Latino Legacy Fund partners with COVID-19 Response Fund to make $100,000 in grants to Latino-led and Latino-serving organizations

Boston – The Latino Legacy Fund at the Boston Foundation today announced that it was partnering with the Foundation’s COVID-19 Response Fund to support four Latino-led or Latino-serving organizations in Greater Boston. The $25,000 general operating support grants made it possible for the COVID-19 Response Fund to expand its weekly grantmaking to 22 organizations this week.

“The Latino Legacy Fund was established in part to nurture philanthropy in communities of color, and close funding gaps facing Latino-led and Latino-serving nonprofits in Greater Boston – “gaps which have been made even more visible in the COVID-19 crisis, and have resulted in even more perilous consequences for the Latino community,” said Aixa Beauchamp, co-chair of the Latino Legacy Fund at the Boston Foundation.

“These grants are one part of an ongoing commitment by both the Latino Legacy Fund and the Boston Foundation to support Latinos in communities throughout Greater Boston,” added Juan Carlos Morales, co-chair of the Latino Legacy Fund. “We will continue to work to raise awareness and generate support for organizations providing critical services to Latino communities in Boston and other cities and towns, and we encourage other philanthropic organizations to do the same.”

The partnership grants were awarded to:

East Boston Neighborhood Health Center Corporation (East Boston): to provide support for a COVID-19 testing site, increased COVID-19 prevention education (multilingual), expanded food access/food support services, and increased psychosocial support for families, seniors, and undocumented individuals.

The Latino Health Insurance Program, Inc. (LHIP) (Framingham): to provide COVID-19 emergency services to Latinx communities in MetroWest and Boston via TeleHealth and phone service in their preferred language: Spanish, Portuguese, or English.

The Neighborhood Developers, Inc. (Chelsea): to support some 6,000 low-income people in Chelsea, Revere and abutting cities with a hotline to help constituents apply for unemployment benefits, cash payments to vulnerable households to pay for rent, and food delivery.

The Right to Immigration Institute (Waltham): to provide immigrants and refugees with legal representation on housing, employment, and safety matters, especially domestic violence and hate crimes.

The Boston Foundation has also continued its ongoing commitment to support Black, Latino and Asian-led and -serving organizations through the COVID-19 Response Fund. Of 91 grantees to date, over half are led by people of color.

“History has repeatedly highlighted the inequities in both the impact to communities of color and the support for their recovery from economic and health crises,” noted Orlando Watkins, Vice President for Programs at the Boston Foundation. “We are committed across our organization to improving racial equity, and this partnership is helping us address an already pressing need to support Latino leaders and organizations.”

The Latino Legacy Fund, a unique partnership of local Latino philanthropists and leaders, the Boston Foundation and Hispanics in Philanthropy, was founded in 2013 as the first Latino-focused fund in the Greater Boston area. The Fund’s mission is to create and maintain a permanent endowment to strengthen the diverse Latino community of Greater Boston and contribute to the region’s civic vitality by supporting issues and organizations that advance the socio-economic status of Latinos—while enhancing the leadership capacity of the entire Latino community. While raising money for the permanent endowment, the Fund has also given nearly $400,000 to Latino-led and Latino-serving nonprofits in the Greater Boston area.

The Boston Foundation and the Latino Legacy Fund also partnered in 2017 to found Massachusetts United for Puerto Rico, which raised more than $4 million to organizations providing relief, recovery and relocation support to thousands of people affected by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and Massachusetts.