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The Kresge Foundation’s grantmaking continues to seek a balance between responding to the immediate hardships arising from the economic downturn and the longer-term challenges of addressing enduring social, environmental, and economic problems. At its second-quarter board meeting in June, Trustees awarded 73 grants totaling $26 million for nonprofit organizations in 23 states, the District of Columbia, and Ireland.

“We want to help move the needle and alleviate some small measure of human suffering now by supporting organizations that are working on the frontlines to assist those most affected by the downturn in the economy,” says Elaine D. Rosen, chair of the Board of Trustees.

Grants were made in Kresge’s six fields of interest – human services, health, arts and culture, education, community development and the environment. In each field, awards were made to provide short-term relief while also contributing to the build-out of the 85-year-old foundation’s strategic objectives.

“At the same time we seek to buttress these lifeline organizations,” says Rip Rapson, president of the foundation, “we have to bear in mind that the underlying challenges they face pre-existed the economic recession and will continue once economic conditions improve.”

“In each of our fields of interest,” he continues, “we work steadily to chip away at some of the most intractable problems affecting low-income and vulnerable populations. At the same time, there is a palpable urgency to our efforts as we take immediate action to assist those individuals and communities hardest hit by the recession. As in past quarters, the grants awarded in June reflect this.”

Human Services: Food, shelter, and emergency assistance

Food banks, homeless shelters, legal outreach and child-support services were the primary recipients of Kresge’s awards in the human services field.

Anticipating a 12 percent increase in demand for food in Arizona, St. Mary’s Food Bank Alliance in Phoenix received a $1 million grant. The nation’s oldest food bank (founded in 1967), it currently works in partnership with 500 human service organizations at 700 sites – domestic violence shelters, senior centers, churches, and transitional housing facilities, among others – to distribute nearly 45-million pounds of food annually, including to 25 Kid’s Cafes, food centers that provide meals to youngsters eligible for free or reduced school-lunch programs. St. Mary’s saw a 36 percent increase in the number of meals delivered in November and December 2008 in comparison to the same period in 2007.

MUST Ministries, which received a $500,000 grant, provides housing to those in need of shelter in metropolitan Atlanta. The organization offers emergency shelter for those needing short-term assistance – up to six weeks – as well as transitional housing for up to six months, and permanent shelter for the chronically homeless, many of whom are mentally or physically disabled. “The grant funding will contribute to an overall expansion effort to increase much-needed services,” explains Rapson, “including increasing the number of beds available, expanding the health clinic, establishing a food bank and clothes closet, and offering employment training.”

Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, a San Francisco-based firm offering legal, social and educational services in 13 languages, helps residents of some of the poorest neighborhoods in the greater bay region in the areas of elder abuse, domestic violence, immigrant rights and youth violence protection. A grant of $130,000 will contribute to the organization’s efforts to expand their reach to other underserved areas where language barriers prevent access to needed services.

Health: Environmental quality and health-care delivery

Kresge’s Health Program has focused its grantmaking in three areas: fostering safe, healthy places for vulnerable populations to live, work and play; supporting health-care safety-net institutions in underserved urban and rural areas; and exploring, testing and promoting new methods for improving the health of those living in poor and low-income neighborhoods.

The Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy illustrates Kresge’s work in promoting healthy environments. The organization, which received a $300,000 grant, works to improve environmental conditions that contribute to poor health as well as increase access to employment, quality health care, and fresh foods, among other measures. Kresge’s grant will go toward efforts to reduce truck emissions in the neighborhoods adjacent to the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach – the nation’s two busiest ports, handling 40 percent of container shipping in the United States. Almost 44 percent of the families living in the Long Beach area live below the federal poverty level and have disproportionately higher rates of respiratory disease and cancer.

HealthNet, a federally qualified health center in inner-city Indianapolis, is a network of five primary-care health centers, an obstetrics and gynecology center, a pediatric/adolescent-care center, eight school-based clinics and support services. With a $250,000 grant from Kresge, the nonprofit plans to expand into a nearby facility in order to more efficiently serve its 50,000-plus clients – men, women and children – 74 percent of whom live below the federal poverty level.

With a $500,000 grant to the Medical Legal Partnership for Children, a national health-care/legal intervention model based at Boston Medical Center, Kresge is helping the program grow its operation and plan for its long-term sustainability. Medical Legal Partnership consists of 80 partnerships in 160 hospitals and health centers and exemplifies an emerging and promising practice.

“This organization is transforming the delivery of primary care to low-income children and their families,” Rapson says. “They have found that many health problems, such as asthma, need legal as well as medical attention. They bring lawyers and other legal services into the clinical setting to help address the social and environmental factors that influence health.”

Arts and Culture: Supporting artists, promoting community engagement

With a $300,000 grant to the Cultural Development Corporation in Washington, D.C., Kresge is investing in an organization that creates affordable housing and studio space for artists, offers technical, business-management advice to arts and cultural organizations and artists trying to earn a living from their work, and operates two facilities that provide affordable rehearsal, performance, exhibition and administrative space for individual artists and arts and cultural organizations.

“Grants to organizations such as the Cultural Development Corporation are always necessary,” Rapson continues, “because arts and culture are an essential component of community life. In times like these, supporting the arts is absolutely essential – they are community assets that offer hope in times of distress.”

A $600,000 grant to the Erie Art Museum in Erie, Pennsylvania, was made for the same reason. The museum, which attracts more than 40,000 visitors a year, nurtures community engagement through its exhibits, art classes, lectures and concerts. It also supports arts organizations and local artists, leads a jobs-training program for refugees, and offers Kids as Curator, its largest educational program teaching urban, rural and suburban middle-school children how to curate, interpret, design and install exhibits that are tied to science, language arts and other academic subjects. Seventy-five percent of all visitors and program attendees at Erie Arts participate free of charge.

In other fields, awards were made to environmental organizations working to advance energy efficiency, higher-education institutions and community development organizations. Twenty-five grants were made in Michigan, predominately in the metropolitan-Detroit area, the home of the Kresge Foundation.

Here is a list of grants approved in the second quarter of 2009:

(The list includes current and future planned grants.)

For more information, contact Cynthia Shaw, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or
call 248-643-9630.