Surdna Foundation
/OVERVIEW: The Surdna Foundation invests in environmental justice, climate change, and land use reform initiatives. It also invests in local economies, women and girls, K-12 education, the arts, and culture.
IP TAKE: Many Surdna grants focus on advancing social justice, offering tangible benefits to underserved communities, and sharing of best practices, so applicants should consider those goals when crafting your funding request. Indeed, Surdna conducts all of its grantmaking through a racial just lens focused on balancing historic and systemic injustices that people of color face.
This is a highly collaborative funder that works closely with its grantees to advance its foundation’s mission. Grantseekers should keep in mind that Surdna’s program areas frequently overlap in their goals. Anyone looking into submitting an LOI to Surdna should first review its various grantmaking programs to determine how their work lines up with Surdna’s grant making goals. While Surdna does not frequently accept LOIs, it puts out a call for them when it’s open to reviewing them.
PROFILE: Founded in 1917 by John Andrus, a successful medicine manufacturer and distributor, the Surdna Foundation is still largely managed by his descendants and a board. John Andrus, himself a self-identified family man of nine children, founded the Julia Dyckman Andrus Memorial in 1928 as a tribute to his wife who was orphaned as a child. Andrus later bought a farm in Westchester County, New York in order to establish an orphanage. The Memorials’ name changed to the Surdna Foundation, with "Surdna" becoming a semordnilap of the family name “Andrus.” Beyond the Surdna Foundation, the Andrus family also conducts grantmaking through its Andrus Family Programs, providing several giving vehicles.
The foundation, through its six core values and Theory of Change, seeks to foster “sustainable communities in the United States,” which it defines as being “guided by principles of social justice and distinguished by healthy environments, inclusive economies, and thriving cultures.”
Grants for Economic Development and Opportunity
Surdna’s Inclusive Economies program targets its efforts at improving those economies by enabling “upward economic mobility among communities that have experienced historical economic barriers, including low-income people, communities of color, women, and immigrants.”
This program has several subprograms that provide added themes and giving opportunities:
Business Start-up and Growth subprogram aims to “increase the amount of capital that people of color-owned firms can access, as well as explore opportunities to change the racial and gender dynamic of investors.” This giving centers on people of color and women, so your work should as well if you plan on securing funding here. This program addresses “anchor institution strategies, corporate initiatives and shifts in government policy that create more opportunities for firms owned by people of color to generate revenue and scale operations.” The page further outlines evolving selection criteria and details about Letters of Inquiry (LOIs) at the bottom.
Equitable Economic Development, which promotes “training programs, industry networks and technical assistance that equip government agencies with the necessary tools to embed accountability and equity into their economic development work.” Past grantees include Boston Impact Initiative Fund, Black Gravity, and Jobs Move America.
Grants for Environmental and Climate Justice
Surdna’s more general Sustainable Environments program supports “communities of color and low-wealth communities to direct infrastructure and land use investment dollars, drive decision-making processes and design policy solutions because those who are disproportionately impacted by environmental and climate inequity have the most powerful solutions to resolve these inequities.” Surdna, thus, conducts its environmental giving through a racial equity and justice lens, which is important to note for setting apart your grant writing. In recent years, Surdna joined the Climate Funders Justice Pledge to advance its justice-focused mission centered on supporting inclusive climate grantmaking.
The Environmental and Climate Justice subprogram works to “center and support the power of communities of color and low-wealth communities most impacted by environmental and climate injustices.” Surdna intersects its environmental giving with its climate justice work through “deep collaboration” with its partners and stakeholders in order to advance movement-building that addresses systemic environmental injustices.
In particular, Surdna’s environmental and climate justice work strives to “use a variety of tools beyond grantmaking such as convenings, program related investments, and communications to play a role in shifting investments to frontline and grassroots organizations, particularly those led by people of color.”
The goals of this initiative work to “shift from an extractive economy (one that relies on the extraction of labor, natural resources, culture) to a regenerative economy,” support “grassroots and frontline leaders in the environmental and climate justice movements as they continue to build their political, economic and cultural power,” promote “policy changes that work towards reducing racial disparities of environmental and climate impacts,” and generally “increase environmental funding from public and private sources to frontline and grassroots organizations.”
Surdna’s other environmental subprogram, Land Use Through Community Power, seeks to “increase community control, ownership and stewardship of land and infrastructure.” Past grantees for climate change and environmental conservation include Climate Justice Alliance, People’s Action Institute, and Local Clean Energy Alliance.
To qualify for an environmental and climate justice-related grant, applicants must:
Represent and reflect the communities they seek to serve.
Have leaders that bolster relationships that are deeply rooted in the communities they serve.
Elevate and advance “equity through campaign and policy design.”
Lead campaigns “designed to build power and leadership among grassroots and frontline organizations.”
Participate in capacity-building.
Grants for K-12 Education
The Surdna Foundation supports K-12 education through its Thriving Cultures initiative, which “seeks to foster the conditions in which artists of color, guided by radical imagination, are leaders in the cultivation of a racially just society.” This program focuses on funding a mix of grassroots organizations and larger, more established K-12 outfits that advance local approaches to addressing systemic racism evident in public education.
Past grantees serving K-12 populations include the Center for Urban Pedagogy, which involves educators, students and others in urban planning projects, and Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools, which used funding to run arts programs for formerly incarcerated youth.
Grants for Women and Girls
The Surdna Foundation does not dedicate a separate grantmaking program specifically directed toward women and girls; however, this funder conducts related grantmaking across all of it’s giving areas For instance, Surdna awarded an Inclusive Economies grant to the Hillman Accelerator, a program designed to assist investment ready minority and women-led tech companies. It also awarded a Thriving Cultures grant to UBW Inc. in support of its Urban Bush Women’s Summer Leadership Institute. It appears that giving related to women and girls focuses on themes related to women and girls’ empowerment, well-being, and health.
Grants for Film, Arts and Culture
Surdna conducts arts-related giving through its Thriving Cultures program, which supports “artists of color, guided by radical imagination,” as they, “are leaders in the cultivation of a racially just society.” The program seeks to create “just and sustainable communities” through the support of local arts and culture organizations in three main ways:
Create: This area prioritizes investing “(through regranting organizations) in artists of color who work in communities of color to imagine and build racially just systems and structures at a local scale."
Clarify: This area focuses on art criticism and research. It “invests in researchers and cultural critics of color” so that they might “interpret and disseminate knowledge about the work of artists and to build a more equitable research and criticism infrastructure.”
Connect: This area “advances the role of artists and communities of color in shaping public policy, narrative change, and philanthropic practices that advance racial justice.”
Surdna’s persistent efforts tend to revolve around the premise that communities with robust elements of arts and culture are more cohesive and prosperous and benefit from the diversity of their people. The foundation looks for organizations in the focus areas that meet its leading criteria. In particular, the organizations embrace and exhibit artistic and design excellence, find innovative ways to use arts and culture to make communities more just and sustainable, prioritize the needs of low-income communities and people of color, have sound financial practices, and are willing to share their practices with others in the field.
Important Grant Details:
Grants range from $25,000 to $1,500,000. Grantseekers may explore its grantee database for more information on its past grantmaking. All grants must be focused on activities in the United States, tribal lands, or in U.S. territories. This is not an otherwise international funder.
Interested grantseekers must start by submitting a letter of inquiry, accepted year-round only when Surdna posts a call for LOIs. Full applications are accepted by invitation only, following an LOI. The foundation is currently not accepting unsolicited LOIs until further notice; however, you may reach out to their team by calling them for more information and learning how Surdna’s grantees get on the foundation’s radar. Grant seekers may contact Surdna by calling 212-557-0010.
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