Media Inquiries – Members of the media should contact liv@spitfirestrategies.com or call 212-557-0010 with all inquiries, including requests for interviews with the Foundation’s staff.
Surdna Boilerplate – The Surdna Foundation seeks to foster just and sustainable communities in the United States— communities guided by principles of social justice and distinguished by healthy environments, inclusive economies, and thriving cultures. For over five generations, Surdna has been governed largely by descendants of John Andrus and has developed a tradition of innovative service for those in need of help or opportunity. Learn More.
Logo – The Surdna Foundation’s logos may only be used by organizations that receive funds from the Foundation for such items as printed literature, signage, exhibits and displays, publications, interactive media, websites, sponsored program literature, joint publications, letterhead, news releases and/or announcements. Permission to use the Foundation’s name and/or logo by other organizations including vendors must be requested by contacting news@surdna.org. Please do not alter our logos. If options provided do not fit your needs, please contact news@surdna.org. Click here to download a .zip file containing Surdna’s logo in various file formats.
Fast Facts
The Surdna Foundation was established by John Emory Andrus in 1917.
Our current endowment stands at over $1 billion.
Grants awarded during fiscal year 2021 (7/1/20 – 6/30/21) totaled $51,510,763.
The president of Surdna is Don Chen (as of November 1, 2018).
The Foundation is headquartered in New York City, but grantmaking is national in scope.
The Foundation currently supports three program areas: Inclusive Economies, Sustainable Environments, and Thriving Cultures.
Glossary
Anchor Institutions – Anchor institutions are enterprises such as universities and hospitals that are embedded in their local communities by mission, invested capital, and relationships to customers, employees, and vendors.
Climate Justice – Climate justice frames climate change as an ethical and political issue, rather than one that is purely environmental or physical in nature. The fight for climate justice focuses on the root causes of climate change. It pushes to make the systemic changes that are required to address the unequal burdens communities face and to realign our economy with our natural systems.
Cultural Power – The ability to influence or inform how people perceive themselves, how they are perceived by others and what they believe about the world around them.
Culture-bearer – Any individual, especially a migrant, and/or a person of color, who carries, and thus diffuses, cultural values and traits between societies.
Equity – A process and an outcome characterized by the fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all people, often achieved through the identification and elimination of barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups in society.
Extractive Economy – An economy based on the removal of wealth from communities through the depletion and degradation of natural resources, the exploitation of human labor and the accumulation of wealth by interests outside the community (i.e. big banks, big oil and big box stores).
Frontline Communities – Communities most affected by pollution, environmental degradation and climate change impacts. Equity is both a process and an outcome characterized by the fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all people, often achieved through the identification and elimination of barriers that have prevented the full participation of some groups in society. These communities are characterized by their collective naming of the ways they are burdened and collective organizing around those issues.
Generational Wealth – Also called family wealth or multigenerational wealth or legacy wealth – is wealth that is passed down from one generation to another.
Impact Investing – Any investment that aims to produce both measurable financial returns and positive social outcomes.
Implicit Bias – Having an attitude towards people or associating a stereotype with a group of people without conscious knowledge.
Infrastructure – The substructure, network or underlying foundation used for providing goods and services; especially the development, the basic installations and facilities on which the continuance and growth of a community, state, etc. depend.
Investment Management Diversity – Investment practices that consider racial/ethnic and gender diversity when choosing fund managers. For some investors, the goal is to ensure that funds led by managers of color and women are represented in their portfolio; for some institutions with social justice values, the goal is to ensure access for professionals who are underrepresented in the field.
Just Transition – Just transition is a vision-led, unifying, and place-based set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power and works to shift an economy and community from an extractive to a regenerative economy. Just transition is based on the belief that a healthy economy and a clean environment can co-exist.
Low-wealth – A person or household is low-wealth when net assets are insufficient to sustain life-long well-being.
Mission-Related Investing (MRI) – Any investment policies and practices that align with a foundation’s endowment investment decisions with its mission or values.
Media – All forms of communication, from videos and websites to theater, dance, design, and interactive technology.
People of Color/Communities of Color – A person or community of Asian, Latino/a, African, Arab, or Native American descent.
Program-Related Investment (PRI) – A foundation’s investments to support charitable activities. PRIs include financial instruments such as loans, loan guarantees, and equity investments in charitable organizations or in commercial ventures for charitable purposes.
Racial Justice – The systematic fair treatment of people of all races through the elimination of policies, practices, attitudes and cultural messages that reinforce differential outcomes by race.
Regenerative Economy – An economy based on reflective, responsive, reciprocal relationships of interdependence between human communities and the living world upon which we depend. The purpose of a Regenerative Economy must be social and ecological well-being.
Well-being – The state of being happy, healthy, or prosperous through the removal of structural barriers to participation in decision-making, the achievement of racial justice, and the ability to generate wealth.
