The latest perspectives, news, reports, and resources from around the Foundation.
For the Fall 2022 PEAK Grantmaking Journal, Surdna's Director of Learning and Grant Operations, Jonathan Goldberg shares a few ways the Foundation is building a culture of learning. This excerpt was originally published in PEAK's Emergent Learning…
By Don Chen and Jon Goldberg Have you ever had food stuck in your teeth and only found out when you looked in the mirror hours later? If you’re like us, you probably thought, “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” The truth is that it’s tricky…
I am a gay Puerto Rican cis-man raised in Massachusetts. In public, I have the privilege of passing as white. My parents were activists since they were young and always vocal on issues of justice, whether on the island or stateside. Growing up, I…
In 2020, the Surdna Foundation’s Inclusive Economies and Learning Grants Operations teams, alongside a dedicated group of grantee partners, completed phase one of a two-part pilot program to co-create a set of metrics and indicators to measure…
Amid a national reckoning with race and the pandemic, foundations are leaning into racial justice like never before. Yet many foundations are grappling with how to fund racial equity and the best way forward for their institution and grantees.…
Surdna grantee Asian American / Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP) recently released Seeking to Soar: Foundation Funding for Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities. This new report finds that foundation funding designated for Asian…
Now in its 103rd year, the Surdna Foundation is, amazingly, still led by descendants of our founder, John Emory Andrus. During most of its history, Surdna’s mission was nonspecific, a common practice at the turn of the 20th century. Until the…
Findings From a Pilot With Surdna's Inclusive Economies Grantees At the Surdna Foundation, we believe that learning with and in service of our grantees is essential to driving impact. In this spirit, we conducted a pilot with our Inclusive…
How can we in philanthropy do a better job of supporting the kind of collaboration and shared learning that grassroots organizations need to grow their movements? In 2019, the Surdna Foundation Sustainable Environments team set out to better…
Casey Pechan of Fluxx Labs recently told the story of how Surdna shifted its grantmaking strategy to rapidly respond to the COVID-19 crisis and the needs of our grantees. Below is an excerpt of Casey's blog post, which you can read in full — and…