FJC is offering these recommendations of critical nonprofit organizations providing relief and recovery during the winter storms that are affecting Texas and other southern states unaccustomed to extreme weather.

We invite you to review this Disaster Profile from the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, as an excellent primer on the impacts of the storm.  They note, “Unlike many natural disasters, the loss of homes due to Uri and Viola is minimal. However, the impact on infrastructure, especially power grids and water systems, is immense.”

Funds

Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP) EIN: 45-5257937 has a Disaster Recovery Fund that has a category for U.S. Winter Storms. In addition to awarding grants for specific emergencies, the CDP Disaster Recovery Fund makes strategic investments in research, preparedness, and planning, fully demonstrating the value of a streamlined, long-term approach.

Communities Foundation of Texas – EIN: 75-0964565 – CFT has launched a North Texas Winter Weather Crisis Relief Fund which has a goal of providing emergency assistance and long-term recovery needs related to the weather crisis in North Texas.

Multi-state Nonprofits

American Red Cross – EIN: 53-0196605 – ARC provides emergency disaster relief including shelters, meals and snacks, health and mental health support, clean-up supplies, hygiene kits and more to communities affected by disasters. They have over 150 congregate shelters open (across several states) and are providing feeding and safe shelter.

Salvation Army – EIN: 22-2406433 Provides logistical supply chain management getting food, water and blankets into communities, coordinating deliveries from food banks and operating warming centers.

Food Banks

Southeast Texas Food Bank – EIN: 76-0338721 (Beaumont area – mostly urban area with significant poverty)

Houston Food Bank – EIN: 74-2181456 (Greater Houston area – largest food bank and serves as hub for three other smaller, regional food banks)

Central Texas Food Bank – EIN: 74-2217350 (Austin area)

North Texas Food Bank – EIN: 75-1785357  (Dallas area)

Local / Grassroots Efforts

CrowdSource Rescue – (EIN: 47-1963607.  Note: make donation to their fiscal sponsor Outdoorsmen in Action and specify “funds are designated for CrowdSource Rescue”) Organizing a quick reaction to senior citizens facing dangerous temperature during the Texas freeze. The operation is two-fold: 1) transport vulnerable populations to a safe place and 2) deliver food, water, and other needed supplies.

RAICES – The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services – EIN: 74-2436920 – Promotes justice by providing free and low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees. Programs include legal services, social programs, bond assistance, and an advocacy team focused on changing the narrative around immigration in this country.

West Street Recovery – EIN: 82-2708194 – Grassroots organization in Houston, TX which was born out of the recovery efforts after Hurricane Harvey to build community power. Their driving principle is to work together with community members, not for them, or on their behalf.

Our Vision

All New York City youth and families with children will have a safe and stable place to call home and a community of support.

Our Strategy

The NYC Fund to End Youth & Family Homelessness uses its resources and influence to transform our city’s homelessness systems.  Currently, those systems function primarily to manage the crisis of homelessness.  We seek instead to prevent and end that crisis.

To do this, we support innovative, evidence-based, promising approaches that help youth and families facing housing instability keep their homes or move quickly into a new permanent home that is safe, stable, and affordable. In each approach, we seek to leverage and transform major systems so that they operate to promote housing stability as part of their core function (e.g. housing and shelter; education; foster care; child and family welfare; health, including mental and behavioral health; law enforcement and justice).

Shelter offers a place to sleep at night, but the solution to homelessness is a home.  Investing in access to quality, affordable homes is investing in our children’s – and our city’s – future.

Our Values

The Fund’s core values are to advance racial equity, LGTBQ equity, and lived expertise in the design of our housing and homelessness systems and in our own governance and operations.

Contrary to what many believe, people are not homeless simply because they made bad choices or had bad luck.   All of us make bad choices and have bad luck at different points in our lives, but all of us do not become homeless.  Those who do are those of us who do not have the protection of wealth and ownership – either in our own household or in our extended network – to cushion us when we have bad luck or make a mistake. 

Since our society has long excluded people who are Black, indigenous, and people of color from wealth and ownership opportunities (especially those who are also LGBTQ), we have limited the ability of these individuals, households, and communities to build that cushion of net worth.  As a direct result, it is disproportionately people in these communities who face homelessness when something goes wrong.

Moreover, the systems we have built to manage homelessness often reinforce inequity rather than reduce it, all too frequently denying people dignity, autonomy, and control over their own lives.  These systems are often also inefficient, expensive, and counterproductive, offering take-it-or-leave-it, one-size-fits-nobody interventions that don’t help people quickly find a stable home.

Instead, we must build systems founded on principles of equity and dignity that give people the resources they need to design their own solutions and achieve their own goals.

Our Governance

The Fund is committed to centering racial and LGBTQ equity and lived expertise of youth and family homelessness in its governance and operations.  As part of that commitment, 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. 

These Steering Committee members draw on their own lived expertise in New York City homelessness systems and partner with our philanthropic members to lead the Fund’s strategy, policy, and grantmaking work.  They also currently lead the Fund in developing a longer-term strategy for how to continue to advance equity and lived expertise as core values of what we do and how we do it.

The Fund is currently co-chaired by Beatriz de la Torre, Managing Director of Housing & Homelessness at Trinity Church Wall Street, and Rhonda Jackson, Housing Policy Fellow of the New York City Family Homelessness Coalition.

Our Contributors

The Fund’s current contributors are:

• Block-Leavitt Foundation
• Booth Ferris Foundation
• Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation
• Helmsley Charitable Trust
• Melville Charitable Trust
• Oak Foundation
• Pinkerton Foundation
• Robin Hood Foundation
• Stavros Niarchos Foundation
• Trinity Church Wall Street
• van Ameringen Foundation

Special thanks to FJC – A Foundation of Philanthropic Funds for hosting the Fund.

Contact

For information about contributing to the Fund, applying for grant, or for press inquiries, please contact the Fund’s senior advisor – John Kimble (jgkimble AT gmail DOT com).

In times of global crisis, philanthropy can play a critical role in deploying resources quickly as governments and multi-lateral organizations mobilize for action. In our latest webinar, “Global Health in the Pandemic Age,” Kate Dodson, VP of Global Health at the UN Foundation spoke about how individual donors came together with corporate, foundation, and others to enable to the distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) to over 173 countries. “We used a nimble mix of partnership to get this done,” said Ms. Dodson, which included over 631,000 individuals from 193 countries (FJC donors among them!). The conversation was moderated by FJC’s Chief Executive Officer, Sam Marks. See the full recording here.

FJC’s first-ever Collective Giving Campaign, focused on addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, raised over $147,000 for six outstanding organizations that are tackling the impacts of the pandemic in a range of ways: food security, employment, grassroots organizing, small business support, public health, and research and development. During the campaign period in May 2020, donor contributions were matched dollar-for-dollar by FJC’s Special Initiatives Fund.

Over 90 percent of participating donors who responded to a post-campaign survey found many compelling reasons to participate, such as the elevation of strong, effective organizations (many of which were new to them); the ability to align their resources with other donors at FJC; and the opportunity to have their gifts matched, effectively doubling their giving. As one donor said in her survey response, “Let’s do more work together!”

The Center for Effective Philanthropy published a blog post by Sam Marks, CEO of FJC, with further reflections on the successes and challenges of the campaign. “The initiative suggests the power that DAF sponsors can bring when they provide focused guidance to rally disparate donors around a common cause,” he writes.

FJC also hosted a subsequent webinar highlighting the work of Food Bank for New York City, the top choice among FJC donors. Food Bank CEO Leslie Gordon spoke of the operational and logistical challenges of keeping food flowing where it has been needed most during the pandemic, and cautioned that the economic fallout of the crisis may create even greater need. “This is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.” See a summary and link to the full webinar recording here.

Leslie Gordon, CEO of Food Bank for New York City, joined FJC’s CEO Sam Marks and dozens of FJC donors for our first-ever “Lunch and Learn” webinar on June 30 to discuss Food Bank’s extraordinary work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Food Bank was the most popular choice by FJC donors during its recent Collective Giving Campaign, receiving over $85,000 from FJC and its donors to mitigate the effects of the pandemic among New York City’s most vulnerable.

Gordon placed her own professional journey in a multigenerational family context, contrasting the informal approach to voluntary food delivery service in her grandfather’s day with the scale, sophistication and data driven approach of the Food Bank. Food Bank’s network of food pantries, community kitchens, and local, civic, and religious organizations are committed to preserving the dignity and choice of the individuals and families they work with, and they address food insecurity with the larger goal of developing New Yorkers’ self-sufficiency with other programs and services. Across all the partners, she said, “This is a human-centered problem, we want to treat people with respect and care.”

She also spoke of the operational and logistical challenges of keeping food flowing where it has been needed most during the pandemic, and cautioned that the economic fallout of the crisis may create even greater need. “This is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”

See the full webinar recording here.

Imaginative FJC donors have created specialized accounts that allow for revolving funds for recoverable expenses, so that nonprofits can recycle grant funds on an ongoing basis.

In 2019 organizations focused on criminal justice reform and impact litigation were particularly active users of these resources, putting nearly $1 million in aggregate to work for their missions. These organizations included: the Government Accountability Project, was able to represent whistleblowers exposing abuses of public trust throughout the federal government as well as corporate employees within the banking, energy, food, and health care industries; the New York Civil Liberties Union, is bringing an important voting rights case to challenge violations of the federal Voting Rights Act; the Southern Environmental Law Center, which has reached a settlement with a private company that will result in the largest coal ash cleanup ever in America; Brooklyn Community Bail Fund secured the freedom of 23 immigrants held in ICE detention and at imminent risk of deportation, and reunited them with their families and communities.