2023 End of Year Letter
Hello KAF partners! Happy end of 2023 to this growing list of inspiring organizations doing critical work across the country. We continue to be amazed at all you achieve.
This is a very tough moment in many ways. There are so many people living in and through extremely challenging circumstances, both here and abroad. And we are facing another presidential election that will have tremendous impact in shaping our collective future. We recognize it is hard to hold these challenges on top of the work you do daily. We more than admire your ability to keep showing up for the work and driving towards impact that makes a difference in people’s lives.
And there are definitely bright spots. The voters of Ohio supported enshrining the right to abortion in their constitution – a HUGE win for people in Ohio and across the Midwest. We hope this win helps create a roadmap for other states that are planning similar measures in 2024. It is critical to restore the rights we lost and even more important to make accessibility to reproductive health care a reality across the country. We were proud this year to support organizations that work to secure rights and protections for individuals across the country.
At the Katz Amsterdam Foundation, this past year has been a time to solidify our focus, align on goals and strategies in each of our three program areas, and continue to build our team and internal culture.
Ensuring Civic Engagement
Our new program director, Kahran Myers-Davis, joined us this past summer with much experience working on civic engagement and improving access to voting across the country. As we shared with you previously, we studied several states to determine where our resources could have most impact; and this year began to build relationships, learn state dynamics and make grants in Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina. We hope to deeply focus on civic engagement in BIPOC communities in each of these states and be a strong partner for many years.
Mountain Mental and Behavioral Health
The KAF mountain mental and behavioral health network focused much of its collective effort sharing learnings about the creation and utilization of peer services. We had thought and hoped that we could help communities create a unified peer support system, but the challenges of individual state credentialing have made that challenging. We are still facilitating connections and learnings and are excited about many of the peer programs that are emerging from several communities. We also loved being together again at our 4th annual Convening in May, and very much appreciated the honest dialogue that emerged.
The KAF network is growing in the mountain west! Three new communities – Aspen, CO, Telluride, CO and Jackson Hole, WY plan to come together with others at the Convening in May 2024 to share learnings and challenges. These three communities will also join the data collection efforts launching in January to better understand the mental and behavioral needs of each community and compare with and learn from others through the KAF shared measurement framework. With the addition of these new areas, KAF will transition to focus our efforts on the Rocky Mountain west where we hope we can partner to have the most impact.
Reproductive Justice
Last spring, our team outlined high-level focus areas for our reproductive justice grant-making, and we plan to spend time in 2024 further refining our efforts. In our first docket this summer, we supported organizations advocating for reproductive justice, connecting abortion-seekers with the care and support they need, and increasing access to services. There is so much effort happening in this critical field. We hope to learn from the experiences of other funders, collaboratives, and organizations to determine how we can most support reproductive health care for all.
Youth Access to Winter Sports
In partnership with Vail Resorts, the youth access to winter sports program supported 22 organizations that will introduce snow sports to over 2,600 kids during the 2023-24 season. The experiences shared from time on the hill are awesome – kids loved the feeling of accomplishment, experiencing something brand new, conquering fears, and bonding with peers. As always, we look forward to more inspiring videos of their skiing and riding triumphs again this winter!
The KAF team and our commitment
Throughout 2023, Katz Amsterdam board and staff worked together to better define our racial equity commitment. Through a series of workshops guided by our amazing consultants, we drafted our Racial Equity Commitment Statement, which we are excited to share on our website. Currently, we are discussing and drafting specific actions that will guide our everyday activities that we will use to reflect on our efforts each year. We will share those on our website in early 2024. We fully recognize that we (individually and collectively) are a work in progress and have committed to be on the journey together.
In total, we made 70 grants to 95 organizations (grantees and sub-grantees) of over $11M this year. Our senior grants manager, Jina Freiberg, is always interested in your feedback on our process—what works and what doesn’t work—so please reach out with any thoughts! Our 2023 grants included:
- Ensuring civic engagement for BIPOC communities: $3,850,000
- Mountain Mental and Behavioral Health: $2,660,500
- Reproductive justice: $2,890,000
- Youth connection to winter sports: $1,905,999
I am honored to do this work with an incredible team that is committed to equity, justice, respect, and kindness. Rob and Elana are generous and passionate leaders who inspire us to help create impact every day. We are all truly awed by your incredible work and very much look forward to our future partnership. I hope for peace in the world, and love and warmth in the spaces you occupy – and we all wish everyone a happy holiday season!
Thanks for all you do,
Beth Ganz
Executive Director