Dear Colleagues:

As we begin the second quarter of the year, I wanted to thank you, our friends and partners, for your good work and to share with you some of the connections we see across your efforts and ours.

In the past quarter, we awarded more than $12.8 million through 67 new grants. In many cases, those grants continued projects that began years ago. That’s important, because we know that change and progress take time.

But we also feel an urgency to respond quickly to changes in the world, and to do more than grantmaking, by publicly standing with our partners. I’d like to mention just a few recent examples that speak to being responsive to change and to voicing our support for the issues we and you together are addressing:

• Recognizing the need to support the field of journalism as an essential arm of democracy, this week we announced several grants to support journalism institutions. You can read more here.
• This past February, during one of the wettest winters in California, thousands of residents in San Jose had hardships related to flooding. Our Community program officer, Holly Kreider, writes about an emergency relief grant we made, here.
• More and more, our youngest children live in households with at least one immigrant parent—and many speak multiple languages. Our new Dual Language Learners (DLL) portfolio, in our Education program, aims to move DLLs from the periphery to the core of early childhood education policy and practice, and we invite you to learn more here.
• We recently joined more than 190 philanthropic institutions in signing a letter issued by Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees.
• One of our Education program officers, Kimberly Brenneman, also joined a list of leaders who signed a letter committing to support strong science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) teachers and education for all children in America.

These are just a few examples of the news on our end.

We invite you to take a look at other recent highlights on our blog, including our new interactive infographic looking at our 2016 Year in Review—complete with messages from each member of our Board—as well as a guest post from one of our Human Rights grantees, thoughts from our Climate and Clean Energy program director on the path forward for clean energy, and seven tips for integrating mathematical thinking into family engagement programs.

As always, we look forward to hearing from you and to following all of your good work.

Sincerely,
Deanna Gomby
President & CEO
Heising-Simons Foundation