“Avenues for Hope” in Gun Violence Prevention — and a Major Role for Philanthropy
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Memorial to honor the victims of the mass shooting in Buffalo, NY. Val Dunne Photography/shutterstock
A recent New York Times piece captured the grinding hopelessness many Americans feel after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas left 19 children and two teachers dead.
“We witness the horrors of the present in which these massacres seem to happen every week, and while we still feel the pressing, manic need to do something, we also now know that nothing will be done,” Jay Caspian King wrote. He ended his piece on a bleak note: “It is crucial that we, as a society, don’t allow ourselves simply to accept these deaths, but for the life of me, I can’t come up with a single reason this time will be different.”
When I spoke recently with David Brotherton, the vice chair of the Fund for a Safer Future (FSF), I assumed he would be similarly pessimistic. After all, gun violence prevention is an issue he has focused on for over 20 years, and works on now at FSF and as a fund advisor at the Kendeda Fund, one of its members. Since FSF launched in 2011, its ranks have grown from five to over 30 funders — including the Annie E. Casey, Joyce, and Heising-Simons foundations, and the Every Town for Gun Safety Support Fund. That growth is itself a sign of progress, but it’s also coincided with some of the worst incidents of gun violence in U.S. history. (Even during the writing of this article, details emerged about another mass shooting.)
And yet, Brotherton is surprisingly hopeful — not necessarily about the prospects of meaningful gun control legislation at the federal level, given the Republican Party’s apparent conviction that the solution to rampant gun violence is more guns. But he believes that real and steady progress on gun violence prevention is happening right now — and that philanthropy has a key role to play in accelerating change.
Avenues for hope
Brotherton’s optimism may be a matter of seeing the glass half-full versus half-empty, because there is a lot to be pessimistic about when it comes to national action on gun control. In a recent IP post, my colleague Philip Rojc pointed out that while there are opportunities for progress, philanthropy is greatly limited in what it can accomplish due to the political stalemate on Capitol Hill. “Until something changes there, we’re unlikely to see an end to tragedies like Buffalo and Uvalde,” he wrote. GOP obstruction is only reinforced by our flawed and fragile democracy, and here, too, the outlook is bleak.
But what if, instead of waiting for change to happen at the federal level, progress at the targeted, local level could bubble up and spread, ultimately forcing national reform? Brotherton has been tracking such efforts, and supporting some of them in his roles at Kendeda and FSF. And that forward momentum is what gives him hope.
“It’s why I am able to get up and keep going and doing this work every day,” he said. “Because if all we were doing is banging our head against the wall, hoping for federal congressional action, it would be a very uphill climb. That is not to say that there isn’t value and need for advocates to continue working those strategies, as well. It’s not either/or; it’s both/and. In the meantime, while we have to struggle with congressional sclerosis, there are other paths to pursue and other avenues for hope.”
Workarounds to federal reform
The Fund for a Safer Future has supported some of these other paths. Since it was founded a little over a decade ago, FSF’s pooled grantmaking has grown to more than $3 million annually, and its members have made more than $135 million in grants through their respective foundations.
FSF has supported, for example, an increase in the number of extreme risk protection orders, which temporarily remove firearms from those at risk of harm to themselves or others (also known as “red flag” laws). Since 2014, at least 19 states have adopted or strengthened these measures.
“Through a number of grantees, we have helped create an ecosystem where these laws have been tested, proven and are now being expanded,” Brotherton said. “We by no means claim total credit: We are not the only funders and boosters of this strategy. But I do think our collective support has given them an accelerated opportunity to be taken up in counties and states and cities all over the country. And the spread is significant.”
FSF has also uplifted Community Violence Intervention (CVI) programs, which address the roots of violence and reduce homicides at the local level by connecting with and supporting those community members at highest risk of becoming victims or perpetrators. CVI is receiving increasing support at both the state and federal levels. As IP previously reported, the White House is pushing CVI as a strategy through its recently unveiled Community Violence Intervention Collaborative, with the backing of an array of major funders.
As we’ve pointed out before, the program, while promising, has a limited scope and reach, focused on a set of 16 mostly big-city jurisdictions that does not include places like Buffalo or Uvalde. But Brotherton takes a longer view here.
“There is huge reason to believe that community violence intervention strategies are one of the best alternatives to the lack of progress at the federal level,” he said, as they allow communities to meet the moments of violence as they occur. “Funders and advocates and front-line public health experts are recognizing that we need workarounds to federal policy reform, and community violence intervention strategies are one of the best avenues at our disposal.” (Learn more about CVI in IP’s in-depth report on funding for gun violence prevention.)
FSF is pursuing gun violence prevention from other directions, as well. It funds research on the topic at major institutions like Duke, Johns Hopkins, UC Davis and Yale Law School (see complete list), and legal scholarship on the second amendment and avenues for litigation and policy reform at organizations like the Brennan Center for Justice and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. A number of its grantees focus on advocacy, messaging and movement-building.
Philanthropy’s role
For Brotherton, one of the most promising developments in recent years has been a shift in thinking about gun violence. “The frame of gun violence prevention has expanded,” he said. “We’re now in a place where it’s undeniable that this is not just a criminal justice issue, but a public health issue.”
He believes that funders are recognizing this, too. As we spoke, he was fielding calls from other interested funders, and FSF is holding a philanthropic briefing on gun violence prevention today. “There are increasingly entry points for funders who don’t historically think of themselves as prioritizing gun violence; funders who may be a criminal justice reform funder, or a public health funder, or a community development funder. All of those issues have dotted lines to the issue of gun violence.”
Brotherton sees FSF as one of those entry points. That was the case for the Kendeda Fund. After Sandy Hook, Diana Blank, who created the fund, wanted to invest in gun violence prevention but wasn’t sure where to start. “For Diana, the Fund for a Safer Future was the best on-ramp,” Brotherton said. “Kendeda is a small foundation, and it was even smaller then. Diana didn’t want to start her own gun violence prevention program right away, she wanted to make an investment and learn about the issue. So FSF was that on-ramp.”
Brotherton hopes more funders will take that on-ramp, too. “There is a tremendous opening for funders, large and small, national and local, to commit to solving gun violence,” he said. “If your foundation wants to develop a bigger strategy, organizations like the Fund for a Safer Future can provide the hand holding you need to get schooled up. If you are a local community foundation and you want to do something at a smaller or more local level, there are roadmaps for what to do with extreme risk protection orders, or how to build a community violence intervention strategy in your hometown. There is a tremendous opening for funders who haven’t thought about this issue to do so now.”
It’s certainly an area that could use more philanthropic support, as Philip Rojc observed recently, pointing out that philanthropy’s role “has been pretty anemic on gun violence prevention despite the ongoing work of several funding stalwarts.”
The Kendeda Fund is one of those stalwarts, but it is a spend-down foundation, sunsetting at the end of 2023. “Our time in this work is limited,” Brotherton said. “I want to make sure that there are others who take up the fight, who can continue to carry the work forward after we’re gone.”
Note: The Fund for a Safer Future is holding a philanthropic briefing on gun violence prevention today, June 2nd, and welcomes participants.
