A consortium of 21 local and national foundations and corporations has pooled more than $8 million to provide New York City’s community-based housing and development groups with new, large operating support grants.

Beginning this fall, the Neighborhood 2000 Fund, chaired by Gary Hattem of Bankers Trust Company and administered by the New York Community Trust, will give grants amounting to as much as $300,000 per community group over four years to at least 25 organizations.

The funding pool’s founders include Hattem, Steve Flax of M&T Bank and Anita Nager of the Community Trust. “We thought this was an opportunity to bring in new sources of money from national foundations that could not support individual groups but would be attracted by a pooled fund in their hometown, and from corporations that had not traditionally supported community development but were interested from a business point of view in strengthening New York neighborhoods,’ Nager said.

Groups can use the grants for strategic planning, organizational and staff development, community organizing–or to pay for basic overhead expenses.

Nager said the fund hopes to raise a total of S15 million and aims to eventually make 50 of the four-year grants.
Participants include longtime CDC funders J.R Morgan, Republic National Bank, Uris Brothers Foundation, Chase Manhattan, and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, as well as relative newcomers such as Fuji Bank and Trust, Bank of China and the Wolfensohn Family Foundation.

For a copy of the Neighborhood 2000 Fund REP, call Norma Rollins at (212) 686-0010, ext 602.