Surdna and Andrus Award Grants to Build Next Generation of Social-Justice Philanthropy
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
February 9, 2018 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Surdna Foundation and the Andrus Family Fund want to help build the next generation of social-justice donors — and they’re putting $800,000 toward that goal.
Surdna, a family foundation, created the Andrus Family Fund in 2000 as a way to get younger relatives, ages 25 to 45, involved in philanthropy. Now they are awarding two-year grants to 21 organizations across the country that train and support young philanthropists who seek to promote racial, economic, and social equity.
Generation X and millennial donors want to do more than just give, says Leticia Peguero, executive director of the Andrus Family Fund. They want to get involved with the causes they care about, meet grantees, and make a difference today.
“They want to participate in philanthropy now, not when they’re 80 and retired,” she adds.
Learning From One Another
Some of the nonprofits that have won grants, like the North Star Fund in New York and the Headwaters Foundation for Justice, run giving projects that bring together donors from an array of races and socioeconomic classes to learn about social-justice issues and decide where to give collectively.
Other grantees, such as the Association of Black Foundation Executives, the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, and the Third Wave Fund, work to build donor networks among groups that have been historically underrepresented in philanthropy.
Surdna and Andrus, created by the chemical magnate and investor John Andrus, hope to bring representatives from all the organizations together later this year to learn from one another.
“Though they all seem to know each other — this group works with that group and this other group with this other group — very rarely are they in the same room at the same time,” says Peguero.
The work that the organizations are doing have the potential to shape philanthropy for years to come, she says: “As we think about the next 10, 15 years, these are the folks who are going to be the trustees at foundations, potentially running foundations.”
