OVERVIEW: The Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation supports grassroots organizations working across intersecting issues of racial, gender, economic, environmental and Indigenous justice.
IP TAKE: This funder prefers to make general support grants rather than project specific grants, and encourages requests for funding to address multiple priority issues. It’s not an accessible or approachable funder, despite its previous responsiveness. However, Noyes explicitly describes its philanthropy as relationship-centered, and its new president spent 2026 prioritizing direct relationships with its grantees.
The Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation’s assistance comes in the form of Grantmaking and Investing. While its grants provide mostly unrestricted multi-year general operating support, its investments seek to support companies that can provide a financial return while still working towards goals aligned with the foundation’s mission. The foundation’s screening process ensures it does not work with companies who are “profiting from harm,” such as tobacco companies, weapons manufacturers, or fossil fuel concerns. It should also be noted that Noyes does not historically fund NARAL Pro-Choice America or Planned Parenthood affiliates, but this could change in the future.
More than ever, Noyes displays an explicit interest in Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous-led organizations. It’s also worth noting that Noyes’ current strategy emphasizes people’s ability to exercise rights and participate in democracy, despite lacking a formal democratic defense program. The best fit is likely a BIPOC-, women-of-color- or Indigenous-led organization located in New York or Mississippi; or, a strategic national movement partner connecting local organizers.
PROFILE: Real estate developer Charles Noyes founded the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation in 1947 as a memorial to his late wife. The foundation’s earliest work fought to end school segregation and promoted educational equality for black students. Over time, its grantmaking expanded to address issues such as the environment, social justice, reproductive rights and food systems. Today, the foundation has shifted away from its previous funding silos to form a more intersectional approach that supports “grassroots organizations and movements in the United States working to change environmental, social, economic and political conditions to bring about a more just, equitable and sustainable world.”
The foundation’s funding priorities involve reproductive justice, racial justice, environmental justice, economic justice and Indigenous sovereignty that represent intersecting themes, not separate formal programs.
- Social Justice Grantmaking is the principal grant program.
- Investing for Impact is a separate mission-aligned investment strategy.
Grants for Public Health, Women and Girls
The foundation’s work supports women’s and girls’ organizations that seek to protect and expand access to reproductive health services and information.
- Areas of interest include expanding state-level reproductive rights agendas to ensure that marginalized populations are engaged in the advocacy and protection of their reproductive rights, broadening the base of reproductive rights activists, and expanding the reproductive rights agenda to include a wider range of issues.
- While the foundation prioritizes reproductive rights, it also supports related matters, such as violence against women.
- Noyes’ beneficiary populations include, but are not limited to, young people, low-income populations, people of color and immigrant populations.
- Past grantees include Black Women for Wellness and National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.
While reproductive rights are the main focus of the foundation’s public health grantmaking, it also supports related matters such as violence against women. It should also be noted that Noyes does not fund NARAL Pro-Choice America or Planned Parenthood affiliates.
Grants for Racial Equity and Indigenous Rights
The Noyes Foundation builds racial equity into its grantmaking process. It supports “people-powered nonprofits working to advance social justice on multiple, intersecting fronts.”
- It funds community-based grassroots organizations that are led by “Black, Indigenous, and people of color,” and approach systems of power “through the lenses of race and gender justice.”
- It prioritizes organizations that take an intersectional approach to social justice through race, gender, and sexuality.
- Some past grantees that focus on racial justice include the YP100 Education Fund, Black Love Resists in the Rust, Citizen Action, Mississippi Black Women’s Roundtable, Mississippi Votes and People’s Advocacy Institute.
- Additionally, some of the Foundation’s largest recent grants involve Indigenous sovereignty, culture and language preservation, land and environmental justice, healing, movement infrastructure and community power.
- Major Indigenous justice-oriented grantees include NDN Collective, Native Voices Rising, Indigenous Environmental Network, Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom School, Seven Dancers Coalition, and Ohero:kon–Rites of Passage.
Grants for Economic Development
Noyes funds worker organizing, tenant power, community ownership, alternative economic models and efforts to shift control over land and capital.
- Recent examples include the New Economy Project, Street Vendor Project, Worker Justice Center of New York, Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights and Higher Purpose.
- The Black Farmer Fund received $40,000 in 2024. Noyes describes its work as building alternative, community-driven investment vehicles for Black farmers and food systems.
Grants for Climate Change and Environmental Justice
Noyes’ mission includes environmental sustainability, and its current grantmaking strategy includes environmental justice.
- Recent grantees include Indigenous Environmental Network and Clean Air Coalition of Western New York, which organizes communities affected by pollution and former fossil-fuel infrastructure.
- This is environmental justice and community powered funding, not conventional conservation grantmaking.
Important Grant Details:
Grant awards typically range from about $10,000 to $75,000. Select grants reach six figures. In a recent year, this funder gave $2,806,500 in total grants.
- To learn more about the types of organizations supported by the Noyes Foundation, explore its current grants list.
- It prioritizes organizations in New York City and the entire state of New York, where the foundation is based, as well as in Mississippi, but facilitates grantmaking across the United States.
- The Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation no longer accepts unsolicited proposals.
- Direct general inquiries to the foundation at hello@noyes.org.
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