OVERVIEW: The Surdna Foundation is a racial and social justice-focused funder with a history going back to the early twentieth century. Surdna’s grantmaking centers on economic development and justice, environmental and climate justice, criminal justice reform, the arts and culture.
IP TAKE: Surdna is a highly influential funder that backs long-term efforts to advance racial, social, economic and environmental justice. Along with its traditional grantmaking programs, Surdna is a proponent of impact investing, cross-sector collaboration, leadership development and other strategies to achieve its goals. In an interview with Inside Philanthropy, Surdna president Don Chen said the foundation has a reputation for “punching above its weight, for being a first mover, for really making bets on promising individuals, promising leaders who are just starting out.”
Because it does not accept unsolicited inquiries, grantseekers should focus less on submitting cold proposals and more on building visibility within the foundation’s funding networks. Many of Surdna’s grants flow to established national and regional organizations, regranters and collaboratives, making relationships with current grantees and peer funders especially valuable. Organizations that demonstrate deep community partnerships, policy or systems-change expertise, and leadership by those most affected by inequity will be the strongest prospects. Surdna also has a history of making early investments in emerging leaders and innovative approaches, so organizations with compelling new models and strong evidence of impact may find opportunities through trusted referrals and field recognition.
PROFILE: The Surdna Foundation was established in 1917 by John Emory Andrus. Andrus was a businessman who founded the Arlington Chemical Company, which manufactured and distributed popular medications in the late 19th century. He later became the mayor of Yonkers, New York and served in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Surdna Foundation is steered by his descendants.
The foundation’s mission is “to foster sustainable communities in the United States — communities guided by principles of social justice and distinguished by healthy environments, inclusive economies, and thriving cultures.” Its main grantmaking programs are Inclusive Economies, Sustainable Environments and Thriving Cultures, each of which conducts grantmaking through a social justice lens.
In addition to the foundation’s three grantmaking programs, Surdna engages in criminal justice reform grantmaking through the Andrus Family Fund, which is legally a fund of the Surdna Foundation but “manages its own grant making program and processes.” According to its website, the Andrus Family Fund “supports the self-determination, power and liberation of Black, Brown, AAPI and Indigenous youth impacted by the youth justice, child welfare and other disruptive systems.”
The Andrus Family Fund is one piece of the Andrus Family Philanthropy Program, a unique Surdna project launched in 2000 to engage and involve the larger Andrus family, “particularly its younger generations, in philanthropy and public service.” Separately from the Surdna Foundation, Andrus descendants helm other foundations and nonprofits, including the Helen Andrus Benedict Foundation, the Andrus on Hudson eldercare facility, and Andrus, which provides human services to vulnerable families in Westchester County, New York .
Grants for Work and Opportunity
Surdna’s Inclusive Economies program “fosters the creation of an inclusive and equitable economy in which people of color can maximize their potential as leaders, creators, and innovators across sectors.” Giving stems from two subprograms.
Business Start-up and Growth focuses on business development in communities of color, including programs that provide equitable access to capital, accelerators and support networks for entrepreneurs of color.
Past grantees of this subprogram include Minneapolis’s Metropolitan Economic Development Association, the Black Innovation Alliance and the Boston Impact Initiative Fund.
Equitable Economic Development grantmaking supports the inclusion of “community voice” in economic policy and decision making, as well as efforts to increase the number of “quality jobs” in communities of color.
Grantees of this subprogram include the Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers University, the Partnership for Southern Equity, Activest and the Aspen Institute, which received funding for its Economic Opportunities and Latinos and Society Programs.
Grants for Environmental and Climate Justice
Surdna’s Sustainable Environments program also emphasizes BIPOC and “low-wealth communities” in policy and interventions to advance climate justice, climate resilience and an equitable clean-energy transition.
A subprogram for Environmental and Climate Justice supports a just and equitable transition to clean energy in “communities most impacted” and emphasizes grassroots organizing, problem solving and power building.
Surdna also works to increase funding from other sources to “frontline and grassroots organizations and movements with a racial equity lens.”
Grantees include the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, the Center for Coalfield Justice and Northeastern University, which received multi-year funding for programs that “address energy challenges” and “empower U.S. communities and policymakers to create an equitable clean energy system.”
- A second subprogram, Land Use Through Community Power, invests in efforts to “increase community control, ownership and stewardship of land and infrastructure.”
- Grants from this focus area tend to support advocacy, civic participation and efforts that build community ownership and decision-making power over land and infrastructure.
- Past grantees include the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, the Detroit People’s Platform, Stand Up Nashville and Minnesota’s Right to the City Alliance, which received a grant to “meet the moment given heightened attacks on community members.”
Grants for Arts and Culture
The Surdna Foundation’s Thriving Cultures initiative places artists of color at the center of a movement to “cultivate a racially just society.” This program names three “interconnected” approaches to its giving: create, clarify and connect.
- Create grants mainly support regranters that, in turn, support artists of color whose work engages communities as they build “racially just systems and structures at local scale.”
- Clarify grants support “researchers and cultural critics of color” who produce and share knowledge about the work of artists of color and its role in the pursuit of social justice.
- Connect refers to the efforts of artists and their communities to shape policy, social narrative and philanthropic practice toward racial justice.
- Grantees of the Thriving Cultures program include Chicago’s Threewalls gallery, The Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, Los Angeles’s Center for Cultural Innovation and Chicago’s Open Television, “a platform for intersectional television, with artists and their creative visions at the center.”
Other Grantmaking Opportunities
The Andrus Family also conducts philanthropy through a collection of affiliated Andrus family philanthropies.
- The Andrus Family Fund supports social justice organizations that involve vulnerable and underserved youth.
- The Andrus Family Philanthropy Program works to engage younger members of the growing Andrus family in philanthropy and service.
- The Helen Andrus Benedict Foundation makes grants to support the elderly of Westchester County, New York.
- Andrus on Hudson is a nursing home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, that receives ongoing support from the family.
- Andrus, also based in Westchester County, is a “private non-profit community agency” that offers children’s and family services for “healthy, stable lives.”
Important Grant Details:
Surdna’s recent grants have ranged from about $2,000 to $2.9 million, although most grants stay under the $1 million mark. The foundation awards roughly $60 million to $65 million in grants annually.
- Grantmaking is national in scope and prioritizes organizations led by and serving Black, Indigenous and other communities of color.
- This funder conducts all of its giving through a racial justice lens, and a significant portion of its grants go to advocacy, policy and organizing efforts.
- The Surdna Foundation is not currently accepting unsolicited letters of inquiry.
- For information about its past grantmaking, see the foundation’s grantee database.
- This funder does not provide an email address for general inquiries, but its phone number is (212) 557-0010. Social media accounts are linked to the bottom of the website, and the team page offers bios of its staff members.
PEOPLE:
Search for staff contact info and bios in PeopleFinder (paid subscribers only).
LINKS:
Last updated on