Women protesting with arm held up

Amalgamated Foundation Expands Its Scale and Impact to Meet the Challenges of 2020

February 1, 2021
By
Anna Fink

Together, we moved $60 million to the frontlines of social change
Collectively, our community of individual donors, foundations, corporations, and activists made more than $60 million in resources to the field, a six-fold increase from the $9 million we granted in 2019.  Responding to the crucial issues of 2020, we granted:

  • $36 million to democracy and racial justice
  • $10 million to worker’s rights and economic justice 
  • $4 million for climate justice and the environment  
  • $36 million to Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) led organizations

Essential workers are the focus of our COVID pandemic response
As the COVID crisis became an increasing threat to vulnerable communities, Amalgamated Foundation worked with partners across corporate America, tech philanthropy, and the nation’s largest philanthropic institutions to launch the Families and Workers Fund which directs resources to essential workers and an equitable recovery, spearheaded in partnership with the Ford Foundation, Schmidt Futures, and the Open Society Foundations.

New partners join our growing community
After only our second year of full operation, the Foundation is now home to more than 100 funds and projects, including individual donor advised funds and a growing number of Combined Impact Funds that bring together multiple funders for collective impact. Those funds support an array of issues and strategies including Black-led organizing, housing access, economic justice, Native women’s leadership, expanding democracy, and more. Our diverse partners include major foundations like the Ford Foundation, Libra Foundation, Open Society Foundations, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; family philanthropies and individuals; and corporations of conscience. 

As contributions increase to $85 million, we remain focused on our mission 
We launched the Foundation not to become asset managers, but to move resources to social change and we are doing just that. In 2020, the Foundation received in $85 million in contributions, more than four-times the $22.5 million we received in 2019. This remarkable growth in contributions has been matched by the resources we are moving to the field. In 2020, our grantmaking dollars and other field-supporting expenditures exceeded $60 million.