All of us at North Star Fund are proud and excited to launch our new grantmaking program - a comprehensive strategy that works with groups at every stage of their development, from start-up to seasoned.

North Star Fund developed our new guidelines over the past year with input from all our stakeholder groups - grantees, donors, Board, staff, and Community Funding Committee members. For more information about the development of the new guidelines, click here.

Click here for more information and application instructions

Application Deadline:
September 15, 2010 at 5 PM

There are three types of grants that you may apply for in the Fall 2010 cycle:

• Grassroots Action Grants
• Movement Leadership Grants
• Grassroots Strategy Grants

To find out more information about the new grantmaking guidelines and how to apply, please click here.

Apply Now

Each year, the NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund offers a grant to an innovative, start-up nonprofit that is addressing a major social problem facing New York City. VPF members vote to determine the area of focus for each year's grant. Past areas of focus for the grantmaking have included poverty and the environment. The grant consists of a cash award, as well as pro bono consulting services provided by VPF members. In 2010, the VPF grant will be awarded to an organization working to improve education in New York City.

North Star Fund provides donor advised services to NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund, so that they can fulfill their philanthropic objectives while leaving the administrative record keeping to us. To learn more about North Star Fund's donor advised services, click here.

The deadline to apply is September 17 at 5 PM. For more information and how to apply, visit the NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund website at www.nycvpf.org.

Read more about NYC Venture Philanthropy's relationship with North Star Fund on our Community Blog.

For our spring grant cycle, we awarded $250,000 to 26 groups. Eight of those are first-time grantees: Bronx News Network, Brooklyn Movement Center, Right to the City NYC, Committee for Transit Workers' Rights, Jahajee Sisters, New York City Community Garden Coalition, New York State Youth Leadership Council, and New Sanctuary Coalition of New York.

Click here to see the entire list.

North Star Fund is proud to announce the release of the RFP for the Greening Western Queens Fund. The Greening Western Queens Fund is a new $7.9 million initiative to invest in energy-efficiency and environmental projects in the Western Queens community affected by the July 2006 electric power outage.

The Greening Western Queens Fund seeks to support projects that will result in tangible, physical and visible improvements to the Long Island City, Woodside, Sunnyside, and Astoria areas.

To find out more information about the Greening Western Queens Fund, the boundaries, and the funding priorities please click here.

Application deadline: Wednesday September 8, 2010 by 5pm

Apply Now

In celebration of these victories and as the second installment of a three-part series of workshops about mission related investing, North Star Fund will host this Proxy Season Wrap-Up Webinar along with Confluence Philanthropy and co-sponsors As You Sow and the Environmental Grantmakers Association. The webinar is geared for individual donors and the trustees of foundations, and/or those responsible for structuring board decisions about asset management.

The webinar will take place on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at the following times depending on your location:

• 3:00 - 4:00 Eastern Time
• 2:00 - 3:00 Central Time
• 1:00 - 2:00 Mountain Time
• Noon - 1:00 Pacific Time

To learn more and to apply to register, please click here

For over thirty years, North Star has been investing in community organizations that are creating positive, sustainable change on the ground, where it matters most. It carries out its investment through an activist-led grantmaking process.

Although I now teach law school, my formative professional experience was in civil rights litigation. I became a civil rights lawyer because I saw the law as a medium for social change. I became involved with North Star because I understand and appreciate that meaningful social change begins at the community level. I started as a donor. The former board chair, Arva Rice, recruited me to join the board in early 2006.

Now, four years later, I'm still involved as a board member. I'm consistently impressed by North Star's dedication to progressive community building. The staff is committed, smart, innovative, and forward-thinking.

In my capacity as a board member, I try to be a bridge between North Star and the communities that I interact with the most, which tends to be social justice lawyers and legal academics. This means connecting people who have progressive values to North Star's work by encouraging them to donate, to attend events, or sometimes even to become boardmembers themselves.

I tell them that North Star deploys resources quickly and strategically -- where they are needed most, and where they will have a lasting impact. But North Star does more than just fund grassroots groups; it cultivates diverse leadership through skills-building workshops for community leaders. It connects people across the city who are building social movements.

To make those connections, you need to be informed and you need to be available. North Star Fund knows what's happening at the grassroots level all over New York City. And North Star Fund is an approachable foundation, available for groups that are new and urgent, as well as established groups with many impressive victories. That's why I give.

North Star Fund is pleased to announced that we awarded United States Social Forum travel grants to 36 organizations. In total, we awarded $30,000 to 13 organizations.

The groups used these funds for support members and leaders of grassroots social justice organizations in New York City to attend the gathering, which took place in Detroit, Michigan from June 22-26, 2010.

Here is the list of organizations that we funded:

• Adhikaar for Human Rights and Social Justice
• Communities Voices Heard
• DAMAYAN Migrant Workers Association
• Domestic Workers United
• Families for Freedom
• Families United for Recial and Economic Equality (FUREE)
• La Union
• Make the Road NY
• Mothers on the Move
• Movement for Justice in El Barrio
• New Immigrant Community Empowerment (NICE)
• People's Production House
• Picture the Homeless

Eligibility

• You are eligible to apply if you are a current or prior grantee of North Star Fund.
• Preference will be given to organizations working in coalition to provide for affordable travel options for their members, staff and leaders.
• Grant size will be based on factors such as the number of constituents transported and budget size of the applying organization.

How to apply

In 1 to 2 pages, please answer the following (do not exceed the page limit):

1. Are you a current grantee of North Star Fund or prior grantee?
2. What do you hope to accomplish through your organization's (or coalition's) participation in the US Social Forum?
3. How will attendance at the US Social Forum strengthen your organizing work in New York City?
4. The background of your organization and the amount of your total annual expense budget (one paragraph).
5. Please provide a short budget of your transportation costs and needs.
6. What other resources do you have available to offset travel costs?

Please include a copy of your 501(c)(3) letter, even if you have provided it to us before.

Send 1 copy of the application, along with your 501(c)(3) letter, to:

North Star Fund
Attn: cori schmanke parrish
520 8th Avenue, Suite 2203
New York, NY 10018-6656

PROPOSALS ARE DUE NO LATER THAN 5pm ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 26, 2010.
NO EMAIL PROPOSALS WILL BE ACCEPTED.

What if I still have questions?

Contact cori schmanke parrish at 212-620-9110 or cori@northstarfund.org.

To download a copy of the RFP, click here.

From the 2010 Community Gala Program

Women on the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH) is being recognized [with the North Star Fund Frederick Douglass Award] for its achievements in empowering currently and formerly incarcerated women to bring about changes in public policy and perception of incarcerated women, and in the process, transforming their own lives and the lives of their families.

WORTH began in 2003. "From the beginning we were a nontraditional organization. We looked around and we didn't find any other leadership development or policy organization that was run by formerly incarcerated women. We recognized that we would probably be the first one, and we saw what an impact we could have," said Tina Reynolds, Executive Director of WORTH and a formerly incarcerated mother. "What we wanted to do was dispel the myth that formerly incarcerated women could not speak to or make change happen through legislation."

WORTH partnered closely with the Correctional Association of New York to work on the Anti-Shackling Bill. "We find it really important to partner with other organizations to move our issues forward," Tina said. "Through our work with CA, we were able to bring in more formerly incarcerated women to meet with legislators and share their stories from a place of power, and to involve themselves in the process of legislative change."

More on WORTH from the Community Blog

• Rapid Response, Huge Impact: Paterson Signs Anti-Shackling Bill by Hugh Hogan
• WORTH Pushes to Stop the Shackling of New Mothers by Tina Reynolds

I'm from New York. I grew up in Manhattan, on the Upper West Side and  have lived in the Village for 35 years.

In late 1978, Martin Bunzl, one of North Star Fund's co-founders, approached me to become part of a new initiative to have young people with money get together to fund social and economic change in New York, with the idea of having the grant-making decisions made by the people who were active in the community. I thought it was a terrific idea. I started going to meetings, and in 1979 we created the North Star Fund. It was an interesting group of people, full of energy, commitment to social change and quite diverse. After an initial period  of active participation in North Star, including some time on the Board,  I've stayed involved as a donor ever since, making a gift almost every year-- and I participate in events whenever I can.

The one steady stream that has followed me throughout my life is the desire to improve peoples' lives in one way or another.  My association with social and economic change goes back to high school and college, when I was active in the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I went to Oberlin, which was a center  of anti-war activism, and was involved in demonstrations and the education of students and faculty.

For the last 25 years, my work has  been focused on housing development and housing related issues. I worked for the Cuomo administration for 11 years,  developing housing for homeless people around the state and left when the administration changed. For the past 14 years, I've been at the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, where I'm responsible for the programmatic side of the agency's operations, including our housing portfolio.

Thirty years ago, we had a vision of creating a place where grassroots organizations could go for help. In addition to being a funding source, we wanted to be a center for New Yorkers who are interested in social and economic change to network and to be a general resource. Since then, other foundations have sprung up that are focused on individual areas of activism and community organizing. But North Star remains unique in New York as a kind of umbrella organization for community activists. The organizations that North Star has funded over the years, and the kind of work that North Star continues to  support, is what the founders envisioned.

There are very few places where grassroots organizations that are starting out or still growing can go to for support--whether it's financial support or technical assistance or networking. This is especially true for organizations that are pursuing causes that are controversial or not universally popular. I know that there have been times when I haven't agreed with the policies or positions of some of the organizations that have been funded--but hasn't changed my commitment to the organization. I feel passionately about North Star Fund and have remained a donor from Day One because North Star is unique in funding such a diversity of community activists.

There is a strength in numbers. It is critical for the continuation and growth of progressive politics in the city, the national, and the world that North Star Fund continues to be able to support grassroots organizations in the many ways that it does.

On April 7, the week before Tax Day, members of Wealth for the Common Good along with North Star Fund and other co-sponsors will initiate a new public conversation about  financial success, taxes, and the vibrancy of  local communities. The occasion will be "Leveraging Privilege," an evening co-sponsored by Wealth for the Common Good, North Star Fund, Business for Shared Prosperity, Institute for Policy Studies, North Star Fund, Resource Generation, Third Wave Foundation, Wealth for the Common Good, Adam Blank, Bill Lyons, Jason Franklin and Eric Schoenberg.

• Jamie Johnson, Born Rich filmmaker and Vanity Fair blogger
• Eric Schoenberg, investor and Columbia Business School professor
• Chuck Collins and Alison Goldberg, Wealth for the Common Good founders

The speakers will talk about how philanthropic leaders can help promote progressive tax reform as an alternative to the 'Tea Bag' anti-tax movement.

The event will be held in North Star Fund's offices.The event times are 5:30 to 8:00 pm. The program will begin at 6:00.

Who Should Attend

This event is geared to business leaders and members of households with incomes higher than $235,000 who are interested in working with others to promote shared prosperity and fair taxation. Staff of other non-profit organizations that are working for progressive tax reform are also welcome to attend.

Click here to register to attend, and learn how those of us in the philanthropy world can leverage billions of dollars toward issues we care about by speaking up for fair tax policies.

Even though it's sometimes hard to believe, change is possible. And I trust North Star Fund to make change happen, even during the rockiest times.

In 1979 the city was still recovering from the fiscal crisis of 1975. In its wake came a financial restructuring that put bankers in charge of allocating crucial social services. Budget cuts hit low income communities first and hardest. North Star Fund founding donors responded, creating a ground-breaking and much emulated model for social justice philanthropy.

Says Lucy, "I remember asking another founding donor, why Dykes with Tykes? That was the nickname for Lesbian Mother Custody Center, an early group we funded that worked to ensure custody rights for lesbian mothers. Without missing a beat, she responded, 'Children are being taken away from their mothers, and whoever the big foundations are ignoring--that's who we want to support.'"

Lucy Winton saw the issue of healthcare from the inside. She says, "I became a paramedic in 1980 for the city of New York because I wanted to serve humanity in an intimate way." Lucy encountered antiquated systems, aging hospitals, disaffected staff--all the consequence of years of disinvestment. "The 911 system was a truly scraggly operation. Sometimes I get together with old friends from the system and we tell war stories."

In 1979, the city released a plan to close two hospitals in Harlem--Sydenham Hospital on the west side and Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem. Lucy says, "North Star Fund jumped into the fray. Among the very first grants we gave went to community groups organizing to stop the closings."

Says Lucy, "The hospital part of Sydenham did close in 1980, but not without a fight. And a 1981 North Star grant helped a team of progressive health care workers set up a walk-in clinic there." The other hospital slated for closing, Metropolitan, stays open to this day, serving the community of East Harlem.

Lucy Winton has been giving steadily to North Star Fund over the past three decades, along with several other founding donors. "It's important to me to give to grassroots groups that would otherwise get overlooked. North Star Fund finds them and supports them better than anybody."

The landscape of healthcare organizing has changed since 1980. But North Star Fund continues to fund groups working for equitable healthcare delivery. Recent grantees include NYC AIDS Housing Network and Rights for Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities.

North Star Fund still moves resources quickly and efficiently to support leaders emerging from the communities directly affected by poverty and other forms of marginalization. Because we know that the most sustainable, most workable solutions come from the experience of people directly affected working with advocates, lawyers, faith leaders and activists.

This profile is from our 2008 annual report.