New at the Foundation
EMCF Launches Competition for Social Innovation Fund (SIF) Grants
Update: Meeting our Nov. 1 deadline, 225 organizations throughout the U.S. submitted online applications in EMCF’s nationwide competition to identify nonprofits that are delivering transformative services to disadvantaged youth, that have demonstrated their programs’ effectiveness (or are close to it), and are poised for growth. A two-phase selection process is now underway. Matching our $10 million SIF award with $10 million from our own endowment, we expect to announce 8-10 recipients of multi-year grants in March 2011.
Read Nancy Roob's latest column on EMCF's SIF initiative, An Unprecedented Opportunity, and her interview with Independent Sector.
See EMCF and the SIF Opportunity to learn how EMCF will select grantees.
Making the Most of the Future
The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation's 2009 Annual Report is now available, with updated reports on grantees' performance and latest projections. In addition, in her annual letter Making the Most of the Future, EMCF President Nancy Roob explains how the steps EMCF took "to preserve the gains we have helped grantees make over the last ten years" are positioning the Foundation and its grantees to take advantage of emerging opportunities to expand "what works" and benefit more of the nation's low-income youth.
In the Spotlight
Movie Casts EMCF Grantees in Supporting Roles
A new documentary film about the crisis in American public education by Davis Guggenheim, Oscar®-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth, features two EMCF grantees. Waiting for "Superman" interviews Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, and Steve Barr, Founder and Chair Emeritus of Green Dot Public Schools, about the challenges of providing educational opportunities to economically disadvantaged children in New York and Los Angeles, respectively.
HCZ and Green Dot are two of 16 current EMCF grantees seeking to improve the educational skills and academic achievement of low-income youth. Mounting federal, state and local deficits, high and rising rates of poverty and unemployment, and an ever more competitive global economy make it imperative to enable more disadvantaged young people to achieve their full potential in the classroom so they can achieve their full potential in their careers and lives.