2010 program Updates
Dear Colleague:
Over the past two years, the staff and board of the Mitchell Kapor Foundation have engaged in “learning by doing” through our support of organizations working on specific environmental, elections, and education issues. Through these most valuable connections, we’ve been able to learn about the respective movements that we seek to participate in and support.
Back in early November 2009, I shared on the Foundation’s blog that “In trying to maintain the equilibrium between our capacity, our interests, and the revenue available for grantmaking and programs (which was cramped by the economic recession, of course), this may mean that we work with fewer organizations over time toward a commonly-identified goal. As a matter of fact, all of the supplementary research and thinking that we’ve done thus far supports that strategy.”
After recently completing our six month strategizing process, our board and staff together have indeed decided to work with fewer grant recipients. At the core of our grantmaking will be “key partner organizations,” those whose work is most closely aligned with our own as determined by a number of variables. Because of the scope of our work and size of our budget, we aren’t able to make multiyear grants, but we want to be clear about our intention to establish ongoing relationships with these key partners in our three core program areas: Green Access, Voting Integrity and Civic Engagement, and the College Bound Brotherhood.
We are in the process of determining who those key partner organizations will be. There is no application or request to complete at this point; we will reach out to organizations individually using information from our strategizing process. We hope to have key partner decisions made by February 1, 2010, and will notify everyone at that time.
In addition to working with key partners, we will still have a general request for grants, but will fund far fewer requests. Most of these grants will support one-time, special opportunities and efforts, namely convenings and tech-related work.
Additionally, we have incorporated other feedback that we learned from your final reports, conversations, and our program evaluation. We will offer small technical assistance grants and space usage. We have simplified our online application and reporting to make both clearer and simpler to complete. We have revised our website navigation so that information is clearly stated. We invite you to check out our website, www.mkf.org, for more information.
As we move forward into this new year and decade, we remain an eager partner in helping to build equity, access, and fairness for communities of color.
Please feel free to contact any of us with questions. Best wishes for a peaceful and prosperous 2010.
Cedric Brown, Director
