Grantmaking
We make strategic grants to nonprofit partners working in all five boroughs of New York City. In addition to making grants, we support our partners by helping them evaluate and ensure program effectiveness; helping them promote their work; and developing and enhancing linkages between organizations that do complementary work.
Our Three Programmatic Pillars
Youth & Education
A grant for programs keeping children, teenagers and young adults safe by empowering them to pursue their goals through education, mentoring and career opportunities.
Housing & Commuity
This grant supports the unique needs of specific neighborhoods and communities throughout NYC, including the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness.
Justice & Safety
Our longest running program pillar grant that supports initiatives with the goal of preventing and minimizing violence and loss of life.
In addition to making grants, we support our partners by helping them evaluate and ensure program effectiveness; helping them promote their work; and developing and enhancing linkages between organizations that do complementary work.
Our Grantees
America SCORES New York
Project: Literacy in Action
Program Area(s): Youth and Education
ASNY is a combined soccer, literacy, and service-learning program for children ages 5-18 in under resourced NYC communities. Instead of exposure to troublesome influences and participation in negative activities, ASNY engages youth with soccer, poetry and community service projects.
Brooklyn Academy of Music
Project: Arts & Justice (A&J)
Program Area(s): Youth and Education
A&J helps young people develop their artistry and academic skills by engaging them in practical workshops, thought-provoking research and discussions, performances and exhibitions at BAM and partner organizations, and in-person and virtual meetings with peers, community leaders, and subject-area experts in New York City and around the world.
It addresses a lack of arts programming in public schools and in low-income communities, and provides critical support to young people, many of whom will be among the first in their families to attend college.
Brooklyn Community Kitchen
Project: Greenpoint Community Kitchen
Program Area(s): Housing and Community
Brooklyn Community Kitchen believes in centering the community and providing a safe space where everybody is welcome to come and get a meal. They currently serve 70-100 people weekly, in addition to providing meals to two or three community fridges weekly. This is an opportunity for Brooklyn Community Kitchen to buy bulk groceries each week such as additional proteins, fresh fruit, produce for soups and salads, and ingredients to bake fresh bread. It allows them to maintain their fridges and cargo van which help them store and move all of the rescued and donated food that makes up their meals.
Central Park Medical Unit
Project: The Stryker Power-load System Program
Program Area(s): Justice and Safety
CPMU serves Central Park’s 42 million-plus annual visitors and responds to over 3,000 calls for aid a year. As the only dedicated EMS unit to Central Park, CPMU fills a void by providing medical care free of charge to the underinsured and reducing response times, as compared to 911, by over ten minutes, which can mark the difference in life and death in many serious calls.
Child Abuse Prevention Program at the New York Foundling
Project: Child Safety Workshops
Program Area(s): Justice and Safety; Youth and Education
CAPP makes child abuse awareness accessible to third and fourth graders in public schools across the five boroughs of NYC. CAPP’s Child Safety Workshops use life-sized puppets in skits that teach children about physical and sexual abuse. By discussing the difference between safe and unsafe touches, workshops help children to recognize potentially abusive situations and seek help before they escalate.
EMS FDNY Help Fund
Project: Housing Security for EMS FDNY impacted by Catastrophic Events and/or Circumstances
Program Area(s): Housing and Community
EMS FDNY Help Fund provides a safety net to 4,567 EMTs and Paramedics that serve as frontline medical care providers across NYC’s five boroughs and as of 25 years ago, they are part of the FDNY. We call them NYC’s street doctors as vulnerable NYC populations often will not seek medical care until it is an emergency.
We want FDNY EMS impacted by Financial Hardship, Natural Disasters and Pandemics to be able to stay in their existing housing - whether they rent or own - in order to continue their work as “NYC’s Street Doctors”, rather than losing their existing housing and further disrupting their vital work.
Foster Pride
Project: Reisenbach Philanthropies Financial Literacy Workshops of HandMade
Program Area(s): Youth and Education
The HandMade program and Financial Literacy programs teach youth the basics of running a small business, designing and marketing their unique crochet items; augmented by the Reisenbach Financial Literacy workshops, youth learn important money management skills which help them toward their goal of independent living. Students who are matched with internships have the opportunity to learn new skills as well as to earn much needed income.
Fountain House
Project: OnRamps
Program Area(s): Housing and Community
The OnRamps program seeks to work with the hardest to serve individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), by focusing on where they are: streets, parks, and recently out of incarceration. It currently operates at 2 street sites, which operate year-round. By bringing innovative social practices to places outside of clubhouses, we can help those with severe mental illness not only connect with services but maintain their connections in a sustainable way.
Good Call
Project: Reisenbach Philanthropies Internship Cohort
Program Area(s): Justice and Safety; Youth and Education
Good Call provides a 24/7 emergency arrest hotline to connect arrested individuals with a free lawyer. Good Call's internship program gives students and system-involved youth ages 17-25, an opportunity to develop their community outreach, technology, and leadership skills, while helping Good Call build awareness and trust in local communities by serving as emerging leaders and credible messengers. The Reisenbach Internship Cohort focuses on raising awareness around community safety within our communities.
Jeremiah Program New York
Project: Economic Mobility for Single Mother Families Experiencing Poverty
Program Area(s): Housing and Community; Youth and Education
The Jeremiah Program works in Brownsville, Brooklyn to end the cycle of poverty for single mothers and their children, two generations at a time. This approach ensures access to post-secondary education for single mothers, high-quality early childhood education for their children, and holistic support for the whole family.
The Jewish Board
Project: Independent Living Skills Groups at Kaplan House
Program Area(s): Youth and Education
Kaplan House serves young men in the foster care system, aged 17-21, from throughout New York City, many of whom have spent much of their lives in the child welfare system. Kaplan House ensures that when residents leave, they do so with viable independent housing options, educational accomplishments, a path to meaningful employment, and permanent connections with trusted adults.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Each year, Reisenbach supports the educational expenses of high-achieving John Jay students working in areas relevant to our mission.
The Reisenbach Master's Scholarship Program is an investment in high-potential graduate students at John Jay College who are planning careers advancing safety and quality of life in New York City. Winners of this scholarship must commit to working in relevant fields in New York City for at least five years after graduation. Past scholarship recipients work as social workers, NYPD officers, federal law enforcement agents, lawyers, nonprofit leaders, and forensic scientists, among other service-oriented professions.
The Judith Bronfman Memorial Scholarship is available to both undergraduate and graduate students at John Jay. It is awarded to students who have already made a significant contribution to safety and quality of life in New York City via work, volunteering, or academic study. This scholarship honors the life and achievements of long-time Reisenbach Philanthropies board member Judith Bronfman, who was a professor of English at John Jay and a driving force behind the foundation's master's scholarships.
New York City Police Foundation
Project: Crime Stoppers
Program Area(s): Justice and Safety
Following John Reisenbach's death in a random shooting, which remains unsolved, Reisenbach supports Crime Stoppers to help ensure that no other families need endure the agony of losing a loved one to an unsolved homicide.
NYC Muslim Center
Project: NYCMC x ACS Foster Care Initiative
Program Area(s): Youth & Education; Housing & Community
The NYCMC x ACS Foster Care Initiative is a simple workshopping experience for the 23 foster care agencies in New York City. During those workshops, they listened to concerns and crafted solutions to problems happening in the field surrounding Muslim parent recruitment and cultural sensitivity. Reisenbach Philanthropies’ funding helps expand the workshop format to actually participate in the strategies devised and presented to the agencies as well as continuing their workshopping after a highly requested continuation from both ACS and agency participants.
The POINT CDC
Project: Camp PowerPOINT
Program Area(s): Housing and Community, Youth and Education
CPP offers a comprehensive program in which 65 youth, ages 14-21, participate in required activities and chosen electives in the areas of leadership, arts-in-education, stewardship and social skills building. For many, this job is their first and/or only formal work experience.
Police Athletic League
Project: Reisenbach Interns Program
Program Area(s): Justice and Safety; Youth and Education
Reisenbach Interns at PAL are teenagers involved in the court system; they receive individualized academic support and hands-on work experience to help ensure that they meet their academic and workforce goals.
Safe Horizon
Project: Streetwork Project
Program Area(s): Housing and Community; Youth and Education
Safe Horizon's Streetwork Project serves a particularly vulnerable population: homeless youth. Based at Streetwork's Uptown Drop-In Center in Harlem, this project connects participants with safety, shelter and basic services.
Technology for Families in Need
Project: Autumn 2023 Deployment Support
Program Area(s): Youth and Education
By TechF.I.N. helping to narrow the digital divide, more low-income New Yorkers will have the tools necessary to participate fully in their education and the economy. TechF.I.N. enables 125 families to receive a working computer for their home, enabling them to complete schoolwork, online classes, conduct job searches, without the limits and inconveniences of resource stretched computer labs in public libraries and schools.
Win
Project: Young Adult Income Building
Program Area(s): Housing and Community; Youth and Education
Win provides safe, clean and private transitional housing for families, as well as long term supportive housing with intensive one-to-one case management, to break the cycle of homelessness for New York City women and their children. The Income Building Program offers employment counseling, employment retention workshops, interview preparation, mock interviews, GED preparation, resume writing assistance, job fairs, computer skills training, and more.
The W.O.W. Project
Project: Sustaining Color, Sustaining Community: Natural Dyes for Chinatown
Program Area(s): Youth and Education
This intergenerational art program engages femme, queer, and trans Asian American youth between the ages of 15-25. It provides an identity-affirming arts space for these youth that supports self-expression through the experience of making clothing.
YWCA Brooklyn
Project: Enhanced Trauma-informed Supportive Services and Nontraditional Therapeutic Programs for Women Impacted by Gender-based Violence, Poverty and Homelessness
Program Area(s): Housing and Community
YWCA Brooklyn provides safe, permanent, affordable homes for women impacted by poverty and homelessness with a focus on those who have experienced domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking and exploitation.
The organization offers trauma-informed supportive services, and will expand the nontraditional therapeutic programming for their residents to help them build resiliency, heal from the trauma they have experienced, develop confidence and healthier relationships, and live independent, self-determined lives within a community of their peers.
Apply for a Grant
Apply for a grant
Thank you for your interest in becoming a Reisenbach Philanthropies grantee partner. Our current grant term is closed. Please return to this page the final week of May 2024, when our application period opens for the 2025-2026 grant term.
If you have any questions, please email Director of Programs, Korenet Brown at korenet.brown@reisenbachphilanthropies.org.
Programs