Funder Collaboratives

Member Examples

The Emergency Assistance Fund

was a joint effort of the Eos Foundation and three other Boston-area family foundations. Together, they granted $1.1 million at Thanksgiving 2008 and immediately distributed the funds to nonprofits across the state to help residents meet their basic food and fuel needs. While not technically a pooled fund, the group announced its giving together to bring more attention to residents’ basic needs, and succeeded in gaining great media. They plan to convene grantees in the spring to follow up.

The Summer Youth Program Fund

(SYPF) is a collaborative effort among local and national funders (including ASF members The Clowes Fund, Inc., and the Christel DeHaan Family Foundation, Inc.) to support summer programming for youth in Marion County, Indiana. A single application form makes the process easier for potential grantees. The forms are then distributed to roughly a dozen funding partners, which include family, corporate, and private foundations, as well as a government agency. Each funder makes its own funding decision within a designated window.

The San Francisco Arts Education Funders Collaborative

(which includes ASF member The Fleishhacker Foundation) began as a way for arts education funders to share information about the field, identify funding overlaps and gaps, and develop centralized resources for teachers and parents. The project is ending, in part because a long-term goal of the funders has been reached: The city of San Francisco has adopted a Master Plan for Arts Education that will be implemented from within the schools. During its course, the project was led by the funders’ steering committee, which met about six times a year; had an advisory committee comprising arts educators and school district representatives; and was staffed in a public–private partnership agreement with the San Francisco Arts Commission. The collaborative offered professional development for incorporating arts into the classroom and created a website about local arts education opportunities.