New York Community Trust
OVERVIEW: The New York Community Trust is composed of over 2,000 separate funds that vary in size, specificity and donor control. The New York City is a clear geographic priority, this funder has expanded its grantmaking nationally and internationally.
IP TAKE: This iconic funder leaves almost no area untouched. The fund’s largest area of grantmaking is New York City K-12 education, which accounts for about 30% of its funding. Other recent areas of strong interest include housing, civic engagement, the environment and work and economic opportunity.
This is a surprisingly accessible funder. The Trust accepts proposals for its competitive grants on an ongoing basis through an online portal. Its grantees range from prestigious institutes and universities to small, neighborhood-based organizations. This is also an approachable and responsive funder that likes to communicate with potential and current grantees.
PROFILE: The New York Community Trust was formed in 1924, when 11 New York City banks banded together to “more effectively make grants from the charitable trusts they held.” Over the years, thousands of New Yorkers have made donations of all sizes to build “a permanent endowment to support the nonprofit organizations that make our city a vital and secure place in which to live and work.” With over $2 billion in assets, the New York Community Trust currently oversees more than 2,000 individual funds of varying degrees of specificity and runs donor-advised and competitive grantmaking programs for New York City, Long Island and Westchester County. The competitive grantmaking program is currently organized thematically into three broad focus areas: promising futures, thriving communities, and healthy lives. While a great majority of the fund’s grantmaking supports New York City area organizations, this funder also does grantmaking nationally and internationally through its donor-advised grants and its environmental grantmaking area.
Grants for K-12 Education
The New York Community Trust’s education funding stems from its promising futures initiative. The overarching goal of the fund’s education grantmaking is to “ensure New York City’s public schools prepare students for success in college and the workforce, and for participating in public life as creative and responsible citizens.” Specific areas of recent interest include research, advocacy and organizing toward greater equity; school transparency and accountability; and improving the city’s middle and high schools through instructional leadership, student leadership, school culture and academic supports. Recent grantees include the teacher development organization Teaching Matters, New Visions for Public Schools and the Fund for Public Schools, each of which received over $1 million in a recent year. Smaller grants have gone to organizations including Chalkbeat, the Foundation for the Public Schools of the Tarrytowns and Sponsors for Educational Opportunity.
K-12 funding also stems from the fund’s youth development sub-initiative, which supports initiatives for low-income teens and young adults. Recent grants have mainly supported leadership, mentoring and out-of-school learning programs, including multiple chapters of Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCAs.
Grants for Early Childhood Education
The New York Community Trust invests in early childhood education through the promising futures’ human services subprogram. Grants aim to improve access to high quality early education and early intervention services for underserved and vulnerable children. One recent grant supported the Northside Center for Child Development, which provides early intervention services to at-risk children and families in Harlem. Other grantees include the Westchester Children’s Association and multiple early education outreach programs at New York’s public libraries.
Grants for Work and Economic Opportunity
Grants for work and economic opportunity stem from promising futures’ jobs and workforce development subprogram. The fund’s strategy in this area includes efforts to train and place job seekers in secure positions; remove barriers to employment for disabled, under-skilled or formerly incarcerated individuals; and to collaborate with employers of various sectors to create talent pipelines and ensure fair wages and safe working conditions. One recent grantee, JobsFirst NYC, used funding to run vocational education programs for unemployed and out-of-school young adults. Another grant supported Long Island’s Viscardi Center, which helps disabled job seekers train for and secure meaningful employment. Other recent grantees include Bernard Baruch College, the Workforce Professionals Training Institute and Invest in Skills NY, which coordinates industry investments in workforce development initiatives throughout the state.
Grants for Mental Health
The New York Community Trust has demonstrated a strong commitment to mental health in New York City and beyond. The trust’s healthy lives initiative names behavioral health as a main area of investment and aims to strengthen the New York City’s behavioral health infrastructure by providing effective skills training to mental health professionals and paraprofessionals. The trust has also supported addiction treatment service and mental health initiatives for vulnerable youth, the elderly and disabled people. Recent grants have gone to the Network for Social Work Management, the Family Service League of Suffolk County, the National Council on Behavioral Health and Safe Horizon, a network of New York providers that support victims of physical and emotional abuse.
Grants for Public Health
The New York Community Trust makes grants for public health through the health and behavioral health subprogram of its healthy lives initiative. Public health funding focuses on interventions that reduce health disparities between low- and high-income communities, as well as the expansion of healthcare safety net services for uninsured and underinsured people. Specific areas of interest include preventative healthcare, effective treatment for diseases and lifestyle, nutrition and exercise programs. Recent grants have supported Cancer Care, Inc., which provides counseling, education and financial assistance to cancer patients in and around New York City, and New York City Health and Hospitals, which runs a broad range of healthcare centers, long term care facilities and home healthcare services. Other grantees include the American Heart Association, the Community Health Care Association of New York State and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
Grants for Disease Research
The New York Community Trust names biomedical research as a focus area of its healthy lives funding initiative. This funding program aims to “help early- and mid-career researchers start projects and gather data needed to apply for larger government or private grants.” The trust names “cancer, heart disease, leprosy and incurable diseases” as specific areas of interest. Recent grantees include the Weill Cornell Medicine.
Grants for Criminal Justice Reform
Justice is a main area of focus of the New York Community Trust’s promising futures initiative. The program’s goal is “to promote a more effective and fair civil and criminal justice system through research and monitoring of practices and procedures in City courts, and advocacy to improve local court practices and procedures.” Current grantmaking aims to support legal nonprofits to adapt to changes in laws and policies and organizations involved in legal protection of New York City’s most vulnerable residents. Grants have also funded initiatives that “help low-income New Yorkers resolve legal problems and thereby improve their quality of life,” including legal issues involving housing, employment and education. Recent grantees include Volunteers of Legal Service, Bronx Legal Services and Legal Services of the Hudson Valley.
The trust also supports criminal justice reform via its youth development subprogram, which names “changing New York’s juvenile and criminal justice systems to produce better outcomes for young people” as an area of priority. In this area, the trust has made grants to the Urban Justice Center and Youth Represent, an organization that helps young people involved with the criminal justice system “reclaim lives of dignity, self-fulfillment, and engagement in their communities.”
Grants for Immigrants and Refugees
The New York Community Trust has demonstrated significant commitment to organizations that work with immigrants and refugees in New York City and beyond. Grantmaking has focused on legal assistance, advocacy, organizing and leadership development programs and is sourced from several different grantmaking programs and subprograms. Past grantees include the Immigrant Justice Corps, which provides free counsel to recent immigrants and trains legal professionals in current immigration law, and New Immigrant Community Empowerment, a New York City organization that offers services, leadership development and community organizing programs to vulnerable immigrant workers. Other grants have gone to the New York Immigration Coalition.
Grants for LGBTQ
The trust supports LGBTQ causes through several of its grantmaking programs and has increased giving in this area over the past several years. One grantee, the SAGE National LGBT Housing Initiative, was instrumental in the development of New York City’s first two affordable LGBT-friendly housing communities for the elderly. Other recent grantees include the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center and the LGBT Network.
Grants for Civic Engagement and Democracy
The civic affairs subprogram of the New York Community Trust’s thriving communities initiative seeks to encourage voting and civic participation, hold local and state governments accountable and promote civic literacy. Recent areas of specific interest have included voting reform, nonprofit journalism, the equitable and balanced distribution of information about candidates and legislation and civic education programs in neighborhoods with low levels of participation. One recent grantee, Community Votes, used funding to run informed voter campaigns in all five boroughs of New York City. Another recent grantee, the New York Civic Engagement Table, helps communities of color address issues racial and economic inequality in New York. Other grants have supported the Long Island Civic Engagement Fund and the Long Beach Latino Civic Association.
Grants for Housing and Community Development
The New York Community Trust makes grants for affordable, transitional and emergency housing through its promising futures and thriving communities programs. The promising futures initiative supports “proven and promising” interventions that decrease homelessness and help people build stability and independence. The community development subprogram of the thriving communities initiative, meanwhile, aims to preserve affordable housing and to maintain and expand housing for elderly and disabled people. In a recent year, the trust supported Nazareth Housing, an organization that provides supportive housing to vulnerable New Yorkers, and Neighborhood Housing Services of Brooklyn, which works to preserve affordable housing and offers homeowner and financial education programs to residents. Grants have also gone to the New York Housing Conference, the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation, the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Council of New York and the Supportive Housing Network of New York.
Grants for Arts and Culture
The trust’s thriving communities initiative runs an arts and culture subprogram with a strong focus on increasing diversity in the arts and broadening access to artistic and cultural experiences. Other interests include strengthening the capacity and management of arts groups that serve all five boroughs of the city, arts education and talent development and advocacy for the arts in local, state and federal policies and budgets. Past grantees include the Queens Museum, NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, Chamber Music America, Flea Theater, Bushwick Starr, IndieSpace, Harlem School of the Arts, National Black Theatre, Dance/NYC, Urban Bush Women, and People’s Theatre Project.
The trust also funds fellowships for arts organizations that “identify, train and support young people” from historically underrepresented groups through the Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund and its affiliated fellowship program. Established in 1991, this program has awarded over $25 million in pre- and post-college level fellowships at over 100 New York City arts organizations. The fund refines its areas of focus yearly; potential applicants should check current RFPs to explore opportunities.
Grants for Environmental Conservation and Climate Change
While the New York Community Trust has traditionally supported conservation programs in New York City, it broadened its scope to regional, national and international projects in 1996, with the establishment of the Henry Phillip Kraft Family Memorial Fund. Within New York City the fund aims to help New York become “a climate-smart metropolis,” to improve community health through environmental intervention and to protect existing ecologies in the city. Recent areas of focus have included the reduction of air pollution, reducing the risk of exposure to toxic substances and the protection of wetlands and waterways. Grants have supported the Central Park Conservancy, the City Parks Foundation, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance and the New York League of Conservation Voters Education Fund.
The trust’s national conservation funding strategy includes support for efforts to mitigate and build resilience to climate change and to protect communities from harmful pollutants. A significant portion of the trust’s national conservation grants have remained in the Northeast, with grants going to the Clean Energy Group of Vermont, and the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.
International conservation funding is limited to only a few grants each year, focusing on improving global environmental health, protecting biodiversity and reducing greenhouse gasses. Grantees include the Environmental Defense Fund.
Grants for Animals and Wildlife Conservation
The New York Community Trust’s healthy lives program names animal welfare as a priority for its grantmaking. This program focuses on wellbeing and health of domestic animals in New York City and elsewhere in the Northeast. Grantees include New York City Audubon, Bideawee, and Animal Care Centers of New York City, among others. Through its local and national environmental subprograms, the trust funds organizations involved in the conservation and protection of wildlife and biodiversity. Recent grants have gone to the National Audubon Society and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Important Grant Details:
Through its more than 2,000 managed funds, the New York Community Trust awards more than $150 million in competitive grants each year. Most grants are awarded in amounts of up to $200,000, with an average grant size of about $90,000. The largest of the trust’s three grantmaking areas is the promising futures program, from which grants for K-12 education in New York City are sourced. In recent years, other substantial areas of giving include housing, the environment, civic engagement and initiatives for work and economic opportunity.
The New York Community Trust accepts proposals on an ongoing basis for its competitive grantmaking programs via its online system. Application guidelines are available on the website. Materials are generally submitted through the trust’s application portal, and applicants are notified of decisions via email within a six-month time frame. The trust also posts information about RFPs for special projects on its grants portal and RFP pages. For general inquiries, see the contact page.
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