Twenty-one grant makers led by the Ford Foundation and Filantropia Puerto Rico have pledged to redouble their support of recovery efforts in Puerto Rico three years after Hurricane Maria barreled through the island.
Ford has committed $10 million to help rebuild. The money will come from some of the proceeds of Ford’s $1 billion social bond offering, which it announced in June.
Other grant makers joining Ford include organizations on the mainland, such as the Mellon, Surdna ,and Nathan Cummings foundations, Hispanics in Philanthropy, and organizations in Puerto Rico, such as Fundación Ángel Ramos, Fundación Banco Popular, and the Tintin Foundation.
Hurricane Maria caused the deaths of at least 3,000 people. In the year after the storm, 41 grant makers joined together to provide organizations in Puerto Rico with $375 million in aid, according to a 2018 report by Red de Fundaciones de Puerto Rico, the Puerto Rico Funders Network. More devastation came in January, when a strong earthquake shook the island.
In the past two years, donor fatigue has set in, even though the recovery is far from complete, says Jerry Maldonado, director of Ford’s Cities and States program.
“This is a collective effort to raise the profile of a place and a people that have often been ignored by institutional philanthropy because of its territorial status,” he said
Call to Action
The participating grant makers have not committed to raising a specific amount of money. By signing the “Philanthropic Call to Action Towards a Just and Resilient Puerto Rico,” the organizations have pledged to support local organizations and networks that are working for a just, equitable, and inclusive recovery.
“We’ve seen an unfair and an unjust recovery process to date that has systematically discriminated against some of the island’s poorest and most marginalized communities,” Maldonado said.
According to a report issued by Filantropia Puerto Rico, only about one-third of the federal disaster funds dedicated to Puerto Rico have been disbursed. And despite an urgent need, no new homes have been completed under a federal Community Development Block Grant disaster-relief program, the report stated, citing Federal Emergency Management Agency figures.
We’ve seen an unfair and an unjust recovery process to date that has systematically discriminated against some of the island’s poorest and most marginalized communities.
Jerry Maldonado, director of the Ford Foundation's Cities and States program
Much of the promised federal help is of little assistance to the island’s nonprofits because government aid included new layers of reporting requirements, unique to Puerto Rico, that make it difficult for nonprofits to access, according to the report.
In addition, many nonprofits operate under local nonprofit guidelines but lack the federal 501(c)(3) status necessary to receive federal assistance, says Glenisse Pagan-Ortiz, Filantropia Puerto Rico’s executive director. Many of these organizations do not have the financial wherewithal to finance operations on the ground and wait for the federal reimbursement provided by many government programs.
“Most of the programs that come our way don’t really support how we’re structured in Puerto Rico,” she says. “They discriminate because they don’t fit organizations’ size and capacity.”
