an iconic institution with a trove of buried treasures,” said Dr. Polonsky. “I’m delighted to help bring them to the surface so that the public can forever share in them.”

Under Meesha Brown’s leadership as President, PCI Media developed a strategic plan with an ambitious path for growth.  As an organization that uses storytelling and communications across the world to shift mindsets and make meaningful cultural and positive behavioral change, Ms. Brown and her team were determined to increase impact, develop new partnerships, and achieve economies of scale.  “We had this new plan for growth that required us to develop a new, more robust private donor base,” said Ms. Brown, “but the question was, how would we get started?”

The answer to this question came from out of the blue, in the form of a bequest.  A donor, who had made occasional grants to PCI Media over the years, had passed away and selected PCI Media for a major gift, alongside dozens of nonprofit organizations devoted to conservation, family planning and health, women and girls, and arts and culture.  PCI Media, whose mission spans all of these program areas, expects to receive between $4 – $8 million from this bequest, a windfall that will catapult the organization into its next phase, allowing them to execute on their strategic vision.  (The donor has requested anonymity).

The urgent needs of PCI Media’s stakeholders, however, required the organization to begin implementation immediately, even as the estate winds its way through the probate process.  (The legal process for sorting through the donor’s last wishes can take several months to resolve, sometimes longer with complicated estates).  PCI Media’s plans required immediate action: hiring new staff, investing in program expansion, and establishing systems for sustainable growth.

Enter FJC and its fellow nonprofit lender SeaChange Capital Partners.  FJC and SeaChange are co-lenders on a $550,000 loan to bridge PCI Media’s bequest.  The loan will allow PCI Media to jumpstart their next phase of work as they wait for the funds from the bequest to arrive. 

PCI Media’s mission is to create a healthier, more just, and sustainable world using the power of storytelling and community. The organization partners with local organizations across the world to shift social norms and mobilize communities through culturally resonant radio programs, social media, and interactive communication campaigns.  Their local partnerships have taken them to over 70 countries, including in recent years Peru, Colombia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Mozambique, just to name a few. Beyond helping their partners produce effective content, PCI Media builds partner capacity for the long term, helping them format programs to produce positive change, organize as networks of media stations and community coalitions, and engage their audiences on a host of issues. 

In Mozambique, for example, PCI Media has launched a multi-pronged communication initiative  Ouro Negro  (Black Gold), in partnership with UNICEF Mozambique and the Ministry of Health, focused on improving public health outcomes in childhood nutrition and maternal health. As the longest-running radio drama in the country, it has broadcast over 394 episodes on 116 national radio and local stations. In the drama, worlds collide as a fictional African village is confronted with the arrival of a foreign mining company.  Against this backdrop of tension and change, listeners learn essential maternal, newborn, and child health practices. Rapid assessment surveys showed widespread impact after season one. Ouro Negro is currently in its 7^th season.

The Covid-19 pandemic only intensified the need for media that improved access to health information and services.   In response to the pandemic, PCI Media’s production teams practiced social distancing, recording voices one by one, and disinfecting the studio between each actor. PCI Media recreated community discussion forums online. “We know our work is important, but with the increases in risks to women and girls, children, and overall health, the pandemic made it clear that the need for our programs exceeds what we can provide with our current funding,” said Ms. Brown.

Receiving this bridge financing from FJC and SeaChange allows PCI Media to smooth the cash flow challenges associated with government and bilateral organizations, close program funding gaps and ensure there is no disruption to the 4 million listeners who rely on their programming for reliable health information.

Ms. Brown notes that bridge lending against donor bequests is not a typical product in the banking sector.   “It’s such a pleasure to work with lenders like FJC and SeaChange that are so sensitive to the needs of nonprofits,” said Ms. Brown.

If you visit the Heine Wildlife Preserve, located in Wheat Ridge in the greater Denver metropolitan area, you might find dozens of species of birds, butterflies, deer, and fox.  You might marvel at the habitat diversity of this 11-acre urban oasis.  And you might encounter schoolchildren from the nearby Alpine Valley School, examining bugs, filling bird-feeders, and maintaining the bumblebee habitat. 

This oasis of urban wildlife conservation represents the vision of longtime FJC donor Karin Heine, who passed away in May of this year.  Ms. Heine was committed over her lifetime to demonstrating how humans might integrate more harmoniously with nature and wildlife, even in urban settings.

“So much conservation in urban areas is abstract and hypothetical,” explains Tony Caligiuri, President of Colorado Open Land.  “The special thing about the Heine Wildlife Preserve was that it was right in the middle of the neighborhood, and it was a relatable example of what could be done in an urban environment.” He noted that Ms. Heine loved to make educational opportunities about the environment available to young people, in the hopes of inspiring a next generation of conservators.

Colorado Open Lands was one of several environmental and conservation nonprofits that received significant grants following Ms. Heine’s untimely death, as part of final distribution of funds from her Donor Advised Fund account.  Like all the organizations receiving funds from the final distribution, Ms. Heine enjoyed a decades-long relationship with Colorado Open Lands.  

In the early 2000s, Colorado Open Lands entered into an agreement with Ms. Henie to establish a conservation easement on her property: a voluntary, permanent contract whereby the landowner gives up development rights of a property in perpetuity, in return for tax benefits.  The preserve has grown through careful stewardship from 3.7 acres initially to 11 acres today, and the easement will ensure the property will remain a nature habitat forever.  Following Ms. Heine’s death, Colorado Open Lands is in conversation with its board about this most strategic use of her final grant, with the hopes of adding organizational capacity to address a backlog of similar conservation projects, representing potential conservation of 100,000 acres across the state. 

“The Nature Conservancy works locally to globally, and Ms. Heine appreciated that approach,” said Carlos Fernandez, the State Director for The Nature Conservancy in Colorado, another organization that received significant grant funding from Ms. Heine’s DAF account.  He noted that Ms. Heine was a discerning philanthropist with a trust-based approach to giving that allowed the Conservancy to find the most impactful use for the funds.

Financial advisor Harvey Wacht, a Principal at ShufroRose, reflected on his thirty-year friendship with Ms. Heine, which began with a advisory relationship with Ms. Heine and other members of her family.  Ms. Heine lived among animals, keeping goats for pets and a chicken coop “before it became fashionable for hipsters in Brooklyn.”  He noted that Ms. Heine cared deeply about the local community, and “was often first in line to help others,” often providing financial support personally to friends and neighbors in crisis.  “But her passion was the charities that she cared about,” reflected Mr. Wacht, noting that her philanthropy and longstanding nonprofit relationships have created an enduring conservation legacy for generations to come.

Leaders of two nonprofit organizations whose urgent financial needs were met by innovative FJC donors were featured on a webinar hosted by the Estate Planning Council of NYC (EPCNYC), titled “Multiplying your Impact: Innovative Approaches to Revolving Philanthropic Dollars”.  The nonprofit Executive Directors, Annie Polland of The Tenement Museum and Dolores Kordon of Brighter Tomorrows, were joined by members of FJC’s leadership, CEO Sam Marks and Chief Legal Officer Mark Cohen, who described the foundation’s role executing the transactions.  The event was moderated by Henry Snyder, Executive Director of JP Morgan’s Private Bank, and a member of EPCNYC.

While most holders of Donor Advised Fund (DAF) accounts use their philanthropic funds for grants, the webinar highlighted cases where donors identified financing gaps in the organizations that could be addressed with solutions that combined philanthropic intent with investment strategies.

In the case of Brighter Tomorrows, a domestic violence nonprofit serving women and families on Long Island, the donor was solving for a cash flow problem.  As Ms. Kordon explained, the majority of the organization’s work is funded with government contracts.  These contracts, typically administered through the state or county, are notoriously slow to pay even during normal times and are typically paid on a reimbursement basis.  During the pandemic, when the needs of clients for shelter, food, and emergency assistance were at an all-time high, the public agency offices administering payments on the contracts were also facing major capacity issues.  “Payments slowed to a snail’s pace,” Ms. Kordon lamented. “With the pandemic came all sorts of additional emergency costs, and we had to still keep the lights on and pay rent.”

Enter Sandy Wheeler, one of Brighter Tomorrows’ most steadfast donors.  Ms. Wheeler worked with FJC to deploy $100,000 in her DAF account as a 0% interest revolving line of credit.  This cash resource allowed Brighter Tomorrows to continue meeting the urgent needs of clients, even in the face of slower contract payments.  In the year since the loan was closed, the funds have been fully drawn, repaid, and drawn again. “I can’t say enough about the importance of having a donor provide this resource,” says Ms. Kordon. “It was a godsend for us.” 

FJC facilitated a more complex transaction with The Tenement Museum, a vital organization that has been researching and telling the stories of immigrant New Yorkers for the past 25 years. In the early days of the pandemic, the organization faced significant financial distress, as documented in an New York Times article, “A Museum Devoted to Survivors Faces Its Own Fight for Survival” (April 24, 2020). The article noted that 75% of the museum’s revenue came from earned income, reflecting admissions and gift shop revenue of its 285,000 annual visitors.  As a result of the pandemic their visitors (and attendant revenue) had dried up, but the museum carried significant fixed costs due to its mortgage, which cost the museum $585,000 per year.

One of FJC’s donors read the New York Times article and reached out to inquire whether he could refinance the museum’s mortgage with funds in his DAF account.  Upon further conversation with the Museum’s leadership, it was revealed that the mortgage was in the form of a tax-exempt bond, issued by the City of New York through its Build NYC Resource Corporation, a division of the NYC Economic Development Corporation.  In coordination with the donor, FJC purchased the bond from the bondholder, and amended the terms to interest-only at 1% per year, reducing the museum’s annual debt service payment from $585,000 per year to $80,000.  “We are paying $2.5 million less out of pocket for debt service over these five years,” explains Ms. Polland. “This has bought us time to figure out how we manage through this pandemic year, but it also freed us up to think of creative ways to operate.” Ms. Polland noted that the museum has been able to develop distance learning modules that have engaged students virtually from as far away as California.  She also noted its new exhibit focusing on a Black family and a walking tour called “Reclaiming Black Spaces,” which explores sites connected with nearly 400 years of African-American presence on the Lower East Side.  “The Museum is not just pausing,” she said. “We’re taking on new and addressing the questions important to this country.  How does learning our history help us move forward?”  The Museum’s new programs and strong emergence from the pandemic were featured again in the New York Times this month, a story that Ms. Polland describes as a “bookend” to the previous year’s story on the organization’s distressed financial picture.

Mr. Cohen explained that after five years, FJC intends to sell the bond back to the bond market, and will aim to recoup the $9.5 million face value of the bond for the donor’s account.  These funds can then be recycled as grants or additional loans or impact investments.

The moderator Mr. Snyder noted that customized transactions like these do not appear to be standard offerings at most DAF sponsors.  Mr. Marks noted that philanthropic lending and impact investing are more common at the more sophisticated, professionalized foundations and that FJC had a long history of applying best practices from philanthropy more broadly to their DAF account holders.  “We’re trying to inspire more of our donors to approach philanthropy in this way,” says Mr. Marks, “and work with new donors that are inspired by examples like these.”
 

In life, Helen Rehr led a distinguished, trailblazing career in social work.  She was known for revolutionizing and standardizing the field of social work, and her long career at Mt Sinai, where she retired in her role as Chair of the Division of Social Work in 1986.  Ms. Rehr was also a longtime donor at FJC.  Since her death in 2013, FJC has honored her philanthropic legacy by honoring her wishes through a Board-advised Fund, “to identify worthwhile projects determined by FJC to be used for social services, research or training projects all to enhance health and mental health care for vulnerable populations within the State of Israel and the City of New York.”

This year FJC issued a Request for Proposals that put a timely focus on her programmatic wishes: “organizations engaged in social work research and/or training projects focused on developing alternatives to the current police response when encountering the mentally ill in NY.” Each year, the New York Police Department (NYPD) responds to nearly 200,000 calls regarding individuals experiencing mental health crises.  In the past five years alone, notwithstanding Mayor Bill de Blasio’s implementation of crisis intervention training for police officers, 18 individuals were fatally shot by police when experiencing a mental health crisis, and 15 of those 18 individuals were Black or Brown.

The winning response to the RFP came from New York Lawyers for the Public Interest (NYLPI), working in coordination with program partner Community Access.  The $100,000 grant will fund the two organizations to advocate for New York City to establish a non-police response to mental health crises, which will consist of trained peers (those with lived mental health experience) and independent emergency medical technicians whose aim is to de-escalate violence and administer proper assistance through a non-police mental healthcare response. 

Recognizing that creating an alternate response to mental health crises means doing as much as possible to ensure crises never happen in the first place, NYLPI will also develop a training geared to such frontline workers as social workers to de-escalate crises, building on a Community Access training module that seeks to equip workers with the knowledge and de-escalation skills to make compassionate connections with people in crisis.

“We could not be more grateful for the FJC’s generous support of this critical work,” said Ruth Lowenkron, Director of NYLPI’s Disability Justice Program who spearheads NYLPI’s work in this area.  “For far too long, our citizens who experience mental health crises have been neglected and worse.  It is high time to transform the way New York responds to mental health crises an ensure that all New Yorkers are provided the services they need and are treated with the dignity they deserve.”

NYLPI will leverage the grant from the Helen Rehr fund as a match for their #MentalHealthCareNotPolice campaign, which NYLPI and its coalition partners will be highlighting throughout the year in a series of events in public parks.  Visit NYLPI’s website for more information.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy has published a blog by FJC’s CEO Sam Marks titled, “Stretching Dollars without Straining Donors: The Case for Revolving Funds.”  The blog post features a donor’s innovative use of a DAF-like account at FJC to support the nonprofit Southern Environmental Law Center’s pioneering anti-pollution litigation work, as well as additional applications of revolving funds.  An excerpt is below.

At FJC – A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds, we have worked with imaginative donors to structure revolving accounts (essentially, variations on Donor Advised Fund accounts) with a goal of empowering nonprofits to take on significant campaigns and projects. Such arrangements can be incredibly catalytic, giving nonprofits the confidence to move forward on complex projects while mitigating financial risk. Also, by prioritizing activities with a high likelihood of recovery, these structures create the potential for donors to amplify their impact, revolving their funds so that the same philanthropic dollar can have multiple impacts on multiple projects. 

A case in point is our work with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), a 35-year-old nonprofit organization active across six states.

To achieve their mission, SELC uses a broad array of law and policy approaches including strategic litigation which can be expensive and resource intensive.  Enter an anonymous donor at FJC. The donor worked with FJC to create an account where charitable grants to SELC are deposited and from which SELC can draw funds specifically to pay for direct litigation expenses (like expert fees) in potential fee-recovery cases. Periodically, when SELC wins a case and recovers attorney fees, they make a deposit back into the FJC fund to replenish it in the event of future need. To date, SELC has drawn approximately $1 million from the revolving fund to pay for professional experts and other direct litigation expenses. With an incoming payment of fees recovered from SELC’s landmark Atlantic Coast Pipeline litigation, SELC will have redeposited some $270,000 back into the fund. 

As impact investing becomes further mainstreamed among foundations and holders of Donor Advised Funds, imaginative donors should consider recoverable grants and revolving fund structures as an additional tool in their continuing philanthropy. A fundraising campaign around this type of fund may engage donors that wish to invest in the organization’s growth and capacity while simultaneously compelling donors who would find value in seeing significant, multiple impacts over a long period of time as a result of a one-time gift.

For more information about revolving funds and how SELC put this unique resource to work, read the full blog post at Center for Effective Philanthropy.

Earlier this year, FJC began hosting a funding collaborative of corporate, family, and private foundations that have aligned their funding in an effort to transform New York City’s homelessness systems.   FJC has disbursed over $525,000 in grants on behalf of The NYC Fund to End Youth and Family Homelessness, which expects to make a total of $3 million over the next two years.

The vision of the collaborative goes beyond funding social services.  The Fund seeks to “transform major systems so that they operate to promote housing stability as part of their core function” by influencing a constellation of interlocking systems: housing and shelter; education; foster care; child and family welfare; health, including mental and behavioral health; law enforcement and justice.

“We’re looking to make strategic grants where if you can just push in the right spot, you can have a compounding effect on impact,” explains Lisa Talma VP of Philanthropic Initiatives at Deutsche Bank, one of the funders.  Among the grants the Fund has made include the development of technology applications that enable homeless individuals to access public resources and programs more quickly, and initiatives that provide direct cash transfers to homeless individuals and families. 

The Fund’s governance structure ensures that the philanthropic strategy is being shaped by people with the lived experience of homelessness.  The Fund currently reserves four seats on its Steering Committee for the two Co-Coordinators of New York City’s Youth Action Board and the two Housing Policy Fellows of New York City’s Family Homelessness Coalition.  By explicitly advancing equity and lived expertise as core values, the collaborative has attracted both national and local funders looking to support cutting-edge programs and interventions.  UPDATED 6/17/21: One of the projects supported by the Fund to research the impact of direct cash transfer payments to homeless youth has attracted follow-on investment from the City of New York.  Read the press release about the Trust Youth Initiative, a program of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and Point Source Youth.

To assist the Fund in achieving its goals, FJC arranged a Collective Giving Account (CGA), a variation on a Donor Advised Fund that allows for incoming contributions from multiple philanthropic actors.  “We considered fiscal sponsorship as an option, but the CGA account’s ease of use and efficient fee structure made it the right vehicle,” explains Bea De La Torre, Co-Chair of the Fund, and Managing Director of Housing and Homelessness at Trinity Church Wall Street. 

“Very often our CGA accounts are used by individuals to mark life occasions,” says FJC Chief Operating Officer Meghan Hudson, “Weddings, bar mitzvahs, and the like.  It was easy enough to apply this vehicle to the needs of these more institutional foundations, and we hope to do more in the future.”

List of funders

• Block-Leavitt Foundation
• Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation
• Helmsley Charitable Trust
• Melville Charitable Trust
• Pinkerton Foundation
• Stavros Niarchos Foundation
• Trinity Church Wall Street

Grants to date

• Settlement Housing Fund – supporting the NYC Family Homelessness Coalition’s Housing Policy Fellows program, which hires and trains advocates with lived expertise of family homelessness in NYC to help the Coalition’s policy, advocacy, and communications initiatives.

• Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Service – supporting the Coalition for Homeless Youth in launching a first-of-its kinds Peer Navigator Program, which will train a corps of young people with lived expertise of homelessness to work at youth homelessness service organizations throughout NYC as part of their client service teams, helping their peers find permanent housing and access other benefits programs and support.

• Rethink Food NYC – as fiscal sponsor for Streetlives, an initiative to co-design, build, and operate a technology platform with youth with lived expertise to better connect young people facing housing instability with the information, services, and support they’re seeking to improve their lives.

• Funders Together to End Homelessness – to join this national organization and benefit from its learning on national best practices in grantmaking and its public policy advocacy, and to join its cohort of Foundations for Racial Equity.

• Chapin Hall at University of Chicago – to support a groundbreaking pilot and rigorous evaluation of a Direct Cash Transfer Program, which will study the impact of providing monthly flexible cash support for two years to young people experiencing homelessness in NYC and compare their outcomes with control groups who receive significantly more costly, non-fungible supports like shelter.

For more information, visit the Fund’s home page.