Our Vision

We envision a world in which all people have the resources, respect and sense of belonging to live and contribute fully as themselves, in safety, and with joy.

Our Mission

We seek to ensure that all people have:

Resources: Access to food, shelter, education and healthcare.

Respect and a sense of belonging: For women/girls, immigrants, Black, Indigenous and other people of color, LGBTQ, religious minorities, the formerly incarcerated, young people, people with low income and others who have historically experienced discrimination, injustice and/or marginalization.

The opportunity to live and contribute, fully as themselves: To receive life-sustaining pay or public support, to participate equitably in their communities and in the political system, as their full selves.

Our Values

We believe that the people most impacted by oppression and injustice – those living at the intersection of racism, sexism, transphobia, disability, xenophobia and classism, to name a few – should be resourced so that they can design, implement, and sustain solutions.

We believe that true, trust-based collaboration – among nonprofits and among funders – is essential.

We believe our government has a responsibility to guarantee the rights and well-being of all people.

We believe philanthropy should strive to repair the harms caused by extreme wealth inequity and to change systems to prevent future concentration of wealth upon which philanthropy itself is built.

Commitment To Racial Justice

The Grove Foundation is committed to racial justice, which to us means the systematic fair treatment of people of all races, resulting in equitable opportunities and outcomes for all.¹ We strive to achieve racial justice within our own organization and through our grantmaking. To this end, The Grove Foundation aims to:

• Follow inclusive hiring and HR practices that allow The Grove Foundation to attract, retain, and enjoy the benefits of a diverse team
• Analyze our grants to understand and expand the extent to which our resources support organizations that: are led by people of color, collaborate with people-of-color-led organizations, and carry out their work in a way that advances equity and racial justice
• Seek grantees with a strong analytical understanding of the intersection of racism with other oppressions, and who have, or are developing, strategies for addressing racial injustice
• Continue to learn and challenge ourselves to understand and overcome the ways in which we uphold white supremacy so that our work both internally and externally advances racial justice

To see our initial analysis of our grantmaking from a diversity, equity and inclusion perspective, click here.

Working With Grantees

We strive to:

• Be open, accessible, responsive and respectful to grantees, grantseekers, and other nonprofit partners
• Be appropriately transparent and direct, including about the likelihood of funding, process, timing, budgets, strategies and changes in strategy
• Respond to emails or phone calls in fewer than five business days, preferably between 24 and 48 hours for grantees; set up automatic replies if we cannot do this
• Be grantee-centric and treat grantees as potentially long-term partners whom we aim to support
• Process grants quickly while being thorough and following the grantee’s pace
• Recognize that grantee time is valuable and seek to minimize our requests
• Refrain from asking for unnecessary documentation and be flexible about document requests, e.g.
  • • Encourage grantseekers to re-use proposals and reports
    • Provide alternatives to written proposals and reports
    • Procure publicly available documents ourselves, rather than requesting them
    • Prepare for meetings with grantees and review materials prepared by them
• Give grantees the benefit of the doubt, and step up, not back, during difficult times
• Give grantees generous notice if we plan to discontinue funding them; step-down funding whenever appropriate

To see key findings from our grantee perception report, click here.