Greater New Orleans Foundation Announces Additional $25,000 in New Grants to Local Nonprofits to Support Hurricane Francine Recovery
“Many of our neighbors in our thirteen-parish region have suffered significant damage from Hurricane Francine. For each of them, this storm has truly been a nightmare, and we worked with nonprofit partners to identify their needs and the resources necessary to support them. With these grants, the Foundation is supporting recovery in the most impacted communities and to replenish supplies in preparation for the next storm or disaster,” said Andy Kopplin, President and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
The Foundation was also able to immediately award grants to local nonprofits through the Foundation’s endowed Gayle and Tom Benson Disaster Relief Fund, which was established earlier this summer to give the Foundation capacity to provide rapid financial support to our region’s most effective first-responding nonprofits in advance of an event like the landfall of a hurricane or tropical storm.
Since 2005, the Greater New Orleans Foundation has built a track record of making impactful grants after a disaster. The Foundation has responded to every disaster since Hurricane Katrina when it led the Unified Community Planning effort and raised a $23 million affordable housing fund. The Foundation invested approximately $10 million in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and distributed roughly $8 million in response to Hurricane Ida.
In May 2022, the Foundation announced one of its major long-term community recovery grants from Hurricane Ida disaster response funds, which was a $1 million leadership grant to launch the Community Lighthouse Project. The Community Lighthouse Project, an initiative of Together New Orleans, aims to provide commercial-scale solar power and back-up battery capacity to congregations and nonprofits throughout Louisiana. An initiative of Together Louisiana, Community Lighthouses have been established at churches and other nonprofits where we have installed solar panels and battery storage. Since the Foundation made its grant, nine Community Lighthouses have been established within the Greater New Orleans region and provided residents immediate access to cooling and heating stations, charging stations, food distribution, oxygen exchange, light medical equipment, and other critical services during extended power outages in response to Hurricane Francine. This first activation of Community Lighthouses provided an opportunity for a first run of the Community Lighthouse operations and a chance to learn what works and what can be improved. This is an example of the impact that donations to the Foundation’s disaster recovery funding have on nonprofits’ ability to immediately respond to the disaster at hand.
Through the Greater New Orleans Foundation Disaster Response and Restoration Fund, the Foundation mobilizes and supports a network of voluntary and community organizations active in disasters (VOADS and COADS) whose expertise is deployed locally, nationally and internationally. The Foundation also honors the tradition of “paying it forward” by coordinating with a network of community foundations when disaster strikes other communities to get immediate support to the most vulnerable citizens. Our Response and Restoration Fund provides immediate relief as well as long-term rebuilding support.
The Greater New Orleans Foundation is the community foundation for the 13-parish Southeast Louisiana region (Orleans, Jefferson, St. Tammany, St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Lafourche, Terrebonne, Assumption, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, Tangipahoa, and Washington Parishes.)