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Dear Friends and Colleagues, We hope this finds you and yours well on all fronts. We are writing to share a few updates from the Square One Foundation about our team and grantmaking this year. First, we bid a grateful farewell to Cindi Canary as she retires from her role as Strategic Advisor to the foundation. Cindi has played an invaluable role in building and shaping our Democracy grantmaking program over the last nine years. We were fortunate to tap into her prior experience as the founding executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, where she addressed a range of democracy and anti-corruption issues. Her impact can be seen all over Illinois through her work on the census, judicial and campaign finance reform, and electoral maps and redistricting. She was a trusted and supportive guide to many of our grantees working to strengthen our democracy. As of April 10, please direct any questions to our Managing Director, Mae Hong at mae@alchemizegiving.net or Grants Manager, Tia Rashke at SquareOneGrants@alchemizegiving.net. Second, we are thrilled to welcome Lilla Fisher Hoyes to our team to lead our Education program. She comes to us with deep field experience, having been a Broad Fellow in residence with Chicago Public Schools where she helped launch GoCPS. She has also consulted with Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and the Ballmer Group on special projects within education. In addition to overseeing our education portfolio, she will lead our long-range planning for education-related special projects. And finally, a general word about our grantmaking: In light of the unimaginable times in which we find ourselves, we have made the difficult decision to not accept new applications for grants for the foreseeable future. We could not responsibly take on new grantees without diluting our impact and spreading ourselves too thin. After several years of having grown our portfolio of grantees to nearly 100 organizations across our three program areas, we will be focusing our resources on deepening our support to current grantees to ensure they have what they need to meet the moment from a place of strength. We envision this as a “for now” decision, not a “forever” one, because we do believe (we must believe), that this season will end. And a strong partnership with you is key to bringing that day closer. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions. With gratitude,
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