As New York’s community foundation, we foster and engage in enduring and innovative philanthropy.
The "Promising Futures" grant program aims to create significant positive changes in various societal areas by offering support in multiple key facets. The program targets the empowerment of young individuals, enhancing job training and placement opportunities, reforming educational and justice systems to be inclusive and fair, providing relief from hunger and homelessness, improving family and child welfare services, and advancing the field of social work. Specifically, under the focus area of Human Justice, the program aspires to foster a more efficient and equitable civil and criminal justice system. This is achieved through supporting research and monitoring of city court practices and advocating for their improvement. The grants support advocacy, legal representation, and litigation efforts to protect civil rights and respond to urgent legal needs, especially in situations where other funding is scarce. They also aim at finding innovative ways to resolve legal problems for low-income New Yorkers, thereby enhancing their quality of life. This includes experimenting with different service delivery methods, linking legal assistance to other key outcomes like reducing homelessness, and building the capacity of legal-service nonprofits to better track and communicate the impacts of their work.