The Open Society Foundations has awarded $1.9-million grants to three teams of charities in Buffalo, N.Y., San Diego, Calif., and Puerto Rico, the foundation announced Thursday.
The New York foundation, started by the philanthropist George Soros, picked the three teams out of eight it awarded $100,000 planning grants to last year as part of its Open Places initiative.
The grant-making effort seeks to expand on the local work the foundation has supported in its Baltimore office, which since 1998 has worked with local nonprofits to help establish local policies to expand access to addiction treatment, develop alternatives to suspensions in public schools, and assist people transitioning out of the criminal-justice system.
Open Places aims to help teams of local nonprofits and other organizations to collaborate on ways to push governments to become more effective, spur people to get involved in civic affairs, and advocate to improve education, criminal-justice systems, and immigration policies. The initial two-year grants are likely to be expanded to cover 10 years of work.
Local Solutions
The foundation’s hope is that local teams will be in a position to solve problems in ways similar to how its Baltimore office has worked.
Open Society’s efforts in Baltimore have resulted in new public policies forged by working with local government and other nonprofits. The group collaborated with the Baltimore City Health Department and drug-treatment organizations to devise and carry out a plan to increase the use of a new prescription medication that allows doctors at community health centers to treat heroin addiction, expanding options beyond methadone clinics.
The foundation also helped the city’s school district devise new policies for student discipline that led to fewer suspensions and higher graduation rates. The policy’s success at one of the city’s high schools led federal officials to use it as the backdrop this month to announce new guidelines for how schools across the nation can avoid racial discrimination in disciplinary actions such as suspensions, which disproportionately impact minority students.
Diana Morris, director of Open Society’s Baltimore office who also oversees Open Places, said it is unusual for a “national foundation to open a field office with its own local board and say, ‘Local knowledge is best. You figure out your priorities.”
Ken Zimmerman, director of U.S. programs at the Open Society Foundation, said the organization does not want to “dictate models” but expects its newly chosen teams to determine, as Baltimore’s office did, how best to galvanize local organizations around a common problem with a solution that works best for their communities.
“We are constantly allowing for evolution,” Mr. Zimmerman said.
Ambitious Plans
The new efforts financed by Open society are ambitious.
The Buffalo groups proposed to come up with economic-development plans to spur jobs in poor communities and to “reduce the flow of students into the criminal-justice system,” according to the foundation’s announcement. The team includes groups such as Partnership for the Public Good, PUSH Buffalo, Voice-Buffalo, and nearly a dozen other organizations. In addition, several foundations are supporting the effort: John R. Oishei Foundation, Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, Margaret L. Wendt Foundation, and the Western New York Foundation.
In San Diego, the James Irvine Foundation, Rosenberg Foundation, and California Endowment joined with a large coalition of labor unions, grant makers, and community groups to improve the rights of workers and to promote social and economic stability for “vulnerable residents” such as immigrants and people involved in the criminal-justice system.
The Puerto Rico team seeks to “strengthen the civic sector” by increasing government transparency, building new models to improve access to legal representation in civil cases, and encourage savings for low-income residents. The team includes the ACLU of Puerto Rico, the University of Puerto Rico Law Clinic, the Center for Investigative Journalism, and several foundations.