Refining our Partnership Request Process
October 8, 2026
Partnership Highlights, January 2025-August 2026
Partnering Beyond Grant Dollars
We believe strong communities are built through strong organizations, which is why our support extends far beyond funding. While grantmaking remains an important part of our work, we also invest in strengthening organizational infrastructure, developing leaders, and helping nonprofits build the resilience needed for long-term success. Through our partnership with Perrin & Associates, organizations engage in assessment-based planning, executive coaching, leadership support, and customized organizational development designed to address both immediate challenges and future opportunities. Together with long-standing offerings such as Master Your Nonprofit Numbers and StoryGrowing, this approach reflects our commitment to being a partner in organizational growth, not simply a source of funding.
Dollars Invested & Unique Reach
Guided by the 7 Framework Focus Areas
- Individual Power
- Community Asset Control & Ownership
- Joy, Restoration, & Resilience
- Collective Community Organizing
- Policies & Practices
- Narrative Change
- Organizational Power
Some of our Partners
- 5/14 Memorial Foundation
- Black Business Week
- Boys and Men of Color Breaking Barriers Financial Empowerment Summit
- The 37th Annual Pine Grill Jazz Reunion
- Beau Fleuve
- Buffalo Juneteenth 50th Anniversary Festival
- King Urban Life Center
- Local Initiatives Support Corporation
- UPward Design for Life
- Heart of the City Neighborhoods, Inc.
- Home Beneath Our Feet
- Open Buffalo Inc.
Workshop and Learning Highlights
Lunch & Learn Series
Kicked off our partnership with Perrin & Associates, hosting dozens of East Side leaders.
Read Event Highlights →Strategic and Crisis Communications Learning
Porsha Ari Parson led a discussion for nonprofit leaders on why crisis communications matter in a hyper-connected world. Nonprofits need to act quickly in a crisis so they can return to their mission.
Read Discussion Insights →What We Learned
- We intentionally shifted our resource allocation to prioritize supporting organizations on the East Side.
- We learned that our work must be guided by reciprocal, trust-based philanthropy, grounded in transparency, accountability, and humility.
- We must leverage our institutional reputation across sectors to further benefit our partners and the communities they serve by encouraging the dismantling and/or restructuring of unnecessary barriers.
- Community Power Building is essential to how we approach our mission to advance financial prosperity, and we will be clearer on how the Framework supports that.
Reflecting and Refining
Since adopting the Framework our commitment to working with communities to change systems and build financial prosperity for Buffalo's East Side has deepened. Shifting resources, updating our partnership model, and changing how we use our influence are structural changes, and they take time to do well. In keeping with our values of transparency, humility, and accountability, we are owning that there is more to do, and we will. This is just the beginning. We are committed to building upon this work steadily and deliberately so that the changes on the East Side are lasting.