Dear Colleagues,

These are extraordinary times. For more than 25 years, Nathan Cummings Foundation’s mission has explicitly named a commitment to democratic values and social justice, supporting the most vulnerable, respecting diversity and promoting understanding across cultures, and empowering communities. Today, we are facing assaults on the values we hold dear. Racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia are on the rise. Our democratic institutions are under attack. The legitimacy of the press is being questioned and critical public institutions like the Environmental Protection Agency and National Endowment for the Arts are being undermined.

People are responding to these extraordinary times in extraordinary ways. The Foundation’s grantees are on the front lines, confronting Islamophobic travel bans, standing up for sanctuary for families separated by deportations, and sounding the alarm on the increase in anti-Semitic acts. They are organizing vast groups of people who are showing up at airports and in the streets, finding reasons to hope and work together to defend shared values. They are partnering with and pushing companies to stand up for immigrant workers and communities and defend progress on clean energy and climate change. The work of these advocates is not a spontaneous reaction to a single president, but a result of years of investing in organizing and building innovative initiatives and visionary leaders.

No Time for Business as Usual
Earlier this month, the Foundation’s board and staff met for the first time since November to answer the question: how can we stand alongside our grantees and philanthropic partners and respond to this challenge with leadership, urgency, and impact.

Our board was clear that this was no time for business as usual.  Gathered around our board table, we made the unanimous decision to increase our payout in 2017 and 2018, and to join with and encourage other philanthropic organizations to do the same. 

Philanthropy is the risk capital in our society, and collectively, we were made for this moment. We are being called to act and to provide resources that catalyze leaders and solutions to the most pressing problems of the day. The question of how to respond is an essential discussion in the boardrooms and staff meetings of foundations all across the country. Over the last several months we listened and learned with partners in the field, and I am inspired by the other foundations that are doing the same.

We engaged our grantees through in-person conversations and an online survey, which brought us deep insights into the ways our grantees are responding to these challenging times and what they need from us now. Those insights have shaped our response in four primary ways. We will:

• Increase grantmaking dollars to the field now when there is great need;
• Modify our processes and types of support in order to make grants more quickly or more flexibly;
• Communicate and advocate for our values and interests; and
• Convene and collaborate to bring new resources and ideas to the field.

We are clear that the changes we seek will take more than two years and we will hold ourselves accountable to making sure that our resources and actions are making a difference.

Lessons from the Field
We were joined at the April board meeting by Debbie Almontaser, Nan Aron, Angela Glover Blackwell, Farai Chideya, Dee Davis, Caroll Doherty, Marisa Franco, George Goehl, Kristen Grimm, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Brad Lander, and Heather McGhee. Together, we grappled to understand the racial, economic, and cultural dynamics at play in our country, and were encouraged by stories of local organizing, activism and journalism making a difference in this moment. People are finding community, pushing on the idea of sanctuary and achieving significant wins, especially at the intersection of immigration policy and criminal justice reform.

They reinforced that our programmatic pillars were right for this moment. They urged us to continue to take risks and to help build a narrative for the future that crosses racial, social and geographic boundaries, and bridges the chasms between communities.

Doubling Down on Our Integrated Framework
In the last quarter, we approved $2,667,800 million grants renewing funding relationships and building new ones in line with the four focus areas of our integrated framework. The framework seeks to find solutions and transform systems and mindsets that hinder progress toward a more sustainable and equitable future for all people, particularly women and people of color. We amplify voice, creativity and culture to shift narratives, build empathy, bear witness, challenge injustice and move people to action through the work of organizations such as the Momentum Training Institute, Asian American Writers Workshop and Firelight Media. The poets and the preachers are our prophets – allowing us to find our place in an ongoing story, moving hearts and minds, and sparking our collective moral imagination through organizations like through Church World Service’s support for the New Sanctuary Movement and through Muslim community infrastructure groups like the Pillars Fund. Our racial and economic justice work supports the efforts of groups like JustLeadership USA and the Advancement Project to develop solutions for a multiracial working class by unlocking markets that have excluded generations from economic opportunity, reforming systems that criminalize too many, and lifting up new models of economic and democratic inclusion. Our inclusive clean economy work partners with organizations like New York Renews and 350.org to demonstrate solutions, supporting movements on the ground that shift the narrative and galvanize people, ushering in a just transition to a new economy. Through partnerships with groups like the Center for Political Accountability and World Resources Institute, we use our standing as both a grantmaker and an investor to hold corporations accountable and safeguard the integrity of our political system.

With additional resources, we can deepen coalitions, explore new ideas, and set aside space for some big bets that could emerge. While we don’t have all the answers, we are identifying an emerging set of themes and grantmaking strategies within each focus area and opportunities to work collaboratively across them.

Safeguarding the Truth
In an era of alternative facts, the undermining of the public trust in the media, science and public institutions, we can shine a light on the relationship between truth, narrative and social change. We believe that journalists, particularly those representing marginalized voices and communities, have a unique ability to move people because they bear witness and tell the truth in ways that challenge power and mobilize communities and policymakers for meaningful change.

Strengthening Civic Engagement
There is a great need to channel the tremendous energy emerging in communities across the country to protect the values of truth and justice. Organizing models are stretching to absorb newly activated people, and we are heartened by the innovation happening on the ground by so many of our partners. We want to expand efforts to mobilize democratic participation and cross-movement collaboration to defend important policies and programs, and also spur new ones.

Investing in Resilience Practices
Leaders and organizations are being pushed to the limit of their capacity in a time of rapid change and flux. There is no better time to invest in the kinds of faith and spirit-rooted resilience practices, especially for those experiencing politicized attacks on their basic dignity, that will help our leaders keep their minds clear, hearts expansive, and eyes on the prize.

Building Bridges Across Divides
Social and economic tensions are fraying the fabric of civic life in America. We will add our voice and resources to those working to see humanity in one another, share stories that bind, and engage with dignitiy as they confront difficult issues like the income and wealth gap, the balance of public safety and equitable treatment under the law, and the need for local solutions to counter efforts that would exclude people based on race, gender, religious identity or immigration status.

This is an incredibly important moment for the nonprofits and communities we serve. The board, staff and I are deeply energized by their leadership and courage to speak up, stand up and show up for truth and justice. In the words of our Board Chair Ruth Cummings, as a family foundation focused on social justice, we consider ourselves in the movement and of the movement.

I thank you and look forward to what we can do when we stand together and show up when it matters most. This is the moment we were made for.

With enormous gratitude,

As we enter an era of profound division in American and global politics and civic life, the Nathan Cummings Foundation’s work to build a more just, vibrant, sustainable and democratic society is more important than ever. In an interview with Inside Philanthropy I shared some early reflections, including the need to “get proximate,” an expression that resonated strongly with many of you. While we are evaluating the shifting landscape and considering strategies for the future, one thing is clear: How we do our philanthropy may prove to be just as important as what we do with our philanthropy.

In my first year at NCF, I heard from our board and staff that this foundation is willing to have tough conversations and yearns to bring the real world into our deliberations and learning. Our board is open to taking risks and to engaging in the ways that philanthropy needs to show up today. I was also inspired by our colleagues’ calls for philanthropy to “get woke,” as Bob Ross, CEO of the California Endowment, put in a September blog post, and by Bryan Stevenson’s words:

There is no path to justice that is comfortable or convenient. We will not create justice until we’re willing to sometimes position ourselves in uncomfortable places and be a witness… If you get proximate, change narratives, stay hopeful and do uncomfortable things, it will break you. But in brokenness, you will understand compassion.

Just days after the election, the Foundation’s board and staff gathered for our final meeting of the year. We planned a learning day on racial justice, looking broadly and critically at criminal justice from a structural perspective to understand how this massive system that disproportionally impacts communities of color disrupts people’s lives, damages the strength of our communities and disenfranchises too many from participating in our democracy.

But this time, how we chose to learn was different.

We chose to get proximate to a system that few of us on the board have seen up close. We tapped expertise from professionals in the field and the real experience of individuals who have been inside the system, including some of our own interns and staff.

Encouraged and supported by our partners at the Vera Institute of Justice, we visited the Manhattan criminal court to observe arraignments. We witnessed those accused of crimes being shuttled through a process where they have scant minutes with an attorney and virtually no chance to speak for themselves. We saw firsthand the racial disparities in who enters the courtroom, how issues of health, survival and family disputes – which many of us deal with in private every day – can become issues for police, judges and lawyers instead of doctors, teachers and social workers.

We heard a moving analysis of the causes and the consequences of America’s mass incarceration crisis and our country’s focus on justice that is punitive instead of restorative from Jeremy Travis, President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Nick Turner, President of Vera Institute of Justice, Judith Browne Dianis, Executive Director of Advancement Project, and Glenn Martin, President and Founder of JustLeadershipUSA, pointed to local and state level innovations on policing, conditions of confinement, education and critical supports for people coming home, alongside the need for philanthropy to take risks and invest in people and solutions closest to the problems. We discussed how lives are affected inside our jails, and the challenges people face when they get out, with the leadership and program participants from two of the leading providers of re-entry services in NYC: Center for Employment Opportunities and The Fortune Society – including NCF staff who came through those programs.

Throughout the day, we imagined ourselves and our families going through these experiences. We developed deeper empathy and understanding. It became more layered and complicated, and at the same time increasingly clear. Our questions got better, our analysis more nuanced.

When we returned to the boardroom the following day, we began to take in the enormity of the fights ahead of us post-election. Our day of learning pointed us toward how we will handle this moment and our work moving forward. Several of our board members remarked that we have to listen closely to those most impacted, leverage our influence and consider issues of power and agency across our work.

The election also demonstrated the progress we can make when we focus on what people need and give them a way to be heard. Across the country, voters cast ballots to raise the minimum wage, secure the right for employees to have paid sick days, advance sentencing reforms, limit the power of dark money and create small donor incentive programs, and protect solar power and the new energy economy. These wins give us hope that communities across the country are willing to stand up for democratic values and fight back against growing inequality and the climate crisis. In the days ahead the Foundation will support our partners to hold the line and continue to make progress.

As we closed the year, the Foundation approved approximately $13 million in grants, renewing funding relationships and building new ones in line with our goals of creating a more inclusive clean economy, advancing racial and economic justice, increasing corporate and political accountability and amplifying voice, creativity and culture.

Dear Colleagues,

In my first six months, I have had the great pleasure of getting to know what is at the heart of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. I have been on a listening tour with our trustees, staff, fellows, and our partners in the field, which will continue in the months ahead.

At the end of April, we came together for our spring board meeting, my first as president and CEO. We elected a new Chair of the Board, Ruth Cummings, and Associates from the third and fourth generations rejoined us, newly inspired and deeply committed to NCF’s values and goals for the future.  We approved renewed support to 17 organizations totaling $7.8 million ; and, we remembered and drew inspiration from Rob Mayer, who passed in December, but whose contributions to make NCF a learning organization live on today.

We dedicated a full day to learning with our Fellows, past and present, drawing connections between their work and that of our grantee partners addressing inequality in America. Our Board committed to continuing our successful fellowship program, and as part of that, deepening the integration between our fellows and our program work so that we can further use their disruptive ideas to fuel innovation inside the Foundation.

Our hearts and minds were opened by an exceptionally moving keynote by Valarie Kaur, a lawyer, filmmaker, Sikh activist, and interfaith leader, who told us:

I’m here today because NCF is a social justice foundation that is willing to take risks and we are in a moment in time that calls us to work against hate and injustice. Courage is possible in communities with new voices, and revolutionary love is a political and moral force that can dismantle structures of injustice.

We talked about the failures within our current economic market and new areas of opportunity with NCF fellow, Jessica Norwood; alumni Saqib Bhatti and Margot Brandenburg; and grantee partner Dayna Cunningham of MIT CoLab. Jessica is breaking new ground by looking at the ways early-stage capital for entrepreneurs – often secured from friends and family – is largely unattainable in African-American communities, which in turn creates obstacles to asset building and wealth creation.  Saqib exposed how the city of Flint struggled to pay bond debts to the Detroit water utility, which directly resulted in water shutoffs to families who could not afford to pay their bills and ultimately led to the shameful crisis endangering that community.

We also engaged in honest dialogue about the role of faith and values in a 21st century civil rights movement, including #BlackLivesMatter and criminal justice reform. Alumni Mosi Makori and Rev. Jennifer Bailey, current fellow Anurag Gupta, and CEO of Bend the Arc, Stosh Cotler, sparked a conversation about what religion means to us, how we identify with race in America, as well as the power of compassion, empathy, and mindfulness to confront racial injustice and interrupt implicit bias.

We are incredibly hopeful about the potential for transformation with allies in new and exciting places (including Hogwarts castle!). The Foundation recently supported the #PopJustice report series, which illuminates the promise and potential of popular culture to make change, and we had an enlightening conversation with current fellow Bridgit Antoinette Evans, former fellow Andrew Slack, and grantee partners Sandra de Castro Buffington of UCLA’s Global Media Center for Social Impact and Alexis McGill Johnson of the Perception Institute, about how to leverage entertainment for social justice ends. From The Help and Harry Potter, to Blackish and Law and Order, we’ve seen incredible impact and leverage in the power of story. Sandra de Castro Buffington put it best when she said, “Stories in television, movies, and new media have the power to transform our world. To awaken us. To foster a revolution of the heart and a higher image of human potential. To make every life count.”

As I’ve spent these months listening to the stories about who we are, the work we’ve supported over the past 25 years, and what this moment calls us to do, one common theme emerged:

Race matters.

We cannot talk about inequality without talking about race.

It mattered when Buddy Mayer, trustee emeritus, joined Wednesdays in Mississippi in the 1960s, building relationships with women in the South to create bridges of understanding across regional, racial, and class lines. It mattered late last year when Reform California joined in coalition with multi-faith organizers across the state to make it clear that racial profiling and criminal justice were Jewish issues. It mattered when artists animated a community’s protests and hopes for the future, acting as translators and healers in Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown. It matters now, as debates over the leadership of our country are fueled by dog-whistle politics, explicitly and implicitly creating a new opening for the kind of racial, ethnic, gender, identity and religious discrimination this country was built to defend against.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation was built 25 years ago on a centuries-old tradition of social justice rooted in Jewish values, to fight against the kind of inequities that we still see around us today. We stand with the families in Orlando, and our nation, with that revolutionary love and courage we all need in the wake of a horrific act of hate against us all.

We are moving forward, pointing ourselves at what the world needs from us now, in a way that honors and continues our long pursuit of justice.   Our vision is to create a just, vibrant, sustainable and democratic society. In the months ahead we will continue to refine our areas of focus. We remain committed to the two big problems of inequality and climate change, which we know stand in the way of our vision. We are looking at how we integrate all of our resources – our people and our dollars – in ways that reflect the intersectional problems we see and the solutions we hope to catalyze in the field. We will continue to update you on our progress as we expand our team and are thrilled that Loren Harris is now on board  as Vice President of Programs.

We are energized and eager to be learning alongside you, and welcome your questions and ideas as we continue to write the next chapter of our work.

Warmly,

Sharon Alpert
President & CEO
Nathan Cummings Foundation