Our Path Forward

We're excited to share some updates about the Scherman Foundation’s future!

🔍 Reflecting on Our Journey

In 2021, we celebrated the Foundation’s 80th anniversary. This was an opportunity to reflect on our history, core values, and most importantly, the transformative work of our grantees. It was not only a moment to explore our past but also to define our future.

During this period, we also focused on developing a shared understanding of racial equity and anti-racist practices among our board and staff. We came away with a renewed, deepened commitment to racial justice, and we're now focused on applying that framework to our grantmaking with transparency and accountability to our community.

🚀 A Vision for the Future

We've spent the past year reimagining our mission, vision, and program guidelines to better reflect our two core commitments: advancing racial justice and emphasizing the importance of organizing, power shifting, and movement building in BIPOC communities. We are challenging traditional philanthropic structures and striving to be better partners, advocates, and allies to our grantees.

During this ongoing process, we’ve assessed our current grantmaking and explored our collective vision for the future grounded in economic, political, and cultural transformation. We've provided final grants to some current grantees that don’t fully align with our direction while increasing support for those that do. We've also temporarily suspended our rolling acceptance of Letters of Inquiry until our revised program guidelines are available to ensure transparency during this period of change.

🌱 What’s Next?

1️⃣ Inviting feedback from our grantees and community members this summer to ensure our vision aligns with those at the frontlines of the movements we support.

2️⃣ Revising our guidelines and grantmaking strategies to reflect our new framework.

3️⃣ Launching these updates on our website and social platforms this fall.