In the six months since the Parkland, Fla., shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students have helped spur a broad-based, multiyear response by foundations to gun violence that goes far beyond the students’ initial demands.
Grant makers across the country are giving to efforts that tackle the problem from multiple angles, including research, get-out-the-vote efforts, and youth organizing.
“Gun violence is not just respond-and-then-forget-about-it because you need to address the issues that are really driving gun violence in particular communities,” said Scott Moyer, president of Langeloth Foundation. “As far as I can tell, we’re in this for quite a while.”
Langeloth, which has focused its grant making on criminal-justice efforts for the past few years, made three rapid-response grants for a total of $150,000 immediately following the Parkland shooting. The money went to the Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing, the Alliance for Youth Organizing, and HeadCount, a nonprofit that works with musicians to register people to vote.
Since those initial grants, the foundation has given to Fund for a Safer Future, which pools investments aimed at strategies to reduce gun injuries and deaths. Other grant makers supporting efforts to rein in gun violence include the MacArthur and Joyce foundations and the Kendeda Fund. This year, Langeloth also pledged $500,000 to Guns Down America, a gun-control advocacy group.
One of the challenges of supporting gun-violence prevention, Moyer said, is the fragmentation of groups working toward the same goal of ending gun violence, with some groups working on suicide, others working on urban violence, and still others on guns in general.
“The common denominator is the gun,” Moyer said. “We listen and try to find out what the people who are working in the field and on the ground are saying the needs are and try to be responsive to that.”
Roots of a Movement
After leading the March for Our Lives not long after the Valentine’s Day shooting at their school, some Stoneman Douglas students have been spending their summer traveling the country encouraging young people to vote in an effort called Road to Change. To fund their work, the students established a 501(c)(4) “social-welfare” organization that has drawn financial support from Everytown for Gun Safety, backed by Michael Bloomberg, and the anti-gun-violence organization Giffords, run by the former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was a shooting victim. Both groups were also major supporters of the march.
“Specifically, these organizations are working to support the students’ efforts to engage critics, change minds, and register voters across the country,” the students’ fund said in a statement.
Moyer said his foundation is pleased by how the Parkland students are bridging the gap between mass shootings and community violence.
Brian Malte, executive director of the Hope and Heal Fund, whose aim is to end gun violence, echoed similar thoughts about the Parkland students’ work in bringing together victims of mass shootings and those of shootings that happen every day.
“That’s not something we’ve seen before,” Malte said.
Most of Hope and Heal’s grants have focused on researching a public-health approach to ending community gun violence, especially its impact on demographic groups like LGBT people or Latinos. So far, the organization has given out $2.4 million in grants.
Currently, Malte said, the onus is on Congress to act. But by studying what works in communities, Hope and Heal is trying to bring proven solutions to a larger scale.
Malte hopes the Parkland students’ movement sustains itself, with its added focus on gun violence that happens every day around the country.
“This is not just a youth movement,” Malte said.
Data-Driven Solutions
Research is a priority at other foundations as well, such as the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. In May, it announced a $20 million grant over five years to the RAND Corporation, a think tank, to examine how guns are purchased and used, how young people are affected by access to guns, the potential risks of having guns in the home, and what factors increase gun violence. The goal is to see what types of prevention programs work and then advocate for such programs, said Jeremy Travis, executive vice president for the foundation’s criminal-justice program.
Travis cited a lack of federal funding as a main pull to invest in research. The foundation hopes to advise government and philanthropies on where they should focus resources aimed at preventing gun violence.
In addition to making the $20 million grant, the Arnold Foundation hopes to raise $30 million from other wealthy donors.
Following the Parkland shooting, Giffords, Everytown, and NextGen America joined forces to create Our Lives, Our Vote., a $1.5 million nationwide drive to register young voters ahead of the 2018 midterm and bring attention to efforts to overhaul gun laws. The drive is aimed at 18- and 19-year-olds and has so far registered nearly 80,000 people to vote.
NextGen America, an organization started by billionaire Democratic fundraiser Tom Steyer, said it would spend at least $3.5 million in Florida on organizing young people on college campuses. The group is also working on a nationwide effort to register young voters.
Targeting the NRA
On the Road to Change tour, the students, including Stoneman Douglas High School graduates Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, are drawing attention to which politicians get money from the National Rifle Association. Following the Parkland shooting, the NRA had a record month of fundraising.
“We’re going to places where the NRA has strongholds — and we’ll be visiting a number of communities that have been affected by gun violence to meet fellow survivors and use our voices to amplify theirs,” says a statement on the organization’s website.
The students are traveling to over 20 states registering young people to vote ahead of the midterm elections. The tour began June 15 in Chicago, where Parkland activists joined a peace march led by students from St. Sabina Academy, which for the past 10 years has marked the end of the school year with a peace rally.
Early signs show their actions could be working. Since the February 14 massacre, youth voter registration has surged 41 percent in Florida, according to an analysis from TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm.
The tour plans to conclude on August 12 in Newtown, Conn., where the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary massacre occurred.
The several million dollars left over from March for Our Lives will go toward lobbying for stricter gun laws and to fight gun violence, according to board member Deena Katz. The march drew over 200,000 people, cost $5 million, and raised thousands from celebrity supporters such as Oprah Winfrey and George and Amal Clooney and millions from philanthropists such as Eli Broad and Marc Benioff. A GoFundMe campaign also raised more than $4 million.
