Committed to Our Partners, Guided By a New Vision and Mission
Foundation Update
As a foundation, we continue to stand in solidarity with our grantee and community partners in the face of a dramatically changing and devastating climate that is causing harm to many of the communities our partners serve. Our commitment to our partners means continuing to move grants and to invest in New York dance and organizing for long-term change, standing with all communities working to protect, defend and secure civil and human rights. As we always have, we will fight back against systems of oppression like structural racism and classism that weaken our communities, and support those building new systems rooted in solidarity and justice.
Mertz Gilmore has gone through some important planning to determine the best role for us—as a foundation supporting communities building and wielding power—in the current environment, and in our new financial reality.
As we’ve shared before, because of the loss of income from, and eventual bankruptcy of, the founders’ company, Publishers Clearing House (PCH), Mertz Gilmore had to significantly reduce our budget, formally closing a financial chapter that allowed the Foundation to resource our partners at a higher level. The loss of income also resulted in the difficult decision to reduce staffing in order to prioritize our primary purpose of leveraging our grant making and investments to support our partners.
Moving forward, we will have fewer financial resources to work with, but we remain clear about the role we play and the values we embody. Readying ourselves for these implications over the last few years, we’ve walked down a path, getting feedback and insights from many of our partners on the best ways for the foundation to show up in these uncertain times, and reflecting on earlier eras of Mertz Gilmore’s work. Planning has meant staying attuned to our grantee and philanthropy partners about how the changing climate is impacting their work and our work collectively. It has helped us gain clarity about our fundamentally-held values and the through lines that have and will define our work.
Rooting in and evolving our work: updated organizational values, and forward-looking vision and mission statements
We’re thrilled to share an updated mission statement, vision and values, which were co-created with staff and approved by the Mertz Gilmore board. These grounding organizational statements provide clarity, urgency and purpose to the decisions ahead, in ways that reflect our deepest-held convictions to advance justice and creativity in communities.
With a smaller budget, our work will look different. Our grantee partners have heard directly from us that current 2024–2025 grants will be the last grants under our existing programs and grant making guidelines. New program and grant making priorities will be shared in the new year. The process to develop our 2026 priorities are informed by our grantees, including recently-completed reviews of all our current programs, and over 120 meetings with grantee and funding partners who shared their learning and field needs. This evolution is necessary to maximize the impact of our future decreased grant making levels, to determine what is most important and where we can most add value in the challenging and ever-changing times.
We’ve made the key decision not to spend down, in order to continue having the greatest impact possible through our assets
Today, we see that movements and communities across the country face greater challenges, with fewer resources from government and philanthropy. We also know that social, economic and political barriers make it difficult for our grantees and partners to respond to immediate and growing crises while also proactively fighting for a just and equitable democracy. Our partners have shared that our role in the philanthropic ecosystem, and our long-standing relationships with our grantee and funding partners–built from our history of funding civil and human rights, arts and culture–inspires others to move more resources.
After careful planning that included taking into account our new financial reality and our grantee partners’ increasing growing needs, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation board made the important decision not to spend down, in order to continue leveraging our assets for systemic change.
Moving forward, we will be assessing our impact to support our partners and the communities they serve every five years. Mertz Gilmore is also joining a growing number of foundations committed to ensuring that our investments support, rather than work in opposition to, our values. We are in the process of aligning 100% of our endowment with our mission and will increasingly seek to move investment capital, in addition to grants, to catalyze change and support communities.