OVERVIEW: The Foundation For Louisiana works broadly and collaboratively to support social justice in the state of Louisiana.
IP TAKE: According to a recent Impact Report, the Foundation for Louisiana supports “the work of community-based organizations responding to the state’s greatest challenges.” Established in response to major hurricanes that affected the state in the early 2000s, the foundation now supports a broad array of work to address the historical inequities that plagued the recovery process across the state.
While this funder is a great supporter of Louisiana’s grassroots and community groups, it does not accept proposals for funding and appears to select its grantees through its existing network of collaborators. It is, however, approachable, offering email addresses for each of its staff members at its website. Reach out with questions and ideas and sign up for the organization’s newsletter to keep up with emerging opportunities.
PROFILE: The Foundation for Louisiana (FFL) was established in 2005, “in the tumultuous days following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.” It was initially called the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, and it focused on supporting “the Immediate recovery of Louisiana’s communities following the storms.” Over the years, the foundation recognized that “a full and responsible recovery would entail far more than rebuilding what was lost – we would need to address the long-standing inequities that have shaped life outcomes for the most marginalized of Louisianans.”
Today, the Foundation for Louisiana’s mission is to serve as a “catalyst for justice.” A signatory of the GUTC Pledge, it “invests in communities and ideas, builds partnerships, and transforms policies and systems for an equitable, stronger Louisiana.” This funder’s stated areas of focus address Climate Justice, Criminal Justice Reform, Economic Justice, Gender Justice, Philanthropic Leadership and Racial Justice. Giving is mainly limited to Louisiana.
Grants for Climate Change and Racial Equity
The Foundation for Louisiana’s Climate Justice program works “to catalyze innovative and multi-sector responses to Louisiana’s climate crisis.” This program’s climate mitigation work intersects with racial equity. As such, a central tenet of the program is an “understanding [of] the disproportionate impacts that climate change has on Black, Indigenous, communities of color, and low-income communities.” The program pursues three related goals:
- The foundation invests in “a future where Louisianans are no longer reliant on extractive economies and are key designers and decision-makers for the future of our state.” Areas of specific interest include vulnerable communities, the creation of sustainable jobs and related “opportunities to reduce disparities, and build wealth for Louisianans.”
- The program works to build “people power” so that Louisiana residents are prepared, informed and able to make decisions about the future of the state’s built environment. A signature program, LEAD the Coast, “is a shared learning and policy advocacy training designed to connect resident leaders” across Louisiana in order to create tactics that advance change at the community level from the ground up.
- The foundation also supports research and evaluation to transform the state’s approach to climate change mitigation to one that centers “those who are historically most impacted by environmental injustice.” This initiative has contributed findings and recommendations to LA SAFE, a comprehensive plan for holistic climate change resilience.
Climate justice grants have supported organizations including the Water Institute of Baton Rouge, the Alliance for Affordable Energy of New Orleans, the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and the Center for Planning Excellence.
Grants for Criminal Justice Reform
The foundation’s Criminal Justice Reform program “is rooted in the legacy of abolition movements that have existed in Louisiana for hundreds of years” and works “to shift resources away from systems that diminish our humanity and towards the things that build it.”
- This program invests in “work to stop the state-sanctioned trauma and violence that disproportionately impact poor people of color.” Early grants were instrumental in the 2009 establishment of New Orleans’ Office of the Independent Police Monitor, “an independent branch of city government that is responsible for providing oversight to the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), helping build community trust in the police department and receiving public feedback on the police, and working to make the NOPD a safer and better working environment for all officers and employees.”
- The program also builds infrastructure to “shift policy” toward the eradication of “bail, fines and fees,” as well as ending forced deportations.
- Finally, the foundation supports and engages with organizations across the state that work to transform state and local criminal justice systems to reduce incarceration across the state. In 2017, the foundation “helped to guide the ambitious 2017 Justice Reinvestment legislative package, which resulted in a historic reduction in jail population.”
Grantees of the Criminal Justice Reform program include the Southern University Law Center, the Promise of Justice Initiative, the Justice and Accountability Center of Louisiana and Operation Restoration, which helps “women and girls impacted by incarceration to recognize their full potential, restore their lives and discover new possibilities.”
Grants for Housing and Economic Opportunity
Grants for Economic Justice stem from the foundation’s Community Investment Fund and work “to combat historic disinvestment in Southern communities, support the essential work of emerging organizations, and seed socially conscious Louisiana ventures that find it difficult to access traditional funding sources due to systemic bias.”
- With support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the foundation awards loans and provides technical assistance to affordable housing projects, small businesses and “retail outlets for fresh, healthy foods in communities.”
- The foundation also works collaboratively with the New Orleans accelerator Propellor to run its Social Venture Loan Fund to support projects related to “water, food, health, sanitation, and entrepreneurs of color.”
- And through collaborative work with the Surdna Foundation and the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, the foundation has made loans for physical upgrades of “commercial corridors” across New Orleans.
Additional grantee partners include InvestNOLA, the New Orleans Business Alliance, the Louisiana Homebuyer Education Collaborative and the Urban Restoration Enhancement Corporation of Baton Rouge.
Grants for Women and LGBTQ Causes
In the area of Gender Justice, the foundation aims to “support LGBTQIA communities throughout Louisiana in accessing the resources, spaces, and protections needed for LGBTQIA people to know justice and to feel safe, connected, and supported.” The program “also address[es] reproductive justice, especially at the intersection of disaster.”
- Areas of investment include protections for transgender people, Black maternal health initiatives, abortion and reproductive health care access and the allocation of “breastfeeding safe spaces in disaster preparedness measures.”
- The program also works to build “networks and coalitions needed for effective LGBTQIA organizing” especially “in rural and potentially anti-LGBTQIA or anti-abortion communities.”
- This program also works toward “systematic change” by involving “those directly impacted” in “program planning and grantmaking.”
Grants for Racial Justice and Indigenous Rights
In addition to justice-focused climate change work, the foundation’s Racial Justice program “builds on the legacy of FFL’s commitments to address the long-standing racial inequities revealed by Hurricane Katrina, in order to bring about transformational and sustainable change, addressing the historic and contemporary effects of racism.” The program was established in 2018 “on the building blocks” of a W.K. Kellogg Foundation program for Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation. Overarching goals of this program include “working to end separation (by segregation, colonization, and concentrated poverty), advance policy, and remove barriers to economic opportunities” in communities most “negatively impacted by systemic racism.”
- The foundation invests in people and groups working for racial justice and healing to “build-out the long-term infrastructure needed to confront systemic racism and white supremacy, and address the multi-generational trauma of BIPOC communities.”
- The foundation works to build a statewide movement for racial justice by supporting leadership development, advocacy and alliance building.
- FFL also works to transform “dominant narratives in support of racial justice,” thereby transforming Louisiana into “a place where people are free to tell their own stories, own their experience, and stand in their power to correct the history shaped by white supremacy culture.
Racial justice grants have supported the Find Our Roots African American Mobile Museum, 100 Black Men of St. Mary, the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans and Baton Rouge’s Assisi House, which aims to “improve social justice outcomes through community-driven research, healing art, and program development.”
Grants for Nonprofits
FFL’s Philanthropic Leadership initiative is its newest area of engagement. The initiative represents a strong commitment to “to an intrepid, on-going assessment of our own practices, as well as those of the broader philanthropic sector” and “[t]hose who are most impacted by injustice are also the best equipped to lead positive change in their communities.” The program works “with community members to create programs and grant opportunities that build power—connecting philanthropy directly to on-the-ground efforts” and aims to provide “grounded, local analysis philanthropy needs to resource Louisiana-based social change work and challenge dominant narratives about the South.”
Important Grant Details:
The Foundation for Louisiana’s grants range from $8,000 to about $56,000.
- Grantmaking is mainly limited to Louisiana and appears to prioritize grassroots and social justice groups and initiatives.
- In addition to grantmaking, the foundation collaborates with other public and private organizations on research and policy development.
- Information about past grantmaking is available on each program page, as well as the foundation’s Impact Report.
- This funder does not accept unsolicited applications for funding.
- Keep up with news and opportunities by signing up for the foundation’s newsletter.
Email addresses for individual staff members of this foundation are available here. The foundation can also be reached by telephone at (225) 326-7016.
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