GCRI member Collette employees joined in a variety of volunteer efforts to celebrate National Volunteer Week, with 100 volunteers at a variety of nonprofit organizations throughout the Blackstone Valley region and a diaper drive for Children’s Friend that collected over 1,000 diaper and 1,000 related supplies (wipes, ointment, etc.).
Exponent Philanthropy is an association of small grantmakers and the only one dedicated to serving foundations with few or no staff, philanthropic families, and individual donors. With nearly 2,000 members, their vibrant network has in common lean operations and a style of philanthropy motivated by personal passion, community needs, and the strong desire for better outcomes. Exponent provides programs, resources, and connections that maximize philanthropy’s impact on diverse communities and causes. Learn more
GCRI members can receive $100 off the first year of membership in Exponent Philanthropy. The discount code is REGIONAL100.
GCRI was recently awarded a mini-grant from the Forum and the Fund for Shared Insight to support foundation openness activities in the form of a statewide dialogue. We will be using the funding for a two-part discussion of “Learning From and With Grantees” in the fall. As part of the evaluation for this project, Harder+Company Community Research will be conducting a few evaluation activities, including a pre-survey of all of the member foundations in the participating regional associations to understand the state of the field around openness, learning from failure, using feedback effectively, and engaging with nonprofits to catalyze more openness. In order to gather the most accurate and comprehensive picture, we need your help to ensure as many member organizations complete the survey as possible.
The survey deadline has been extended to Friday May 12th. The survey should take no more than 15 minutes to complete. Survey
We are excited that Bank of America has rejoined GCRI for 2017, and are looking forward to partnering together in the coming months!
As part of GCRI’s second April Vacation Volunteer Initiative, volunteer teams from Bank Newport (two sites), Blue Cross & Blue Shield of RI, and Pawtucket Credit Union spent a morning with children in afterschool programs doing fun STEM enrichment activities.
A total of 28 corporate volunteers worked with over 100 children to build gumdrop bridges, “rescue” stuffed animals, launch pompoms and make roller coaster tracks for marbles at the Newport County YMCA (ALC member), Kids Klub North Providence (ALC member), Pawtucket Boys and Girls Club (ALC member) and the Bristol Warren COZ program.
Both the YMCA program and the Kids Klub program received positive newspaper coverage in local newspapers:
Newport Daily News – Bank Newport April Vacation 2017
Valley Breeze — Blue Cross April Vacation 2017
Over two days, April 19 and 20, United Way of Rhode Island hosted fifty-three family and corporate volunteers as they made literacy kits for local children. To encourage family reading, volunteers made puppets and games based on the books they brought to donate. Volunteers from GCRI members Bank Newport, Blue Cross & Blue Shield of RI joined in the fun to help ensure that Rhode Island children fall in love with reading.
UWRI is partnering again with Books Are Wings and the Women’s Leadership Council for the sixth annual Children’s Book Drive, taking place April 24-June 2. This event unites local businesses, community partners, families, and individuals around a common goal—helping children read. GCRI members are encouraged to host a collection drive or donate new or gently used children’s books. Read more. For more information on hosting a book drive, email bookdrive@uwri.org.
UWRI and its Afterschool Leadership Circle invites programs, funders and participants in afterschool programs to join in the Afterschool Learning Day at the State House to celebrate the ways that afterschool works to keep kids safe, boost student success and help parents keep their jobs. RSVP to alc@uwri.org.
Five organizations – Rhode Island Free Clinic, Clinica Esperanza, Crossroads Rhode Island, South County Hospital Health Care, and Thundermist Health Center – are receiving more than $270,000 through the RIGHA Foundation Fund to make quality healthcare more accessible and affordable for Rhode Islanders.
“Developing an inclusive primary care system that promotes healthy lives is one of our core strategic initiatives. These grants will advance our continuing efforts to make quality health care more accessible and affordable,” said Neil Steinberg, the Foundation’s president and CEO.
Rhode Island Foundation announced a new mission-related investing initiative to support projects that are local and place-based, and will yield a direct impact for Rhode Island, primarily in the Foundation’s strategic initiative areas: educational success, healthy lives, and economic security. Initial efforts will focus on a loan fund in 2017. In the first year, loans will range between $200,000 and $1,000,000, with terms generally up to 10 years. To learn more about the Foundation’s Impact Investing strategy, join GCRI for an informative session at the Foundation on May 25 (see events calendar for more details).
Collette CEO Dan Sullivan was recently featured in a Forbes article on “Five Organizations Who are Redefining Philanthropy.”
Sullivan spoke about Collette’s philanthropic model, which “is important because it is part of the fabric of Collette. Every employee receives four paid hours each month. Employees routinely get out into their communities to get involved directly in our mission, from feeding the homeless and spending time at food pantries to mentoring at-risk youth. We are launching impact travel programs (in both Ecuador and South Africa) to take this to the next level. Giving back to our communities at home and our communities that we travel to make the world a better place and this is a key value that the Sullivan family has as part of our core values.”
With leadership from Forum member Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, more than 140 philanthropic organizations have signed on to a statement in support of immigrants and refugees, including both foundations and philanthropic support organizations. Read the statement.
10 Ways to Improve Our Response to Humanitarian Crises Report
Transit, Tents, Homes: Approaches to Three Phases of the Refugee Crisis: In-depth report examines the life of a refugee in three phases, includes detailed situation analyses along with several funding opportunities from the following three perspectives: Transit: Whether it is throughout Europe, across the Mediterranean, or on difficult border roads elsewhere, refugees must endure the natural elements and man-made risks; Tents: Refugees living in camps often end up there for many years, posing challenges for both the refugees and host countries; and Homes: Though fortunate, refugees who are resettled into the United States have a wide range of social, cultural, and economic challenges to overcome.
Take Back the Immigration Narrative webinar by the FrameWorks Institute.
Winning Strategies in Use discussion (panel discussion)
Changing Face of America, Latest Immigration Data by The ILC Public Education Institute. Slides attached.
Opportunity Agenda
Welcoming America
Institute for Immigration Research at George Mason University
The Immigrant Learning Center Public Education Institute
Resources from the chat box:
Immigration Research and Information is available for your research needs. You can also browse their resources on education and immigrant integration.
Philanthropy New York is making available a livestream of their Annual Meeting, a half-day conference on the state of our democracy today — focusing on voting rights, access to participation and how people get the information that motivates them to engage. The livestream will be available Friday, June 16, from 9:00am-12:30pm. More information
Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement (PACE), a network of funders and foundations committed to civic engagement and democracy, has seen an increasing interest and urgency around civic engagement and advocacy. In response to questions like, What is civic engagement? How is it defined and what does it look? How might civic engagement relate to my work? How do I get started? Who might I learn from about how to do this work?, PACE developed a Civic Engagement Primer designed to help philanthropies grow in their civic engagement understanding, and learn about resources to engage in this work. Read the primer.
The Foundation Center has a “Foundation Funding for US Democracy” tool, which is a data visualization platform for funders, nonprofits, journalists and anyone interested in understanding philanthropy’s role in U.S. democracy. Funders can use it to discover new philanthropic partners, understand who is funding what and where, analyze funder and nonprofit networks, compare foundation funding for issues you care about and support your knowledge about the field. Explore the tool
Washington Post article on Resignation of Census Director
Making Philanthropy Count: Census 2020 webinar
Press Release on Underfunding of Census
Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers’ Census Site
Link to the Recording of the Census 101 Discussion from October 2016
Census Accuracy and the Undercount