Hispanics in Philanthropy

We here at Hispanics in Philanthropy (HIP) believe that in order to respond to all the challenges and opportunities that face our communities we need a thriving network of Latino organizations and Latino leaders equipped with the knowledge and resources to do their work, whether that work be in education, advocacy, the arts, or economic development.  

Our job at HIP is to build that network from the ground up, by connecting these grassroots organizations with human capital, financial capital, and knowledge capital. Over the last thirty years, we have supported over 550 Latino Nonprofits through nearly $40 million in capacity building grants.  However, we still have more work to do:  while the Latino population has grown 43 percent in the last decade, many of the essential Latino grassroots organizations that serve our growing Latino population continue to be under-funded and stretched thin. But with your support, we have the opportunity to help these organizations succeed—and continue building a thriving network of Latino nonprofits— through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Cultures of Giving Donor Challenge.  Every dollar you give from April 17th-26th will be matched, up to $20,000.  Help us reach our goal of raising $20,000 so that we can maximize this generous matching opportunity.   

 

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I told my daughter that I have no inheritance to leave her…the only legacy I can give her is something that I was never able to have when growing up in Mexico—an education. This is the reason I carry trays and clean tables ten hours a day, six days a week. I cannot read and write, but I want my children to learn.

These are the words of a young Latina mother of five, living in North Carolina. Though her illiteracy presents a serious challenge as she prepares her children to enter kindergarten, graduate high school, and apply to college, she is lucky enough to know about El Buen Pastor—a Latino-led organization in the Old Town area of Winston-Salem that works to bridge the academic achievement gap at all stages of child development.

Because El Buen Pastor, this young mother’s preschool age children will learn “colors, numbers, the alphabet, shapes, days of the week and months of the year, opposites, etc., in Spanish, so that when they go to kindergarten they can learn the English words for concepts that they have already mastered in their first language.” Her elementary school-age niños will work with Elementary Tutoring Director Lora Gordon over the summer to improve their reading comprehension and build their vocabularies.

And because of HIP and our Supporters, El Buen Pastor is thriving: since 2007, the HIP network has supported the community center with $124,800 in grants, allowing them to hire Mary Bolton, their first and only executive director; to expand their base of individual donors and more than triple their budget; and expand its tutoring program to include older students, a music academy, and family life and preschool programs. Bolton says, “I am willing to wager that in ten years, the graduation rate for children from El Buen Pastor is 100 percent. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful inheritance for our whole community?”