2021 Year in Review - Heckscher Foundation

In 2021 our Venture Philanthropy focused on our three principal funding strategies: catalytic giving, strategic partnerships and targeted problem solving with special emphasis on what we call inflection point funding.

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K-12 Education

We continued in 2021 to push back against the “wait to fail” paradigm of our public schools and the impact of remote schooling on K-12 student learning, which has left low-income students significantly behind in their education, particularly in literacy and math.

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College Access and Success

A college degree is still the surest path out of poverty for underserved students. In 2021, we supported programs that help youth navigate the extraordinary challenges in determining how, whether and where to enroll in college, and we renewed support for programs aimed at getting students to college graduation.

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Career Readiness and Success

In 2021 we funded career readiness and job access and persistence programs that guide participants to jobs that lead to economic self-sufficiency and opportunity for advancement. We looked for programs that had developed a strong curriculum as well as partnerships with employers who put real “skin in the game” — partnerships in which employers do more than offer internships without meaningful opportunities for training and future jobs.

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Mentorship

There are thousands of mentoring programs in this country, yet no one had directly challenged business leaders to individually mentor youth who lack a professional role model. We issued such a challenge and in 2021 that call was answered in a bold way through a ground breaking program we envisioned and funded.

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Quality of Life

In 2021, we looked to enhance the quality of life of New Yorkers through a catalytic grant to create a vast new park that will honor the legacy of African American history.

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