July 1, 2025
We are reaching out with an update regarding The Barra Foundation’s response to the current moment in our country. Barra is responding in three ways:
We believe that our current strategy is strong and that the need for creativity, imagination and innovation to create more equitable outcomes for under-resourced communities is even greater and should continue to guide our core work. We remain committed to our approach to philanthropy which is guided by these principles:
- Supporting innovation is different from transactional, traditional grantmaking
- Diversity and equity are critical to innovation
- How we work is as important as what we fund
We know from conversations with you that nonprofits and the people they serve are feeling threatened, making contingency plans and experiencing burnout. In the next few weeks, we will disburse small unrestricted grants (up to $10,000) to Barra’s core funding programs: our Catalyst Fund and Mission-Aligned Investing partners. These are all project-based initiatives, and we think providing a small amount of flexible unrestricted funding to the organizations running these projects is something we can and should do now.
Barra also seeks to advance longer-term solutions that will build resiliency for our region and sector. Our board approved pursuing contributions to emerging collaborative funding efforts that seek to strengthen the broader nonprofit sector and impact investing ecosystem. Many of these sector-wide initiatives already exist but need more resources (one example is the Nonprofit Repositioning Fund). We will be identifying and vetting these opportunities on an ongoing basis moving forward. As part of our impact investing strategy, Barra will also continue to work with others on collaborative placed-based impact investing initiatives that can activate more resources from endowments for the region.
In all, for now, Barra’s Board has approved spending 7% of our endowment value this year, which is approximately $6.3 million. We will share updates as our work evolves.
Finally, we continue to monitor the environment and ask ourselves where we can add the most value and best partner with you as we all weather this moment. If you have questions or concerns, please contact us at info@barrafoundation.org and we will do our best to respond and/or connect you with a viable resource.
In Solidarity,
The Barra Foundation