2022 End of Year Letter

Hello KAF Partners!

Happy end of 2022 – a year when we all got back to in-person gatherings, friend and family hangouts, and less questioning of election results. Thank you for the amazing work you’ve done this year, we are so impressed with your commitment and your accomplishments.

This has been a significant transition year for the Katz Amsterdam Foundation, and we are thrilled about the team, new community-based non-profit partners, additional focus and program areas, and a record number of grants awarded.

This year marked the true launch of our work to advance just and equitable approaches to accessing mental and behavioral health care for BIPOC communities. Led by Ain (our Racial Justice Program Director), we identified non-profit partners focused on many different aspects of mental and behavioral health and utilizing a variety of innovative approaches. We are excited to learn from these and other organizations doing creative work and begin to understand how KAF can help drive towards the greatest impact. We are just getting started in this program area!

It was an interesting election year and there is still much to unpack and understand about who was motivated to vote, who felt excluded from the system, and what we can learn from this cycle of civic engagement efforts. In 2022, we cast a wide net through our voter education work, making grants to organizations that serve nationally and in six states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. We are working right now to understand BIPOC community engagement and voting trends in each state, and plan to target two to three states in 2023 for deep focus and work over several years.

The efforts of the mountain behavioral health network rose to a new level this year, guided by Heather (our Mountain Behavioral Health Network Director), through the creation of a dashboard to track all data collected towards the mountain communities’ shared measurement framework. The dashboard will make the information about access of and attitude towards mental and behavioral health much easier to track and then communicate — enhancing the opportunity for shared learning within and across communities. Heather did a wonderful job bringing us all together IN PERSON for the Convening in May, when we once again realized the value of simply connecting. The data collected by communities was the foundation for great dialogue about workforce pipeline, burn out, the need for more peer support and a commitment to centering lived experience when creating new programs. We continued the conversation about equity in data gathering during the webinar in November, which was led by several awesome community-based organizations.

In partnership with Vail Resorts, the youth access to winter sports program grew to 17 organizations this year with a goal of almost 2,000 kids experiencing winter sports throughout the upcoming season. The stories from the first winter are amazing – kids loved the feeling of accomplishment, experiencing something brand new, conquering fears and bonding with peers. We can’t wait to see more inspiring videos of their skiing and riding triumphs again this winter!

We have decided to add an additional program area for the Foundation – reproductive health and justice. We were floored by the Dobbs decision in June. We knew greater restrictions were coming, but an outright overturn of Roe has motivated us to identify how we can help the greatest number of people access the fundamental right to make their own choices about health care, especially abortion services. The Trust and Foundation helped support organizations working to secure access to reproductive rights through ballot measure education efforts in Michigan and Kentucky this year and will continue to support organizations in states fighting for the right to choose. We also supported organizations focused on ensuring women can access abortion services with direct funding, needed legal protections and through increased opportunities for care. We are all passionate about this issue and are excited to partner with organizations working to eliminate barriers to care, especially for BIPOC women, and help everyone access the health care to which they have a basic right.

In total, we made 86 grants to 114 organizations (grantees and sub-grantees) of approximately $15M. Jina (our Senior Grants Manager) created a streamlined process that helped drive 5 grant cycles, and hopefully made it easier for each grantee to engage. This included:

• Ensuring civic engagement for BIPOC communities: $5.75M
• Improving access to mental and behavioral health
  • Equitable access for BIPOC communities (nationwide): $2.16M
  • Mountain resort communities: $2.46M
• Connecting youth to winter sports: $1.6M
• Protecting access to reproductive health: $2.4M

Internally, we’re discussing how to best utilize a racial equity lens in our grant-making, and what that means for our partnerships with organizations in each program area. We’ve adopted many racial equity approaches thus far and will continue to iterate and learn what will help have the greatest impact in addressing systemic racism and most help strengthen our community-based partners.

Finally, we have a new team member – Grace Loughborough, Foundation Coordinator, who joined us right after Thanksgiving. In this new role, Grace will provide support across the entire organization – she will be our glue! She has years of experience working in philanthropy and non-profits, is passionate about racial justice and loves to keep projects and people organized! We are grateful she is part of the team and know you’ll love getting to know her.

Grace comes to the Katz Amsterdam Foundation after four years in family philanthropy at van Beuren Charitable Foundation (vBCF), where she served her local Newport, Rhode Island community. Engaging with all people and processes across vBCF, she provided support and thought partnership to the Program and Grants Management teams, aligning their respective efforts to create optimal philanthropic practices. Grace managed vBCF’s entire grant lifecycle and was a trustworthy, responsive partner to grantees, staff, and applicants through every stage of the grantmaking process.

Grace is deeply passionate about dismantling systemic injustices and believes that intentional grantmaking structures and processes are critical for philanthropy to advance social justice.

Before entering philanthropy, Grace worked in the nonprofit space, managing the Girls on the Run Rhode Island youth development program and she also worked in the corporate sector, holding an administrative role at Columbus Nova, a venture capital and investment management firm in Manhattan. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia.

Katz Amsterdam Foundation’s values and priorities resonate deeply with my lived experience; I’m thrilled to join an organization that shares my commitment to racial equity and to accessible mental and behavioral healthcare. I welcome this unique opportunity to apply my philanthropic aptitude in service of the othered, the oppressed, and the marginalized. As Foundation Coordinator, I hope to foster streamlined, cohesive internal operations that strengthen the team and amplify the Foundation’s impact.

It’s been a busy year – with a terrific KAF team, inspired by your incredible work. We look forward to our future partnership and wish everyone a happy holiday season!

Thanks for all you do,

Beth Ganz
Executive Director