Mission

North Star Fund is New York's community foundation supporting grassroots groups leading the movement for equality, economic justice and peace. By organizing donors and raising money for grants, we support efforts for better schools, housing and health care, protecting civil liberties, creating living wage jobs, and advocating for peace, freedom and human rights. Since 1979, North Star Fund has distributed over $42 million to 1,775 groups working to create a more equitable and democratic city.

What We Do

By inspiring donors to give, and by awarding grants for grassroots activism, the North Star Fund is building a community of progressive leaders in a movement created to achieve lasting social change.

North Star Fund funds tough and complex issues: immigrants’ rights, the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, reproductive rights, workers' rights, , environmental justice, housing and homelessness.

North Star Fund provides grants in three categories: through our Community Funding Committee, our Rapid Response fund, and donor advised grants. We offer our services to individuals, family and private foundations, and businesses. The Community Funding Committee (CFC) embodies North Star Fund's commitment to being an institution where activists from all walks of life come together with a shared vision of a New York City that works for all its residents. Community organizers, working in the most marginalized communities, hold the majority of seats on the committee, in accordance with our commitment to activist-led grantmaking. They work in partnership with our donors, board members and colleagues from peer organizations, who fill the remaining seats on the committee. The CFC's role is two-fold -- to use experience, expertise and analysis to select the most effective and promising grassroots organizations for funding, and to provide their insight and perspective to shape our grantmaking programs to create the greatest strategic impact.

As a donor organizer, North Star Fund provides prospective and current donors with networking, information sharing, and leadership development opportunities.

Our monthly activities provide easy ways to get connected with like-minded donors and activists. Through van tours, workshops, giving circles, and our Donor Leadership Committee, individuals learn about the groundbreaking work of our grantees, gain tools to increase their effectiveness as givers, and shape the future of progressive philanthropy in New York City.