Flexible Grantmaking Funds
The Foundation makes a limited number of grants to support organizations that are aligned with our mission and advance our priorities at an institutional level within a field, but are not necessarily connected to program strategy. These funds are also intended to encourage cross-program collaboration, initiatives at the margins of strategy, and/or to test new, promising opportunities. Risk-taking and bigger programmatic or cross-programmatic investments are also encouraged through the use of these funds.
New Orleans Fund
In 2008, three years after the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Surdna Foundation created the New Orleans Fund to advance the city’s efforts to improve its resiliency. Projects supported under the fund are aligned with the strategic objectives of our three core program areas: Strong Local Economies, Sustainable Environments and Thriving Cultures. The fund prioritizes groups that are local or are working in direct collaboration with locally led groups, and it gives preference to projects that engage communities that have historically had the least access to power and decision making in the city.
