Polo Ralph Lauren Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Polo Ralph Lauren Foundation supports disease-related organizations, the environment, global development, disaster relief, women’s empowerment, equity work and soil health.
IP TAKE: This corporate funder has expanded funding spaces in recent years. Though it still prioritizes cancer research, other funding opportunities exist here. This funder also tends to give multi-year grants to large, established organizations, especially for those organization with which it chooses to partner. This is not an accessible or transparent funder. That said, giving has evolved in recent years, so too might the foundation’s accessibility. It will be challenging to get on this funder’s radar without deep network and your own ability to scale work at your foundation.
Another avenue here to get on this funder’s radar is through employee volunteerism and Polo’s Matching Program; however, it is not clear from the foundation’s website how grantseekers may do so other than contacting a Polo employee and networking at the private-level.
PROFILE: The Polo Ralph Lauren Foundation, a corporate foundation, was established in 2001 by fashion designer Ralph Lauren who has a separate, family foundation. It is committed to “make the dream of a better life reality by championing equity and empowering underserved communities around the world.” This corporate foundation has expanded its giving spaces in recent years to include new interests.
Grants for Diseases and Cancer
The Cancer Care & Prevention program features the foundation’s long-standing Pink Pony Fund, which was established in 2001, to “reduce disparities in cancer care and prevention to help ensure that people in underserved communities have access to quality treatment at an earlier, more curable stage.” Since its founding, the center has offered a broad range of cancer related services to patients and their families.
In 2022, The Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation announced that it would provide $25 million in new grant funding to establish or expand five Ralph Lauren cancer centers, aimed at reducing disparities in cancer care and access across underserved communities in the United States.
In 2023, the the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Prevention at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center opened to address disparities in healthcare in Washington, D.C.
The Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care in New York City’s Harlem area has received many multi-year grants.
Other past disease-related grantees include the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
Grants for the Environment, Sustainable Agriculature and Global Development
Polo’s Protecting the Environment program is newly committed to protecting the environment through “collective action” towards water accessibility and sustainability and soil health. While this program focuses on the environmental, it provides some global development grants that specifically relate to the environment. The program strives to make “meaningful progress to protect our planet by partnering with organizations focused on local community needs, including safe water, adequate sanitation and proper hygiene solutions and sustainable cotton development.” Previous environment grantees include partnerships with Dig Deep and WaterAid.
Through Polo’s U.S. Regenerative Cotton Fund, the foundation, since 2021, has partnered with the “Soil Health Institute to launch the U.S. Regenerative Cotton Fund (USRCF), a farmer-facing initiative that will support long-term, sustainable cotton production” in the U.S. by 2026. The Foundation’s founding contribution to USRCF has primarily supported work in four states – Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia, but stay tuned as this may evolve in the future.
Grants for Racial Equity and Women
The Polo Ralph Lauren Foundation doesn’t currently offer much information about its contributions in this area, but funding related to racial equity have so far focused on DEI work, while grants for women have vaguely focused on “empowerment,” which relates to economic development and support.
Grants for Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Aid
Through its Community Resilience program, the foundation broadly invests in disaster relief and aid often through Matching Gift programs or encouraging employee volunteerism,. The foundation stays quiet about funding direction here, but expect this area to evolve in future years.
Important Grant Details:
In a recent year, the Polo Ralph Lauren Foundation gave away over $3 million in grants. Grants generally range from $10,000 to $50,000, and grantmaking tends to concentrate on the greater New York City area, but this is not a hard and fast rule as grantmaking has spread across the U.S.
The Polo Ralph Lauren Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant applications or requests for funding. Although this funder does not impose geographic restrictions on its grantmaking, its tax filings indicate a strong support for organizations located in New York City and its boroughs.
PEOPLE:
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CONTACT:
Polo Ralph Lauren Foundation
1065 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10018
(212) 705-8276
