Partnerships Between National and Local Foundations Post-Katrina

March 23, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute

Partnerships with local foundations have been critical in the Ford Foundation’s post-Katrina grant making, allowing Ford to do things that it couldn’t do on its own, said Jerry Maldonado, a program officer at the New York philanthropy.

“Our major challenge was that we didn’t have the agility” to make the small grants that were so necessary after the disaster, he said. “They helped us get money where it needed to go.”

In Ford’s post-Katrina grant making, the foundation has awarded grants at local, regional, and national levels, Mr. Maldonado said. It wasn’t enough to just focus at one level.

“Ultimately change happens at the neighborhood level,” he said, but it is informed by policies at different levels.

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About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.