Robin Hood Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Robin Hood Foundation is dedicated to supporting New Yorkers in need. Its four main funding initiatives are early childhood and youth, education, jobs and economic security, and survival. It also runs special initiatives to address specific challenges in New York’s low-income communities.
IP TAKE: The breadth of the Robin Hood Foundation’s work with nonprofits serving the poor in New York City is impressive, but grantees give this funder mixed reviews. One review recommends having “an arsenal of data when dealing with the foundation,” while other reviewers have indicated that the foundation is “culturally incompetent” and “inadvertently exert[ing] negative influence in the field.” Nevertheless, it is a crucial source of funding for the city’s smaller and startup human services organizations.
With very few exceptions, funding stays in the five boroughs of New York City. Robin Hood tends to make grantmaking decisions in collaboration with large panels of experts in the foundation’s areas of interest; knowing someone who consults with the foundation may be one way to gain Robin Hood’s attention. Grant inquiries are accepted on an ongoing basis through the foundation’s application portal.
PROFILE: Established in 1988, the Robin Hood Foundation makes grants to eliminate poverty in New York City. Its founder is Wall Street veteran Paul Tudor Jones, and its board is comprised of financial industry heavy hitters including Glenn Dubin, Ken Tropin, Daniel Och, Anne Dinning and John Griffin. Robin Hood was one of the first grantmakers to respond to the COVID-19 crisis in New York, and it made rapid response grants to organizations working with residents who were most affected.
The foundation currently names four main areas of grantmaking interest: early childhood and youth, education, jobs and economic security, and survival. It also runs special initiatives in response to pressing needs in New York City. The foundation’s current special initiatives include a signature Poverty Tracker, the Fund for Early Learning, the Learning and Technology Fund and Blue Ridge Labs, which invests in the development of equitable social technology. It also runs a the Relief Fund related to COVID-19 recovery.
Grants for Early Childhood and K-12 Education
Grants for early childhood and K-12 education stem from the foundation’s childhood and youth programmatic area, as well as two special initiatives: the Fund for Early Learning and the Learning and Technology Fund.
Robin Hood’s early childhood and youth funding supports early childhood education and services for New York City’s most underserved communities, while its youth and education grantmaking has recently focused on educational opportunity, leadership and high performing public, private and charter schools throughout the city.
The foundation partnered with the NYC Mayor’s office to create the $100 million Childcare Quality and Innovation Initiative, which works to repair the damage caused by the pandemic on child care programs across all five boroughs of New York City.
Other grantees in early childhood and K-12 education include South Asian Youth Action, Harlem Children’s Zone, KIPP New York, Children's Defense Fund, and Achievement First.
The Robin Hood Foundation also runs a special initiative, the Fund for Early Learning. Led by board members Jackie Bezos and John Overdeck, this initiative consults with over 80 leaders in early childhood education and related fields to improve “language and social-emotional competencies” among New York’s poorest children. The fund’s three-pronged approach to giving focuses on strengthening existing successful programs, creating partnerships with communities and city agencies and “catalyzing innovation and acceleration for scalable programs.”
Grantee partners of this initiative include the Mayor’s Children’s Cabinet and the Montefiore Hospital System’s Healthy Steps Program.
Another special initiative, the Learning and Technology Fund, represents a $40 million, multi-year investment in “the potential of technology to transform learning and advance achievement for low-income students across New York City.” The program’s two areas of focus are blended literacy and computational thinking. Blended literacy investments support classroom technologies that support reading and writing in K-8 classrooms, while computational thinking grantmaking works mainly in teacher education, with the goal of creating “a pipeline of teachers who are equipped to teach students how to think, solve, and create with computers in order to learn any subject better.”
Grantee partners of the Learning and Technology Fund include Teaching Matters, CenterPoint Education Solutions, Project Tomorrow and the National Academies of Sciences.
Grants for Housing and Homelessness, Community Development, Food Systems, Work and Economic Opportunity
Support for housing, hunger and economic opportunity stem from the foundation’s jobs and economic security and survival programs, as well as its Poverty Tracker initiative.
Robin Hood’s grantmaking for jobs and economic security targets low-income areas and offers support to organizations working to eliminate employment barriers. The foundation does not articulate specific goals for its grantmaking in this area, but grants have supported CUNY community colleges, as well as Brooklyn Workforce Innovations and the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute.
The survival program funds basic needs, housing and health, with an overarching goal of helping individuals and families become economically secure. Grants have gone to organizations including Grant Street Settlement, Rethink Food NYC, City Harvest, CASA, Food Bank for New York City, Good Shepherd Services, Henry Street Settlement, and the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Association.
Robin Hood partnered with Columbia University in 2012 to create Poverty Tracker, a long-running quarterly study that follows the same 4,000 New York City households for several years and analyzes more than 40 variables including health, mental health, hunger, work and more. While Poverty Tracker is not a grantmaking program per se, a significant portion of Robin Hood’s grantmaking for poverty has responded to the programs findings.
Created in 2020, Robin Hood’s Power Fund supports nonprofit leaders of color and, in the words of Robin Hood’s CEO, Richard Buery, seeks to “get resources and funds to the highest-performing, best-led, most effective nonprofit organizations in New York City.” Funded organizations must address “the interplay of racial injustice and economic injustice in their work.” It accepts LOIs here.
Grants for Immigrants and Refugees
While the foundation does not have a specific program focused on immigrants, tax records show an interest in improving outcomes for marginalized New Yorkers, including immigrants. Seven-figure gifts have gone to the Chinese American Planning Council and Charles B. Wang Community Health Center. Other grantees working with New York City’s immigrant communities include the Sanctuary for Families, Upwardly Global and the Legal Aid Society.
Grants for Humanitarian and Disaster Response, Diseases
Robin Hood has an emergency relief fund that has only been activated a few times in the history of the foundation. It supported response to the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and to Super Storm Sandy in 2012. The foundation is perhaps best known for its 12-12-12 Concert for Hurricane Sandy Relief, a foundation-sponsored, nationally-televised event that featured numerous celebrity musicians. Robin Hood raised more than $70 million to benefit Tri-State families affected by that storm.
Most recently, Robin Hood’s COVID-19 Relief Fund has provided more than $83 million in operating support and emergency cash relief to organizations working across all five boroughs, emphasizing organizations working on the front lines and those working with high-risk populations. Past grantees include the AIDS Center of Queens County, New York Disaster Interfaith Services, and West Side Center for Community Life.
Other Grantmaking Opportunities
Robin Hood’s Blue Ride Labs supports fellowships, social enterprises and research concerning “tech-based, community-driven solutions to address real-world problems of people experiencing poverty.” The fellowship program supports researchers, designers and creators of products and services that have the potential to solve problems related to poverty. The specific focus of the fellowship changes each year; recent cycles have focused on children’s health, architecture and internet access. The catalyst sub-program invests in “early-stage social tech ventures” that have the potential to improve the quality of life of low-income people in New York City. Blue Ridge Labs also collects qualitative data on technology use through its Design Insight Group, which pays people small sums to share insights and and experiences in interviews and focus groups.
Finally, Robin Hood runs a Grant Readiness and Insight Training program that assists New York City and tri-state nonprofits and their staff members with professional, capacity building and strategic skills development through a cohort-based program that runs each year in May.
Important Grant Details:
Robin Hood grants range from $5,000 to over $3 million.
Grantmaking is limited to New York City, with very few exceptions.
The foundation does not have an endowment; instead, its board covers all operating expenses so that every dollar they raise goes directly to supporting New Yorkers in need.
The money the foundation raises each year determines what it’s able to grant out the following year.
This funder accepts grant inquiries via a brief form on its website, but full proposals are accepted only by invitation.
Some of Robin Hood’s special initiatives run separate application programs, which are linked to individual program pages.
Eligibility, guidelines and due dates vary by program.
For additional information about past grants, see Robin Hood’s Who We Fund page.
General inquiries may be directed to foundation staff via email or telephone at 212-227-6601.
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