The Nathan Cummings Foundation

The Nathan Cummings Foundation is rooted in the Jewish tradition and committed to democratic values and social justice, including fairness, diversity, and community. The Foundation seeks to build a socially and economically just society that values nature and protects the ecological balance for future generations, promotes humane healthcare, and fosters arts and culture that enriches communities.

The Foundation seeks to make progress on the following two pressing and interconnected problems:

Inequality
The Foundation invests in work with strong potential to create pathways to economic opportunity, particularly for women and people of color, and that takes seriously the need to:

• improve quality of life for people;
• level the playing fields of opportunity; and,
• challenge ideas, policies, practices, and systems that perpetuate racial and ethnic stereotypes, criminalize people in poverty, and make it possible for a few to hold a vastly disproportionate share of the nation’s income, wealth, and assets.

Climate Change
The Foundation invests in solutions at the local, state, national, and global level and joins forces with diverse, enlightened leaders to chart a new course for a sustainable future.

The Foundation invests in four focus areas that together advance the Foundation's vision of a healthy planet and a healthy democracy:

• an inclusive clean economy;
• racial and economic justice;
• corporate and political accountability; and,
• voice, creativity, and culture.

The Foundation does not offer support to/for:

• academic scholarships;
• campus or prison education;
• sponsorships;
• social services or direct services;
• capital campaigns, building campaigns, or endowment funds;
• funding for public spaces;
• community arts and theater-based projects;
• dinners or fundraising events;
• projects addressing specific diseases;
• congregations or churches;
• Holocaust or history-based projects;
• Jewish, Hebrew, or arts education; or,
• 501(c)(4) organizations.

Note: The Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellowship provides individuals with $150,000 to pursue an innovative project that seeks to address a challenge related to climate change or inequality, or within the intersection of these two major issues. The proposed projects must demonstrate exceptional vision and relate to at least one the Foundation’s focus areas.

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