A Letter from the President 2020
These are extraordinary times filled with despair, uncertainty and precarity. A global pandemic has not only laid bare the vast and growing inequity of our economic system but the fragility of our public institutions that serve the most vulnerable members of our community. The long-standing racial injustice in this country was exposed by the fact that the highest incidence of COVID-19 fell on our black and brown communities and was compounded by the murder of George Floyd in May. The depth of pain and anger have ironically given us hope that this can be a moment of change. The Square One Foundation is sharpening its focus and responding to this upheaval with an urgency and recognition that too many people have been left behind for too long.
Square One Foundation is approaching this moment in three phases: Survival, Rebuilding and Resilience.
Phase One: Survival
We identified the three most basic of human needs: food, housing (eviction prevention) and health care (safety net hospitals) and funded the following organizations with unrestricted grants:
Food
Housing
Healthcare
Phase Two: Rebuilding
We expedited most of our grants for 2020 and made them unrestricted. We increased giving to those organizations that directly serve communities that have been most impacted. We also made two additional grants for more systemic education policy and to support the Civic Engagement strategy of UChicago.
Phase Three: Resilience
Our thinking about how to best respond in these times was deeply informed by a New York Times editorial in April calling for The America We Need: “Philanthropy can play a role, but the multi-trillion-dollar scale of the government’s response to the crisis, for all its flaws and inadequacies, offers a powerful reminder that there is not a replacement for the activist state. What America needs is a just and activist government. A critical part of America’s post-crisis rebuilding project is to restore the effectiveness of the government and to rebuild public confidence in it.”
The jobs, education and social and racial justice issues we care so deeply about need a functioning democracy driven by civic participation and more equitable access to power and decision making beyond the few.
We have made some emergency grants to address concerns about fair and honest elections that are particularly challenged during this national quarantine.
We will continue to learn and adapt as needed in the uncertain times ahead. We are humbled by and grateful to our nonprofit partners on the front lines serving the communities at the heart of our mission. They are the key to forging the America we need.
Priscilla Kersten, President
Square One Foundation