How Funders Can Better Support Puerto Rico After Hurricanes
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Painted Puerto Rican flag in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in 2017. Steve Heap/shutterstock
Hurricane Fiona just left 80% of Puerto Rico without power and dealing with flash flooding and mudslides. The devastated 3.2 million people who live on the island — for reference, that’s similar to the populations of Utah and Iowa, and exceeds those of 19 other states — are U.S. citizens. And while the U.S. poverty rate is 13%, for Puerto Rico, it’s 43%; the unemployment rate is also double that of the rest of the U.S., making it nearly impossible to escape poverty. Natural disasters like Hurricanes Fiona and Maria before it, earthquakes, the COVID pandemic, and a decade-plus-long recession have only made the economic landscape more challenging, especially for women, girls and non-binary people, who have fewer resources and advocates.
Yet across the board, Puerto Rico receives proportionally less funding from U.S. foundations. Grants specifically for women and LGBTQ+ causes are on average four times higher to Iowa and to Utah than to Puerto Rico, even though we all have the same population size.
As feminist funders, we understand what’s standing in the way of getting the needed funds to Puerto Rico — and what will create true, lasting opportunities, especially for women and LGBTQ+ people. Here’s how foundations can better support Puerto Rico:
Don’t wait for a disaster
Hurricane Fiona hit almost to the day five years after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017. That crisis killed over 4,600 people, cut off electricity for months, destroyed or damaged over 320,000 homes, caused $94.4 billion in infrastructure damage, and wiped out about 80% of the island’s agriculture. Thankfully, we saw an influx of philanthropic funds like never before, both from institutional and individual philanthropy, to help people on the ground access clean water, food, medicine, generators, and temporary housing.
Of course, providing direct services to the most vulnerable groups is critical at the moment, and it was beautiful to see new organizations that had never worked with Puerto Rico make their first grants here. Several years after Maria made landfall, foundations like the Hispanic Federation and the Ford Foundation are still committed, but many other funders during the crisis have moved on — and Puerto Rico is still dealing with ongoing economic challenges and the hurricane’s lasting consequences for our infrastructure, education and society. While we estimate funders sent $81 million right after the disaster, giving to Puerto Rico has since dwindled to $30 million in 2021 and $1.8 million so far for 2022.
It is a well-known fact in philanthropy that organizations can’t create effective change with one- or two-year donations; that can staunch the bleeding, but not restore lasting health. Puerto Rico needs to be a part of the regular, ongoing grantmaking portfolios of U.S. foundations, in the same way there is no questioning when national foundations make grants anywhere else in the U.S.
Pick a portfolio
Many large foundations don’t know how to categorize Puerto Rico. Should it be part of the North American portfolio, or the Latin American one? Should it be domestic, even though it’s not a state? Or international, even though it’s part of the U.S.? Just pick the portfolio that makes sense for your grantmaking and fund. Don’t let a lack of agreement over our category be the reason we’re left behind.
To quickly reach organizations on the ground, trust local intermediaries
In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, we saw that donors sought to give to locally, with national foundations and community foundations based in the U.S. using local foundations and organizations — such as La Red de Fundaciones FORWARD Puerto Rico Fund, the Puerto Rico Community Foundation’s Puerto Rico Community Recovery Fund, and Banco Popular Foundation’s Embracing Puerto Rico Fund, among others — as funding intermediaries. Organizers on the ground in Puerto Rico understand the nuanced social-economic issues we urgently need to address and the small, vetted orgs doing the work that provide the best return on investment. By trusting and listening to us, we can facilitate pass-through funding or share where we recommend you invest. Funding intermediaries also allow for rapid-response grants to small organizations that may not have current capacity to manage large grants.
Specifically fund reproductive care
When women have equal access to education and employment opportunities, communities thrive; a major predictor of a woman’s economic trajectory is whether she can choose to access birth control and abortion. Puerto Rico’s abortion laws are more progressive than those of many U.S. states and ensure women’s rights over their own bodies. Nevertheless, those rights are under attack, and laws don’t provide the funds for women to access healthcare or support the organizations that provide these types of services.
Unfortunately, women’s health is not well supported in Puerto Rico, and the only women’s foundation is small and critically underfunded. Foundations that support the LGBTQ+ community are funded even less. Often, foundations fund maternal health but not reproductive health, including abortion care. Profamilias and Taller Salud provide these essential healthcare services in Puerto Rico, but unless you donate directly to them or specifically earmark funding for these critical health services, women and the children they’re forced to have will stay trapped in generations of poverty.
Please consider donating today to the Puerto Rico Women’s Foundation’s Emergency Fund to support women-led organizations at the forefront of the rescue efforts. Hurricane Fiona has Puerto Rico in the news and on people’s minds right now, but we don’t want to have to wait for the next hurricane or other disaster to get philanthropy’s attention. Puerto Rico needs and deserves the continued support to strengthen and expand existing impactful organizations, foster innovative approaches, and continue to make meaningful change.
Verónica Colón Rosario is the Executive Director of the Fundación de Mujeres en Puerto Rico (the Puerto Rico Women’s Foundation). Elizabeth Barajas-Román is the President & CEO of the Women’s Funding Network, the world’s largest philanthropic alliance for gender equity.
