Mission

It is our mission to support our customers, colleagues and communities by helping them achieve their aspirations and helping their communities thrive. This shapes our work as a responsible corporate citizen. We deliver high-impact funding and initiatives that support people, businesses and non-profit partners so that together, we can make a meaningful difference in the world.

Democracy

Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Democracy program supports civic integration of immigrants. The program also supports the protection of voting rights and promotes voter participation of all citizens. We work to foster a fair, diverse, and vibrant democracy that welcomes and offers opportunities to all.

Focus Areas

Alliance Building

The Democracy program strives to build alliances that bring together a left-to-right spectrum of viewpoints on civics, citizenship, and immigration, while reflecting America’s long tradition of acceptance and respect for newcomers of all nationalities, cultures, and religions.

Pluralism, the belief in one nation made up of many peoples, has been essential to U.S. democracy from the beginning. The Democracy program’s support for alliance building is based on this belief. Our goal is to bring a wide range of pro-immigrant voices into the immigration debate from across the political spectrum during a time of deep polarization, when it is even more crucial to recommend bipartisan solutions to immigration reform, election administration, and voting rights. For example, the Corporation’s support has fostered successful teamwork among members of the business, faith, law enforcement, government, and other key communities to advocate for the value of immigrants and immigration.

Field Building

We support national nonprofit groups that educate, coordinate, and strengthen a field made up of locally based organizations dealing with challenges to democracy, immigration, voting, and related issues. These challenges result from the dearth of effective federal policies needed to promote and protect the civil and human rights of all people in the United States.

Threats to democracy and civic engagement exist in all corners of the country. State and local governments wield tremendous power in the United States, especially in areas not addressed by the federal government. For example, a patchwork of state and local laws attempts to deal with an immigration system that is in crisis. To establish a strong field that can take on numerous challenges to our democracy, the Corporation funds national organizations such as NEO Philanthropy, which houses funder collaboratives like the Four Freedoms Fund. Another grantee, the State Infrastructure Fund, working across a majority of states, has helped build a diverse network of smaller associations that advocate for policy improvements at the local, state, and federal levels.

Policy Development

The Corporation funds original research on important issues, including voting rights, voter participation, immigration, citizenship, and the census, in order to improve federal and state policies regarding immigrant integration and civic engagement.

A strong U.S. democracy depends on government policies developed on the basis of robust nonpartisan research. Corporation-funded research has, for example, shown that mass deportation would cost $285 billion to arrest, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants in the United States. By contrast, reforming the entire U.S. immigration system would add $1.5 trillion to the economy over 10 years. Another study funded by the Corporation analyzed the impact of nonpartisan voter engagement to groups that tend to have low turnout on Election Day. This research showed an overall 12.5 percent increase in voting rates due to this direct, meaningful outreach, resulting in a 19.1 percent increase in turnout for Hispanic voters, a 13.1 percent increase for African Americans, and a 4.2 percent increase for Asian Americans. 

Strategic Communications

The Democracy program’s support for strategic communications is designed to promote intelligent, unbiased, nonpartisan news coverage to deepen public understanding of civic issues like voting rights, voter engagement, immigration, and the census.

A vibrant democracy must have what Thomas Jefferson called the “fourth branch” of government: an independent press capable of keeping citizens informed. Strategic communications, along with the other pillars of our program — alliance building, field building, and policy development — ensures that our message is shared in a thoughtful way, nationally and regionally, reaching communities across the country to build support and momentum for immigration policy changes and the protection of voting rights. 

Nonpartisan Voter Engagement and Voting Rights

Engaged citizens — those who care about and work to preserve our democracy — help ensure that government policies reflect the concerns of constituents. A democracy, by definition, gives eligible citizens the right to vote for their elected representatives.

Carnegie Corporation of New York’s commitment to citizenship and voting rights began with our founder Andrew Carnegie, who stated, “Along with the freedom to pursue wealth and happiness, the greatest gift the American Republic has to bestow is citizenship.” Carnegie also believed that, in return for this gift, citizens have duties. For more than a century, the Corporation has consistently emphasized both the rights and the responsibilities of citizenship. The Democracy program provides strategic, ongoing support to organizations that promote nonpartisan voter engagement, especially among groups with traditionally low levels of voting or with less access to information about government. Compared to other democracies, voter participation in the U.S. is comparatively low, even in recent years when voter turnout has been higher than usual. For example, 55.7% turnout in 2016 put the U.S. in 26th place among the 32 developed countries. With barriers to voting on the rise (e.g., complex voter registration requirements and cutbacks in early voting), large-scale efforts to protect voting rights and encourage voter engagement at the federal and state levels are of critical importance.

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation promotes the advancement and perpetuation of humanistic inquiry and artistic creativity by encouraging excellence in scholarship and in the performing arts, and by supporting research libraries and other institutions which transmit our cultural heritage.

The programs of the Foundation reflect the interests and patronage of its founders, Gladys Krieble Delmas and Jean Paul Delmas.

Humanities Program

The Foundation intends to further the humanities along a broad front, supporting projects which address the concerns of the historical studia humanitatis: a humanistic education rooted in the great traditions of the past; the formation of human beings according to cultural, moral, and aesthetic ideals derived from that past; and the ongoing debate over how these ideals may best be conceived and realized.

Programs in the following areas are eligible: history; archaeology; literature; languages, both classical and modern; philosophy; ethics; comparative religion; the history, criticism, and theory of the arts; and those aspects of the social sciences which share the content and methods of humanistic disciplines. The Foundation welcomes projects that cross the boundaries between humanistic disciplines and explore the connection between the humanities and other areas of scholarship. Programs of institutions in Venice relating to the humanities are eligible in this category. (Individuals seeking research grants for work in Venice should see Venetian Programs.) 

Performing Arts Program

During 2021 and 2022, the Foundation suspended its usual guidelines and open-door policy for grant applications. For 2023 the Foundation has restored its traditional open-door policy for requests and welcomes new applications that fit within our guidelines. However, it is important that all applicants be aware that the Foundation receives many more requests for support than it could ever fund, and for that reason most first-time grant applications are not successful.

The Foundation only supports not-for-profit performing arts organizations in NYC in the fields of music, dance and theatre. Only publicly supported organizations described in section 501(c)3) of the Internal Revenue Code should apply. The Foundation does not make grants to fiscal agents for the benefit of individual artists, special initiatives, start-up projects or emerging organizations that are not already tax exempt and publicly supported or to development campaigns or building projects.

The Foundation has a special interest in supporting:

• Ballet and modern dance companies and the presenters who make the work of these groups available to the public and otherwise provide support to the dance field.
• Theater companies and presenters that have demonstrated a commitment to include the classics in their regular offerings.
• Music groups and concert presenters committed to making early music or contemporary repertory available to New York City audiences.

Research Libraries Program

The Research Libraries Program concentrates primarily in those areas of its founders’ interests and aims to be fully complementary to the Foundation’s other program areas (i.e., humanities scholarship, performing arts, and Venetian history and culture).

The overall objective of the Research Libraries Program is to improve the ability of research libraries to serve the needs of scholarship in the humanities and the performing arts, and to help make their resources more widely accessible to scholars and the general public. Wherever possible, grants to libraries seek to promote cooperative cataloging projects, with an emphasis on access to archival, manuscript, and other unique sources; some elements of interpretation and exhibition; scholarly library publications; bibliographical and publishing projects of interest to research libraries; and collection-level preservation/conservation work and research.

Small-scale digitizing is eligible for support when the process is part of a clearly defined and timely scholarly project that incorporates recognized standards for metadata production, for preservation, and for distribution. The Foundation does not support massive digitizing projects of a general nature.

In general, awards are made for single-year, and not multi-year, projects. Very rarely does the Foundation support endowment campaigns, and then only where the objectives are clearly focused and very closely aligned to Foundation purposes.

NYCT: Healthy Lives

We help providers deliver efficient, patient-focused, equitable, and cost-effective health and behavioral health services to all New Yorkers. We support projects that develop the skills and independence of four groups of people with special needs: the elderly, the blind or visually impaired, children and youth with disabilities, and people with developmental disabilities. We also support biomedical research and projects for animal welfare. 

Funding Areas

Health and Behavioral Health

Program goal: to promote an equitable, patient-focused, and cost-effective health and behavioral health care delivery system.

Grants are made to:

• Advocate for successful health care reform implementation to ensure:
• maintenance of a strong and viable health and behavioral health care safety net;
• access to comprehensive and coordinated care for those who remain uninsured or underinsured; and
• availability of screening, early intervention, and referral for effective treatment of disease.
• Build the capacity of New York City’s health, behavioral health, and human service sectors to succeed in a reformed health care system by:
• developing effective skills training for the professional and paraprofessional health care workforce; and
• strengthening financial and information technology systems to allow transition to value-based payments.
• Reduce health disparities between low- and higher-income neighborhoods through investments in disadvantaged communities that:
• improve indoor and outdoor air quality;
• provide safe and inviting parks and open space;
• promote access to affordable and healthy food; and
• engage residents in efforts to encourage physical activity and healthy diets.
• Foster the independence of people with mental illness and substance use histories by:
• expanding innovative programs that offer clinical care as well as practical services, such as housing, employment, and education; and
• advocating for expansion of participant-led or informed service models that are sustainable and effective.

People With Special Needs

The Trust has a coordinated approach that reflects the common challenges and opportunities for four groups of people with special needs: the elderly, children and youth with disabilities, people with blindness and visual disabilities, and people with developmental disabilities. We support projects that target low-income individuals and communities.

Grants are made to:

• Make New York City communities—especially those that are under-resourced—accessible, welcoming, and inclusive for people with special needs by:
• supporting research and pilot efforts that demonstrate these principles; and
• ensuring that laws that fund services and expand opportunities are implemented fully and effectively.
• Ensure that health, social, education, and vocational services allow people with special needs to live up to their fullest potential by:
• supporting and replicating proven strategies that help these populations receive appropriate education, high quality vocational preparation, and equal employment opportunities;
• testing new approaches that use technology and other innovations to help people with special needs remain as independent as possible; and
• supporting families and caregivers of people with special needs.
• Build the capacity of nonprofits serving people with special needs by:
• ensuring the workforce serving these populations is provided effective training, better career pathways, and increased job quality;
• helping agencies create appropriate financial and management systems, and partnerships to benefit from new financing mechanisms through Medicaid and Medicare.

KearnyBank Foundation

Supporting our community by supporting the important work done by you.

The KearnyBank Foundation is dedicated to delivering meaningful support to the organizations that make our communities better.

Through financial grants and the hands-on efforts of our own employees, together we improve the lives of our friends and neighbors throughout the communities we serve.

We sincerely believe it is our duty and responsibility as a corporate citizen to help build a brighter future for us all. Through the KearnyBank Foundation we support the important work done by so many organizations and groups helping the disadvantaged, the young, sick, elderly and more. We help with financial grants but also through the hands-on efforts of many of our employees who are committed to improving lives throughout the areas we serve.

The Foundation focuses on organizations who are:

• Education — Providing literacy, financial literacy, higher education, and youth outreach.
• Housing — Addressing the urgent need for affordable housing, positive neighborhood development and emergency housing.
• Community Betterment (Arts, Culture, Stewardship) — Enhancing our lives through the arts, social programs, local improvements and the understanding of the responsibilities of citizenship.
• Quality of Life — Helping senior citizens, veterans, the disabled or seriously ill including hospice care and end of life family support.

NOTE: The Sills Family Foundation does not accept unsolicited applications and limits its grants to organizations that we invite to apply. However, we do not discourage you from sharing your ideas with us. If you would like the Sills Family Foundation to consider supporting a program that fits our goals and mission, please send a brief description of the project and contact information where we can learn more.

The Sills Family Foundation’s primary grants program intends to help children from low income families live up to their highest promise by concentrating on the following four areas:

Comprehensive Services to Families in Crisis: 

With a special focus on families impacted by incarceration

The Sills Family Foundation has a major focus on programs that support families impacted by the criminal justice system. We partner with programs that work to strengthen the parent/child bond during incarceration through facilitating transportation for prison visits, creating child-sensitive visiting areas in correctional facilities, providing parenting education classes to incarcerated parents, as well as supporting families through the re-entry period. This effort extends to addressing the inequities in the bail system, preventing juvenile detentions, and providing high quality legal services to low income populations.

In considering the rehabilitative opportunities so rarely provided to incarcerated individuals, the Foundation supports higher education and arts programming inside correctional facilities. The Foundation has begun to play a role in deepening policy makers and service providers’ capacity in this field. The Sills Family Foundation is proud to be a member of the NY Initiative for Children with Incarcerated Parents, as well as the New York Youth Justice Initiative.

Support to Underserved Communities: 

Through improved access to early education and reduction of neighborhood violence

Low income neighborhoods and schools experience a disproportionate amount of school suspensions, violence, arrests and damage to the community through involvement in the criminal justice system. We support programs that seek to intervene in this destructive cycle and help young people stay on the path to success.

Early education can make a world of difference in how a child goes on to succeed in school, work and life. This is especially true for children challenged by poverty, homelessness and other forms of trauma. Children who start kindergarten behind their peers may continue to face problems throughout school. Getting kids off to a good start is critical to their future.

We are committed to high-quality education experiences that help children live up to their highest potential. We want to improve chances for all children to succeed in life through access to education, early intervention and family supports such as mental health counseling and job skills classes for their parents.

Programs Supporting Immigrants, Refugees and Asylees

We believe all human beings have the right to pursue their dreams of building a better home for themselves and their families, and that newcomers to the US should have access to necessary legal, educational, and material needs.

Environmental Justice

With a focus on contaminants that harm the developing embryo, fetus and infant

Toxic chemicals are released into our environment every day. Children consume pollutants in their food, air and water, their toys, candy, even baby bottles. These hazards can cause serious health problems, ranging from asthma and cancer to brain impairment and behavioral problems. They take a greater toll on the most vulnerable: pregnant women, fetuses and children.

We want to protect families from lead, mercury and other toxic compounds. The foundation supports organizations that embrace the ideals of environmental justice and that protect against poor communities carrying a greater share of the toxic burden. We invest in programs that work to reduce pollutants in our air, water, food and homes so that the minds and bodies of our infants and children stay healthy and strong.

Arts and Culture

Arts education and other creative opportunities to support underserved populations

Arts and cultural activity can provide people of all ages important tools of self expression, can open paths to new forms of communication and can strengthen self esteem. We believe that high quality arts programming in schools, community centers and senior centers can be a powerful tool of social justice. The Foundation seeks to support culturally sensitive collaborations between teaching artists, educators and community leaders to bring the positive power of the arts to under-resourced schools and communities.

NOTE: You may submit a proposal anytime. The deadlines above indicate that applicants can expect a decision on their grant application as described here.

Promising Futures

Our grants build promising futures by helping young people thrive; providing job training and placement; making our educational and justice systems work for everyone; alleviating hunger and homelessness; improving family and child welfare services; and advancing the practice of social work. 

Focus Area: Youth Development

Program goal: to help young, low-income New Yorkers up to the age of 24 overcome obstacles and succeed in life and careers.

Grants are made to:

• Expand leadership opportunities for disadvantaged young people, especially through organizations that:
• have a record of creating programs in communities or operate in a minimum of three public school campuses;
• keep diverse groups of young people engaged;
• work with young people for at least three years; and
• create a role for young people to influence public policy, promote racial equity, or achieve meaningful community improvements.
• Expand or improve employer-driven youth workforce programs that:
• create career pathways in higher wage sectors (e.g. healthcare, technology, hospitality);
• expand internships for young people who are attending school, and those who are unemployed;
• help low-skilled youth get an education, and get job skills by providing training, placement, and post-placement services; and
• improve the City’s career and technical education system.
• Expand the capacity of youth development organizations by:
• supporting intermediaries that provide training, streamline services, improve industry hiring practices, or change public policies; or
• training staff that work with youth to use best practices in leadership development, employment, and nonprofit management.
• Promote policy reforms on issues that affect young people, such as:
• changing New York’s juvenile and criminal justice systems to produce better outcomes for young people; or
• creating better programs that engage and encourage employers to hire less-skilled youth of color.

History

Emma Elizabeth Barnsley was born on December 10, 1926 in Crane County, Texas and grew up in the areas of Crane, Midland, and Odessa, Texas. She moved to New York City as a young woman where she spent most of her adult life. Ms. Barnsley had a deep love for animals of all kinds. It is because of this passion she established the Emma Barnsley Foundation for the purposes of the prevention of cruelty to animals and the study, care, protection, and preservation of animals, both domestic and wild, and their environment. Ms. Barnsley passed away on August 1, 2007 in New York.

Mission

The mission of the Emma Barnsley Foundation is to promote the prevention of cruelty to animals and for the study, care, protection, and preservation of animals, both domestic and wild, and their environment.

Giving

The Emma Barnsley Foundation awards grants exclusively for charitable, scientific, and educational purposes as follows:

• To aid and assist in the prevention of cruelty to animals, both domestic and wild.

• To aid and assist in the care, protection and preservation of animals, both domestic and wild, and the environment in which such wild animals may live.

• To provide scholarships for deserving young men and women to assist them in the study of veterinary medicine at any institution of higher learning in the state of Texas.

• To assist institutions of higher learning in the state of Texas in the operation and maintenance of courses of study in veterinary medicine and in the study of animals and animal life.

• To assist in research projects involving ecological, environmental, and wildlife studies, provided no funds shall be given to any organization utilizing animals for research or experimental purposes if such animals are in any way harmed, mutilated, intentionally inflicted with disease or any substance causing disease, or if such animals are killed in the course of such research.

NOTE: Unsolicited requests should be in the form of a letter of inquiry. Solicitations will be accepted throughout the year and grants issued at convenient intervals thereafter. Solicitations received after October 31st will be held for consideration the following year.

Philosophy & Mission

The F. M. Kirby Foundation aims effectively to manage and utilize that which has been entrusted to it over multiple generations of the Kirby family. It strives to make thoughtful and prudent philanthropic commitments to highly selective grantee partners. The goal is to invest in opportunities that foster self-reliance or otherwise create strong, healthy communities.

The Board of Directors recognizes that achieving its philanthropic aspirations takes time, effort and perseverance that often result in sustained funding relationships.

The F.M. Kirby Foundation is a family foundation. Its grantees are largely in geographic areas of particular interest to five generations of family members and, in many cases, are organizations with which family members have been associated.

Scope

The F. M. Kirby Foundation is a family foundation. Its grantees are largely in geographic areas of particular interest to five generations of Kirby family members and, in many cases, are organizations with which family members have been associated. Successful new applicants tend to be organizations already well known to one or more of the directors of the Foundation, and/or other members of the family.

Programmatic Areas of Interest

The F. M. Kirby Foundation donates to organizations within 8 major funding program areas, listed below with brief descriptions:

Arts, Culture, & Humanities

Funding in Arts, Culture, and Humanities includes performing arts centers and programs, cultural community arts development, historical and educational museums, and fine art museums.

Education

The Foundation’s Educational interests include family alma mater support, equitable educational access, school choice, special education and educational support services, civics and history education, and programs fostering entrepreneurship.

Environment & Animals

Areas of interest in Environment and Animals include land conservation and stewardship, environmental law/advocacy organizations, and environmental community development.

Health

Cancer research, neuroscience and neurodegenerative disease research, Type I Diabetes research, and general biomedical research are all included in Foundational research interests. Also included in Health funding is support for medical centers in geographic areas of interest.

Human Services

Support in Human Services includes emergency and disaster services, child protection and domestic violence support, homeless services, food pantries, housing assistance programs, drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, mental health services, adoption, health services, cancer support services, youth and family development programs, physical and cognitive disability services, veteran affairs, and community development.

Public Affairs & Society Benefit

Public policy areas of interest include higher education reform, drug and alcohol prevention policy, sexuality and reproductive health and rights, democratic capitalism, free enterprise think tanks, individual rights and free speech policy, immigration reform, and public news media support.

Religion

The F. M. Kirby Foundation provides support for select religious organizations and churches that are of familial special interest.

Mutual Membership Benefit

The F. M. Kirby Foundation belongs to several membership organizations that serve the non-profit and philanthropic sector.