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Novartis benchmarked Employee Crisis Programs, and asked fellow corporate funders via the corporate funders listserve to answer the questions below.
- If you have an Employee Crisis Program, what is the name
- Do you manage the program internally or thru a 3rd party? If you use a 3rd party, can you share their name/website and any good/bad experiences.
- Do you only support disasters or other hardships as well?
- What is the average percentage of your employees that apply for aid?
- What is your minimum and maximum funding?
- What is the average amount of aid?
- Do you provide aid directly to the employee and/or vendors?
- Do you allow employees to donate to your fund? If so, how do you promote awareness and what is the employee donation participation rate? Do you match these donations?
- Where does the program reside (CSR, Foundation, HR)?
- Please share guidelines and applications, if possible.
- Please share any other insights.
With the recent passage of the federal budget bill that slashed Medicaid and food assistance for millions of Americans while directing $170 billion to border militarization and the surveillance, detention, and deportation of immigrants, it is clear that private industry stands to profit while tearing families and communities apart. Indeed, between Trump’s election in November 2024 and April of this year, the stock prices of the nation’s two largest private detention facility operators, GEO Group and CoreCivic, soared 94% and 62% respectively – a pattern that the Brennan Center for Justice notes followed Trump’s first election. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the budget bill’s signing, both companies saw a further 3% increase in stock value.
With billions in philanthropic assets invested in financial markets, advocates have long called for divestment from private detention facilities and the broader prison-industrial complex. These efforts exist as part of the larger movement for divestment from the range of extractive industries that harm the very communities that foundations seek to support through their grantmaking. Numerous funders have taken up the challenge of revisiting their investment strategies to better align with their missions, with some also pursuing restorative grantmaking practices. In this session we’ll engage in a discussion with several of those funders, as well as an impact investment firm committed to advancing a regenerative economy.
This session will be an excellent opportunity for staff on both the investment and grantmaking sides of the house to learn first-hand what it looks like to operationalize divestment and impact investing strategies, so invite your colleagues and bring your questions!
Speakers
Hans How, Integrated Capital Officer, Restorative Economies Fund, Kataly Foundation
Alex Saingchin, Co-Founder & President, Just Futures
Rochelle Witharana, Chief Financial and Investment Officer, California Wellness
Moderator
Rachel Fagiano, Funders for Justice
Cost: Free

The Princeton Area Community Foundation recently awarded $199,000 in COVID-19 Relief & Recovery Fund grants to 25 nonprofits holding summer programs.
These programs will include instructions to help students overcome learning loss caused by the pandemic.
"Through these grants, we are helping 25 nonprofits engage 2,900 children in educational and social-emotional learning programs," said Jeffrey M. Vega, President & CEO of the Community Foundation.
"We know COVID-19 caused significant disruptions to education, especially for students living in under-resourced communities, and we hope these grants will help young people rebound from some of that learning loss and re-engage children in the many community-based programs that were forced to shut down last year."
To prepare for the third phase of COVID Relief funding, the Foundation reached out to nonprofits and other stakeholders to learn about needs throughout the region.
Learning loss due to the pandemic and helping prepare students to return to classrooms were among the highest priorities cited by nonprofits.
According to a report by JerseyCAN, a nonprofit focused on education, a majority of New Jersey's third- through eighth-graders were not on grade level at the start of the 2020-21 school year because of the pandemic.
Americares has announced a $2 million grant from Johnson & Johnson to launch a three-year program aimed at strengthening the resilience of more than 100 safety-net health clinics in areas where climate change disproportionately affects the health of vulnerable communities.
The Climate Health Equity for Community Clinics Program is a collaborative effort between Americares, the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Johnson & Johnson, and healthcare providers at participating free clinics and community health centers, which will design tailored interventions that meet the needs of under-resourced and overworked staff. By improving clinic operations and health resilience, the program aims to protect patients’ health during heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, and other climate-related emergencies.
According to Americares, more than 90 percent of free clinic and community health center patients qualify as low income, and more than half identify as racial and ethnic minorities. The World Health Organization has declared climate change the single biggest threat to humanity—putting clean air, safe drinking water, secure housing, and food supplies at risk—and projects climate change will cause an additional 250,000 global deaths annually from 2030 to 2050, largely due to malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress.