The Daphne Foundation

The Daphne Foundation was formed in 1991 by Pierre Hauser and Abigail Disney as a way of adding to the discipline and focus of their charitable giving, and in order to guarantee that their giving could continue in good times and in bad. The board of directors was and remains quite small, and is comprised of Abigail and Pierre's closest and most trusted associates. The board has always shouldered an extraordinary amount of the work of the foundation - reading proposals, making site visits and formulating the docket. The first few grants were to a handful of organizations, both small and large, that were already known to the founding board. As time went on, a desire to bring focus to the grantmaking forced the board to begin to articulate its vision. Abigail, because of what she had learned through volunteer work at a variety of local not-for- profits and foundations tried to bring her learning to bear as the board formed its sense of the foundation's mission. In 1997 the foundation brought Vincent McGee in as a consultant to refine the foundation's plans. Slowly everything was coming into focus. It became clearer to the board that ongoing, general operating support was in desperately short supply, especially in the small neighborhood-based organizations that were fast forming the critical mass of Daphne's grantees. This shortage of core funding was having a negative impact on the long term capacity of organizations to do their work, and was creating unnecessary and extremely counterproductive levels of stress for the people shouldering the lion's share of the responsibility for these organizations, in particular the executive directors. It was also becoming clear that it was not necessary to focus on a particular issue or set of issues. Rather our grantees already had a kind of focus that was more a question of style than content. In other words, our grantees tended to manage their organizations with a similar emphasis on democracy, inclusiveness and creativity. They were listeners rather than dictators - people who looked at New York's communities as sources of solutions, rather than problems to be solved. They were creative and courageous, and they melded a compassionate service oriented program style with a strategic vision for generating real and lasting social change. In 1997 Evie Rich of the Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation came on board as a part-time executive director. Evie helped the board do its first serious outreach to new organizations not previously known to the board. That year the foundation made a substantially larger number of small grants as a way of opening the door to some new relationships, and in order to try on a more expansive grant pool. The following year the small grants morphed into larger, impact-size grants, the endowment grew, and grantmaking expanded significantly. In 1998 it became clear that a full-time executive director was needed to direct the outreach process as the foundation built up a large group of new grantees, and the board hired Eloisa Gordon, who had recently served as executive director of one of the foundation's grantees, the El Barrio Popular Education program. It was becoming more clear to the board that the definition of Daphne as a "family" foundation applied not only to the way the board related to itself, but to the relationships with the grantees as well. As the foundation reached out to more grantees it also tried to deepen its existing relationships with the grantees it was already funding. In 1999 we had our first grantee dinner. Since that year we have convened all of our grantees in our home twice a year. It is an opportunity for grantees to meet each other, to get a sense of the work others are doing around the city, and to relax a bit. For the board it is an opportunity to express our gratitude to our extraordinary grantees for the work that they do. Eloisa Gordon stayed on as full time director until December 2002, when we had reached our maximum capacity to fund ongoing general operating support. She brought a graciousness and intelligence to her work for which the grantees and the board were extremely grateful. With sadness the board made the decision that the time had come to retract the position back to part-time, so as to expend as few of the foundation's resources as possible. In 2003 Yvonne Moore joined us as our Program Manager. All of our grantees would certainly agree that she is a joy to work with, and she remains to this day the foundation's most trusted asset. From its first grant in 1991 until the close of 2004 the foundation has made over $3.3 million in grants to a variety of organizations. Some were large, and some were small. Some were old and some were young. Some experienced more bumps in the road than others, and some are no longer around. But they all share a laser focus on the well-being and humanity of New York City's poorest families and individuals. We are so proud of the work we have done so far, and we are so excited and grateful for the opportunity to do more as we go forward.