We, Leslie Karst and Robin McDuff, created this foundation to pass back to communities of color what was, in fact, the result of our accumulated white privilege, i.e., our inheritance, other financial gifts and support from our families that was largely unavailable to communities of color from our parent's generation.
 
At this point in time (January, 2022), this is a family foundation with the majority of the board being members of the Karst family. The plan is to eventually move it from family control (and the family is primarily white) to mostly non-family control, with the majority of the board being people of color. That said, we don't want to make this change until the foundation is well-established with our values as the guide to board decision-making. Any incoming board member must confirm that they accept our intentions, values, and direction.

THE URGENCY OF NOW
 
The two great issues of our time—inequality and climate change—are going in the wrong direction. Therefore, it makes no sense to try to maintain an endowment in perpetuity for the foundation. This is not our value. We believe in using the money sooner rather than later, as we find projects that fit our mission.
 
THE IMPORTANCE OF PROGRAM AND MISSION RELATED INVESTMENTS
 
Many foundations do not align their investments with their program or their mission, but instead (for a variety of reasons, including the duty to be prudent in financial management, as well as the desire to grow the endowment via investments) try to maximize their endowment through stock portfolios. We want to align all our investments with our program and mission to the degree possible. While we have to be prudent with our investments and evaluate them carefully to ensure that there is a balance of risk and reward, we will only invest in areas that we feel will do no harm to the environment and which will positively help in our mission for racial equity.
 
The fiduciary responsibility of the directors is not necessarily to make the maximum amount of return on investments, but rather, to make a return on investment, if any, that is aligned with the values of the foundation. For what does it profit the foundation to gain return at the cost of our prime directive? Thus, all investments should be viewed via the lens of “impact investing” or “regenerative investing,” i.e., those which will help create social and environmental gains that will lead to a more equitable future for all. The majority of investments should thus be focused on either program-related investments or mission-related investments.
 
PROJECT CRITERIA
 
Projects should be on-going and help a wide variety of people in multiple ways and create a positive ripple effect in the community, increasing resilience, and doing so only in ways that will tend to heal the planet.
 
While the projects should be focused on helping broad communities, we are at the same time particularly interested in those projects which will improve the lives and opportunities of women.
 
Any grant or investment should be “green.” No investments should be made in any project or company that isn’t working towards healing the planet.
 
Any project we fund should be leading in the direction of a common humanity.
 
Any project we fund should have core values of fairness, tolerance, acceptance, love, and community.
 
No grant should be given to individuals; rather, grants should be given to organizations with a clear program to ameliorate inequity. That said, a loan could go to individuals if it were program-related with a fairly high certainty that the loan would be repaid.
 
Due to the fact that we are a tiny foundation, we would like to try to find projects that are small and mostly or completely volunteer-based and individual-donation based, so that our funds truly make an impact: in other words, organizations that are not receiving significant funds from large foundations or governmental funds. The money can go to operating costs for such a group. That said, if the project is right and the management is outstanding, this is not any sort of absolute mandate.
 
For ethical reasons, we don’t want to fund any project that is directly related to one of our board members, i.e., to any group with which the board member is working or has worked, either as a volunteer or for compensation.

A NOTE ABOUT DONATIONS
 
We are not seeking donations. That said, we would be thrilled if anyone wants to give to Ken's scholarship. Beyond that, if you believe as we do but don't want to start your own foundation or research places to give - we are more than happy to receive your legacy gift! We are a 401(c)3 foundation; EIN number 87-2385049.