📰Thanks to the The Bay State Banner newspaper 🗞️ journalist Avery Bleichfeld and Editor Jamyra Perry for covering our Boston Public Health Commission launch on Jan. 29 at the Nubian Square Task Force.
📝After years in philanthropy (fundraising 🙏🏾+ funding 🤲🏽) one thing I’ve learned is, it isn’t a “cure-all, end-all” (no sole institution is + when it tries to be, it’s often problematic)👀
📍Yet, in critical moments, like now ⏰responsive flexible funds help fill vital societal gaps that need addressing.
🦸🏾🦸🏻♀️🦹#Philanthropy isn’t about superheroes swooping in to save the day; it's about 🗣️listening🦻🏼 & #collaboration 🫱🏽🫲🏾. Together partnering institutions + communities, we tackle needs, drive #change, and invest in our #future.🌟
“Elsa Gomes Bondlow, who is co-managing the fund alongside Brendan Little has been doing similar work through her own Social Equity Access Fund for years. She said the support around longer-term impacts is important. She recalled a family with six children for whom her fund paid for a funeral, but nothing further.
“All I could think about is, so I paid for the funeral, and that’s it, right?” she asked. “What happens to those six children?”
The fund will provide up to $5,000 to eligible family members to pay for funeral expenses, legal fees, behavioral health costs, and efforts to support child wellness. It’s an opportunity that Little said stems from “once-in-a-generation” money from the settlements.
To qualify, the applicant must be a Boston resident, and his or her family member must have died from an opioid overdose in the past two years and must have been an immediate family member…
The Boston Public Health Commission fund will be administered by Boston BullPen Project a local nonprofit that partners with social service organizations to identify and fill gaps in funding or policy.”
“And since the program was announced, she said she has heard from more and more people who have been affected by substance use disorder.
“It’s not even six degrees of separation,” she said. “It’s probably one or two for everybody.”
...
Gomes Bondlow said it’s about making sure that the money has an #impact.
“We’re being very thoughtful and very caring about every single penny and every single dollar, but we don’t have to let the perfect be the enemy of good,” Gomes Bondlow said.
It’s something she said she would like to see change more broadly in the philanthropic ecosystem.
“We can now say to other funders, ‘No, you don’t have to give money in a very hard way and ask for a 40-page grant that the organization doesn’t have the time to write, and you don’t have the time to read,’” Gomes Bondlow said. “You can be more trust-based to the community.”
In that way, Gomes Bondlow said she hopes the fund will help foster community and address issues that have developed at the society level.”
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