OVERVIEW: The Boston Foundation is a community foundation that works broadly to support equity, justice, community development and more in the Greater Boston area.
IP TAKE: The Boston Foundation should be on the radar of every nonprofit in the Boston metropolitan area. While this funder gives broadly to organizations of all sizes, just and equitable community development is at the core of its work. In terms of grant applications, the Boston Foundation does not maintain one clear format; each of its nine core funds or initiatives maintains their own grantmaking strategies and protocols, making it somewhat difficult to locate specific grant opportunities in this sprawling organization’s website. That said, the Boston Foundation is accessible, and the website encourages grant seekers to contact staff members with questions—email addresses for the entire staff are available at the site, so networking with the right department is key. Another option for keeping apprised of grant opportunities is to sign up for the foundation’s newsletter.
PROFILE: Established in 1915, the Boston Foundation is the community foundation for the Boston region of Massachusetts. A GUTC signatory, this funder is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the U.S. It oversees more than 1,000 “separate charitable funds established by donors either for the general benefit of the community or for special purposes.” Discretionary grantmaking, which mainly serves Greater Boston area nonprofits, is conducted through the Fund for Boston’s Future. This accounts for about 18% of the Boston Foundation’s total giving, and includes four grantmaking portfolios: Nurturing Strong Beginnings, Building Economic Opportunities, Advancing Community Wealth, and Amplifying Community Leadership.
The Boston Foundation’s mission is “to open pathways to opportunity and build and sustain vital, prosperous and equitable communities.” The foundation runs nine funds or initiatives focused on overlapping issues of public health, mental health, early childhood services, education, economic opportunity, housing, civic engagement, racial justice and LGBTQ causes. The foundation also runs an ongoing Safety Net Grants program and awards Sponsorship Grants to “help support the annual fundraising and community events of nonprofits in Greater Boston.” Across all areas of grantmaking and community engagement, the Boston Foundation’s work is centered on equity, diversity and “deepen[ing] a shared understanding of how systemic and structural disparities have plagued Boston and the Commonwealth.”
Grants for Racial Justice and Community Development
The Boston Foundation maintains a commitment to both racial justice and community development across all of its discretionary grantmaking, which prioritizes equity and underserved, underrepresented and marginalized groups. However, three of the foundation’s eight initiatives name racial equity as central tenets of its work.
The initiative for Advancing Community Wealth aims to “repair and build community wealth and advocate for a more equitable city.” Over the past decade, investments have focused on “jobs, housing, entrepreneurship and the arts.” Goals for the next several years include growing opportunities for BIPOC residents, advocating for equity and “strengthening relationships [ … ] to minimize gentrification and sustain community-owned spaces for BIPOC Bostonians.” The initiative operates three subprograms.
Affordable Rental Housing and Pathways to Homeownership supports an array of interventions including increased access to housing vouchers, the development of new affordable housing and increased homeownership opportunities for BIPOC residents.
Business Equity aims to support the development of a “dynamic ecosystem of BIPOC-owned businesses” through investment, strategic support and collaboration.
Community Preservation and Justice seeks to create “a more equitable and thriving local economy and culture.” Funding supports the preservation and improvement of “housing, small business brick-and-mortars, and cultural spaces for BIPOC residents, entrepreneurs and artists.”
The Boston Foundation’s Asian Community Fund was established in 2020 and aims to “strengthen and support Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community power in Massachusetts, to galvanize and unite the diverse ethnicities within this community, and to build a stronger advocacy voice.” The fund also seeks to “collaborate with other communities of color and oppressed communities to build collective strengths to overcome injustice and racism.” The foundation names four specific strategies for its work.
Support for small Asian-owned businesses is sourced through the initiative’s Asian Business Empowerment Council, which, in addition to providing technical and strategic assistance to Asian-owned business, aims to “work in coalition with counterpart organizations in the Black, Latinx and other underserved communities which are dedicated to closing the racial wealth gap.”
The initiative is committed to developing Asian-American and Pacific Islander nonprofit leadership through “talent identification and development, mentoring, training and networking.”
The Asian Community Fund generates and supports advocacy “to amplify the AAPI community’s voice in addressing injustice and anti-Asian racism and to overcome historic invisibility.”
Grantee partners of the Asian Community Fund include the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association, Massachusetts Asian + Pacific Islanders for Health, the India Association of Greater Boston and the Vietnamese American Initiative for Development.
The Latino Equity Fund aims to “amplify diverse voices and perspectives within the Latino community and beyond in Greater Boston and the state, with a focus on achieving greater and more equitable access to economic prosperity and wellbeing.”
Established in 2013, the fund has awarded over $1 million in grants to Latino-serving nonprofits in Massachusetts and has also become “an emerging civic leadership engine, commissioning research and reports that address critical issues facing the Latino community and other communities of color and lead to policy change.”
The Latino Equity Fund runs an open grant application program for “community nonprofits in Massachusetts who are working toward the advancement of Latinos by creating economic prosperity opportunities or addressing health disparities and wellbeing.”
Detailed application guidelines are linked to the program page. The fund usually runs a single grantmaking cycle each year, with due dates generally falling in October. Grants range from $10,000 to $50,000.
Past grantees include the Mauricio Gaston Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Poicy at UMass Boston, Mujeres Unidas Avanzando, the Brazilian Workers Center and Amplify Latinx.
Grants for Public Health, Mental Health and Early Childhood Education
The Boston Foundation’s Nurturing Strong Beginnings initiative supports “equitable early education and healthcare ecosystems for children and the adults who care for them” with the goal of ensuring “that children are physically and emotionally healthy, developmentally on track and well prepared to thrive in school and adulthood.” This initiative maintains three focus areas:
Strengthening the Early Education and Care System is a “developing focus area.” Early grantmaking will support “research and advocacy to reform the child care subsidy system and strengthen the workforce of family child care providers.”
Maternal Health Equity focuses on racial disparities in maternal healthcare and aims to form “a maternal health equity coalition that will equip community leaders who help coordinate efforts across healthcare and social service systems in Greater Boston.”
Mental and Behavioral Health Integration aims to facilitate “more and earlier mental and behavioral healthcare between prenatal and early adulthood, alongside physical health care.”
Grantees working in these areas include the Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention, Boston After School & Beyond, Boston Community Pediatrics, the Children’s Hospital Corporation of Boston, Cradles to Crayons and Children’s Services of Roxbury.
Grants for Higher Education, Housing, Work and Opportunity
The Boston Foundation makes grants for economic development focusing on education, work and housing through two of its initiatives:
Building Economic Opportunity aims to “[e]nsure that residents have a continuum of education and career support to thrive in life” and works through two sub-programs.
Career Equity focuses on providing Boston area residents with “access to the training and support they need to find and maintain household-sustaining careers.” The foundation’s signature program, SkillWorks, not only supports career development and training initiatives, but also works with private and public stakeholders to “increase job quality,” thereby reducing both poverty and racial wealth gaps in the Boston region.
Pathways to Postsecondary Success, one of Boston’s newer initiatives, “will coordinate and strengthen the ecosystem of programs and organizations that engage, educate and support young people in achieving success after high school.” The foundation will partner with “anchor organizations” that “will elevate innovative and effective models and practices that enhance learners’ ability to succeed in Greater Boston.
Grantees working in this area include College Bound Dorchester, the Massachusetts Alliance for Early College, College Unbound and LEAP for Education.
The Advancing Community Wealth initiative works to create a future in which Boston’s “BIPOC residents will own and control critical assets that contribute to community enrichment and sustainability.” Focus areas include investments in:
Affordable Rental Housing and Pathways to Homeownership.
Business Equity, including the development of a “dynamic ecosystem of BIPOC-owned businesses.”
Community Preservation and Justice toward creating “a more equitable and thriving local economy and culture.”
Past grantees working in these focus areas include the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance, Metro Housing Boston, Union Capital Boston, the Builders of Color Coalition and the Boston Private Industry Council.
Grants for Civic and Democracy
This funder’s Civic Leadership initiative is funded by the foundation’s Annual Campaign for Civic Leadership. This initiative aims to “[bring] together analysts, problem solvers and funders to understand and act on matters of local concern.” Civic Leadership is not a grantmaking program per se, but enables the foundation to conduct research, host events, advocate for change and present findings and insights through a range of media. Equity is consistently at the forefront of the program’s work. Specific areas of interest, according to a the program’s brochure, include racial wealth gaps, wage equity, democracy, housing, health, entrepreneurship, climate resilience and immigrant rights.
Grants for LGBTQ Causes
The Boston Foundation supports LGBTQ causes in the Massachusetts via its Equality Fund. The fund was established in 2012 to “support Greater Boston nonprofit organizations that serve and strengthen the LGBTQ+ community.” Since then, it has made about $2 million in grants, focusing on “innovative programming aimed at pressing and emerging issues.” This fund is also committed to “address[ing] the racial and ethnic inequities that exist within this community” and to becoming “more intentional in our work across the many diverse spaces that make up the LGBTQ+ community, so those members who identify as both LGBTQ+ and people of color, of any age and background, can be fully accepted and represented within multiple communities.”
This fund runs a single annual grantmaking cycle and posts a call for applications early each year, with applications due late in February. Grants range from $7,000 to $12,000. Past grantees include the Boston Alliance of LGBTQ Youth, GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, Pride in Our Workplace and Theater Offensive, Inc.
Grants for Philanthropy
The Boston Foundation supports the people and organizations that “push Greater Boston and the Commonwealth toward a more just society” via its Amplifying Community Leadership program. The initiative, the foundation’s newest, names three focus areas.
Nonprofit Sector Infrastructure grants will “advance equitable models, policies and practices that disrupt the status quo to create the conditions for a sector that uplifts and supports historically excluded leaders and organizations.”
Shifting Power and Advancing Justice provides three-year grants and supportive resources to “a group of core leaders and their organizations that have critical roles in advancing social justice in Greater Boston.”
Safety Net Grants support nonprofits that respond to pressing and immediate needs of the communities they serve. This program runs two annual cycles, with application due dates in fall and spring. The foundation updates specific information about guidelines, eligibility and due dates on the program’s web page. Grants are generally awarded in the amount of $50,000, disbursed over two years.
Safety Net grantees include Concord Prison Outreach, the Haitian Health Institute, the Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice, the Somali Parents Advocate Center for Education, and Salem Pantry, Inc., among others.
Other Grantmaking Opportunities
The Boston Foundation makes grants to “support the annual fundraising and community events of nonprofits in Greater Boston.” These grants “provide general operating support to nonprofits, while also giving the foundation the opportunity to take part in these important ongoing community events.” These grants do not support ongoing programs or athletic events run by nonprofits. The foundation accepts requests for sponsorships at any time via its online request portal.
Important Grant Details:
The vast majority of the Boston Foundation’s discretionary grants are awarded in amounts of up to $500,000.
Discretionary grantmaking accounts for about 18% of this funder’s total giving. Other giving takes the form of either earmarked collaborative funds or donor-advised funds overseen by the foundation.
This funder demonstrates a strong commitment to social justice and equity across all giving areas.
The Boston Foundation supports organizations of all sizes, but almost all of its grantmaking stays in the Boston metropolitan region.
This funder often offers support beyond grants, including technical assistance, leadership development and communications.
The Boston Foundation conducts, publishes and disseminates research in areas of interest relating to the communities it serves.
Some of the foundation’s grantmaking programs accept applications for funding, but guidelines and due dates vary significantly by program.
Grantmaking programs may adjust focus and specific goals each year; grant seekers should check relevant program pages periodically for updates on grantmaking opportunities.
Direct general questions to the foundation staff at 617-338-1700 or grantsinfo@tbf.org. The foundation also recommends signing up for its newsletter to receive updates in a timely fashion.
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