NewsTaco

Last week actress Eva Longoria announced that she is creating a foundation to help Latinas through education and entrepreneurship. Writing in the Huffington Post, the Mexican-American television star detailed the obstacles many young Latinas face and claimed:

Our mission is to help Latinas build better futures for themselves and their families through education and entrepreneurship. We will support programs which help Latinas become college ready and college graduates. And we will provide Latinas with career training, mentorship, capital and opportunity.

This has been a subject of particular interest for the actress, considering Longoria wrote about Latina entrepreneurs and leadership while working to obtain her master’s degree. In the Huffington post she gave reasons why Latinas need assistance, citing:

As a group, Latinas are disproportionately impoverished and uneducated. 27% live below the poverty line, struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. On average, women make $0.77 for every dollar a white man makes. For Latinas, the disparity is even more severe — they make only $0.54 on the dollar.

While many factors contribute to poverty, education plays a key role in a person’s ability to secure a good job. Today, only 65% of adult Latinas hold high school degrees and just 15% graduate from college.

Longoria also runs another charity that bears her name, Eva’s Heroes, an organization that helps teens with special needs.

[Photo By CalfundLA]

FuturoFund started in 2009 in Austin, Texas as a way for a group of Latino professionals to make a tangible difference in their community. FuturoFund’s basic premise is a charitable giving circle, in which each “member” donates a set amount of money, and then helps decide which non-profit organizations will receive the subsequent grants.

FuturoFund has prioritized making grants to organizations making a positive impact in the Latino community, and, perhaps even more importantly, organizations that include Latinos in the leadership of the organization.

“We started FuturoFund as a way to change the conversation about Latinos in our community, from one of deficits, to one of solutions,” Priscilla Cortez, one of the organization’s founding members told NewsTaco. ”We knew many people in our Latino community are passionate and possess resources to support our community philanthropically, but no one was engaging them. So we thought, let’s do it ourselves and see what happens.”

Earlier this month, FuturoFund awarded a $10,000 grant to the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition so that the organization could develop its Human Rights Leadership Development Program. Then, AVANCE-Austin won $30,000 for its parenting services in North Austin. Cortez, and fellow co-founder Brie Franco told NewsTaco that in the past, other grants given through the program have included: arts programs, home ownership programs, literacy and immigrant services.

“Since FuturoFund members choose the ultimate winner of the grants, it’s fascinating to see the priorities we are emphasizing. But even better is to see how the organizations take the donation and really pay it forward in our community,” Franco said.

Efforts like this, even on a local level, are extremely important given recent reports that philanthropy on a national level practically excludes Latinos. Specifically, a recent report noted that less than 1% of funding reaches Latino communities. Even then, most of this funding hit larger metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, Washington DC, San Francisco, and New York City.

Thus, an organization like FuturoFund serves to not just fund community organizations, but really, provide funding that would very likely not come from anywhere else. Which is to say, to help provide services for Latinos that might not otherwise be provided.

And, perhaps most importantly, becoming a member of FuturoFund is relatively easy (provided you have several hundred dollars to donate, of course). The essence of the organization is one of inclusion, Cortez and Franco told us, thus the more the merrier. In fact, one of the biggest surprises for the founders of FuturoFund is how diverse their membership has become. “Although we have always said that this effort is about making an impact in the Latino community, this is resonating with all kinds of people. Our membership includes people of all races, ethnicities, ages, and backgrounds,” Cortez told us.

FuturoFund’s 2011 grants were just awarded, but any time is a good time to join FuturoFund, they said because, behind the philanthropy, is a broader effort to develop leadership and community investment. For more information about FuturoFund, visit their website.

By Diana Campoamor, President of Hispanics in Philanthropy

Latinos make up more than 50 million people in the U.S. today, and we’re growing by more than one million a year. Just counting Latinos in the U.S., we are the second largest Spanish-speaking country in the world and the 15th largest consumer economy. By 2025, we will no longer be in the minority: half of US workers will be of Latino descent, and Latinos will make up 95% of teen population growth through 2020—the biggest demographic shift in the US since the Baby Boom.

So, with all this growth in our community, what’s happening with the Latino nonprofit sector? A recent Foundation Center report commissioned by Hispanics in Philanthropy (HIP) shows that Latino nonprofits receive only 1 percent of foundation funding. As Ford Foundation President Luis Ubiñas explained, that’s just one penny for every dollar.

Can you imagine how the United States would change if Latinos were funded at a level commensurate with our talent, ideas, and opportunities?

That is exactly what HIP aims to do. If you haven’t heard of us, HIP is a network of more than 600 funders in the U.S. and Latin America who collaborate to increase philanthropic investments in Latino communities, to increase the participation of Latinos in philanthropy, and to foster policy change to enhance equity and inclusiveness. Headquartered in San Francisco, we have made grants in 18 sites in the U.S. and Latin America, helping to strengthen more than 550 Latino nonprofits. We work on the issues that most impact Latinos: from aging to education to LGBT movement building. Since 1983, HIP has raised more than $40 million to invest in Latino communities.

But we have a long way to go.

Despite Latinos’ demographic growth, we are vastly underserved by the nonprofit sector, with only 1 organization for every 4,800 Latinos, compared to 1 organization for every 200 Americans in the overall nonprofit sector. As you bring in the New Year, I encourage you to invest in your community and to help us create a more equitable reality. Join over 53 percent of Latino households who give to charitable organizations and, in this season of giving, BE HIP. GIVE.

I hope you’ll join us in building the strong families and communities that we Latinos deserve.

As the president of Hispanics in Philanthropy for the last twenty years, Diana Campoamor’s vision has been to connect grassroots organizations with philanthropy and to foster the next generation of Latino leaders. Under her leadership, HIP has invested over $30 million in small Latino nonprofits and leaders in the U.S. and Latin America. Campoamor has served as a trustee of the Council on Foundations, Independent Sector, the Inter University Project for Latino Research, BRAVA for Women in the Arts and Horizons Foundation. She is currently on the Board of International Planned Parenthood for Latin America. Find out more about Hispanics in Philanthropy at HIPOnline.org.

The Foundation Center in conjunction with Hispanics in Philanthropy published a report recently titled, “Foundation Funding for Hispanics/Latinos in the United States and for Latin America.”  The report looked at giving mostly from 2007 to 2009, finding that funding has remained steady during the past decade at about 1% of total foundation funding. This figure comes out to about $206 million.

We had previously reported that this 1% figure was “woefully low” for a population that makes up 60% of the country.

The grants tended to be for health and human services.  The largest share of the funding went to organizations  based in California, specifically in Los Angeles with 17% of grant dollars and 13% of the number of grants.  Washington, D.C. followed, with New York  third and San Francisco fourth;  more than half of all the grant dollars went to these fourth cities.

During the same period, 2007 to 2009, about $1 billion was donated to Latin America, with environmental programs making up the largest share. Of these monies, Mexico and Brazil each received about 25%.

The report also noted that Latinos received the second-largest portion of grant monies for minority communities, after African-Americans. The top five foundations giving to Latino communities during the sample period were: the California Wellness Foundation, Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, Jesse Smith Noyes Foundation, Paso Del Norte Health Foundation and Marguerite Casey Foundation.

In terms of areas of donations, 27% was geared towards human services, 26% towards health and 20% towards public affairs.  For more information or specific data, read the report here.

[Photo By  Foundationcenter.org]

By Aaron Dorfman, National Committee For Responsive Philanthropy

Just when I was beginning to have some hope that philanthropy was getting better at meeting the needs of communities who have been underserved or marginalized in some way, a preview of a new report hit me like a slap in the face.

I attended a reception for Hispanics in Philanthropy (HIP) in San Francisco last week. At the event, HIP and the Foundation Center shared a preview of findings from a study they are working on about foundation funding for Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S. and for Latin America.

The preliminary findings are sobering. The percentage of grant dollars benefiting Latinos has remained flat for ten years, at about 1.3 percent of total U.S. grantmaking, while the Latino share of U.S. population has risen from 13 percent to 16 percent during that same time period. These findings are even more outrageous considering that the Pew Hispanic Center has just released a study showing that Hispanic children are now the largest group of children in the U.S. living in poverty.

Some might argue that grants benefiting the general population benefit Latinos and these are not counted in the study. They also might say that grants targeted to benefit economically disadvantaged populations are helping Latinos and aren’t counted. Those arguments have some truth but also are entirely unsatisfying.

The issues facing Latinos are similar to but not identical to the issues facing other communities of color or economically disadvantaged communities. The principle of targeted universalism suggests that if we aren’t intentionally targeting our grants to ensure that Latinos are benefiting, then we are more likely to fail. The Latino community needs a bigger slice of the philanthropic pie, and all Americans will be better off when fewer Latinos are in poverty or are struggling with other social and economic challenges.

HIP and Foundation Center expect to release the full report in December 2011. I hope it serves as a wake-up call to the sector and results in better, more targeted philanthropy.

Aaron Dorfman is executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).

[Photo By Public Domain Photos]

Port-au-Prince, Haiti — Written on the walls of Haiti’s dilapidated palace in crimson-red graffiti, are the words “No president, no government.”  A people who have proven the utmost resilience after a natural disaster have also proven contempt for the political responses (or lack, thereof) to their plight. After the tumultuous earthquake last January, the international community pledged billions of dollars, promising to bring Haiti out of the rubble and into a complete rebuild. In March 2010, the United Nations declared Haiti was to receive $5.3 billion U.S. dollars in pledges over two years, and $9.9 billion dollars over ten years.

Over a year later, Haiti has received only 63% of aid money pledged. The country has been plagued with a cholera epidemic that has thus far killed 5,200 people. The country has between 2.5 and 3.3 million food insecure. More than a million Haitians are still living in displacement camps. One reason seems to be that organizations are running out of money; of the $951 million pledged in 2011, Haiti has only received $157 million.

But why?

With newly inaugurated President and former pop star, Michel Martelly assuming political power, former Haitian President Aristide returning from exile, and the Haiti Reconstruction Fund slowly stammering to make progress on Haiti’s rebuild, it is crucial to understand now why the effort to rebuilt Haiti has stalled and what needs to be done to fix it.

Not only is the international community struggling to collect all its pledges, it has focused the aid on emergent needs and not long-term rebuilding efforts. For example, while food has sporadically been sent to feed the homeless, the country’s destroyed agricultural system has yet to be addressed. While it has provided tarps for over 250,000 families, there aren’t sturdier shelters being built for the 1,300 displacement camps. And while thousands of non-profits and volunteers have deployed to help, these actors are young, inexperienced, and untrained. As Ricardo Seitenfus, representative of the Organization of American States in Haiti told the Swiss Daily le Temps:

Haiti, I can tell you, is not suitable for amateurs. Since January 12, because of massive recruitment, professional quality has declined considerably. There is a maleficent or a perverse relation between the NGOs and the weakness of the Haitian state.

Now, many of these NGOs are packing up and leaving. Some current moves include the World Bank’s efforts to analyze the safety of 400,000 houses to send displaced families back home. And the announcement in May that the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund would invest $2 million to finish construction on the 130-room Oasis Hotel, creating jobs for 600 workers and inviting businesses and foreigners to travel to Port-au-Prince.

Nonetheless, still only 38% of this aid has been spent.

Issues of governance, specifically how the Haitian government responded to the crisis, have also affected aid spending. Government officials and the public alike were hopeful, though, that a newly elected leader would jump-start the rebuilding process. But even though new president “Sweet Micky” promised a new Haiti on May 14, not many trust his words. After all, only 16% of the country voted him into office. Some fear that he will only bring Haiti back to a repressive military state. And others worry that he merely serves as a political pawn for the U.S. to control.

Haiti is at a crossroads of chaos, where the actors who strive to help are plentiful, but where still millions are without basic means to survive. And unfortunately, this crossroads has turned into a dramatic blame game that has not yet seen a victor. In fact, its losers are only the hundreds of thousands still at the mercy of donor apathy, unfinished plans, and political instability.

Haiti has suffered enough at the hands of various non-profits solving temporary problems but creating others. Haitians have gotten their hopes up only to be crushed by promises of revival without practical delivery. So let us follow through on our monetary promises, but above all else, let us, with respect for those Haitians still living in squalor, hold our international and Haitian leaders accountable for turning those rebuilding promises into realities.

Follow Nicole Kreisberg on Twitter at @NicoKrei

[Photo By Lee Cohen]