The Foraker Group

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) is directing significant funds to Alaska. There may be an opportunity for your nonprofit to apply for federal funds. In this video, Foraker’s Rachel Morse will walk you through how to find details about the funds in order to determine if your organization is eligible. You can contact Rachel directly at rmorse@forakergroup.org for specific questions on ARPA funds. We also encourage you to sign up for the Alaska ARPA email alerts and updates to stay in the know. As a reminder, one of the funding opportunities currently available is through a partnership with the State of Alaska and The Alaska Community Foundation. The ARPA Nonprofit Recovery Fund will have two rounds of applications – the first round is due November 19…. Read more »

Oh, November! You sneak up on me every time. November is that month when the rush takes full hold of me as I frantically try to finish all my projects for the year. It is also the time when I want to savor the new snow and the impending joy (and, yes, bustle) of the upcoming holidays. Here at Foraker, we have some exciting projects on the verge of launching this month and next. We’re putting the finishing touches on them and look forward to sharing them with you. For now, though, I want to get a jumpstart on the season by sharing the top five reasons I’m grateful for the nonprofit sector. Let’s call this the Nonprofit Gratitude List. No nonprofit gratitude list would be complete without starting with… Read more »

Foraker is closed for Veteran’s Day on Thursday, November 11. We will re-open on Friday, November 12…. Read more »

Executive Leadership Intensive provides mentoring and community for executive directors in their first three years of leadership. We believe successful leaders are supported leaders. With the Executive Leadership Intensive (ELI), you will be in a safe space where you can find tools and resources to help you grow into your role as executive director. During this program you will strengthen your board relationship, explore management and planning strategies with an experienced mentor, and learn from a network of peers. Applications are due January 10. The program starts February 17. Learn more here…. Read more »

Thursday, October 21, 2021 (Anchorage, AK) – Today, the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development (DCCED) announced a partnership with the Alaska Community Foundation (ACF) to distribute $20 million to Alaska’s nonprofit sector. The Alaska Legislature appropriated $20 million from the State’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds towards a nonprofit grant program to be administered by DCCED, now known as the ARPA Nonprofit Recovery Fund. With the guidance of the DCCED, statewide funders, and regional leadership, the ACF will administer the program, including processing applications, distributing grant funds to eligible organizations, and managing grantee reporting. “COVID has had negative economic impacts on almost every industry sector and our nonprofits are no exception as they continue to persevere and provide services to Alaskans.  said DCCED Commissioner, Julie Anderson…. Read more »

Our approach every day at Foraker is to focus on strengths – strengths of the people, the places, and the missions we serve. Fault, blame, and shame have no place in our work as they rarely, if ever lead to resolution or learning. Instead, they only serve to polarize and shut people down from learning the very thing they set out seeking. It is, then, with a heavy heart that we are listening, watching, and reading the blatant anti-Semitism, racism, anti-LGBTQ, anti-science rhetoric happening in Anchorage. We recognize or perhaps just hope that this is a fringe set of voices designed to drown out the vast majority of people who are too upset, distracted, or eliminated from the conversation to hear their voices in what should be a civil public… Read more »

Responding to a number of inquiries from Alaska nonprofits, Foraker has been in productive discussions with leadership of the Alaska Department of Health and Human Services to reduce the financial impact from a recent cyberattack. We commend department leaders who are working to navigate fallout from the incident, which has resulted in late disbursement of grant funding to many nonprofits, some of whom have been waiting for several months to receive their funds. Understandably, this has caused financial difficulty for them. Foraker is working with the department to identify organizations that are facing significant financial hardship and have had to or are considering actions such as tapping into dwindling reserves, accessing and/or pursuing a line of credit to cover payroll and other expenses, letting staff go, or at the most… Read more »

To be 100% clear, we believe that every person who can be vaccinated should get vaccinated. We stand with science and public health. We stand for health and the economy as one and the same. We stand with our whole community and say: “we care.” We also understand that health disparity is deeply rooted in our country and in our state. This means that while we all might be floating in the same ocean we were never sitting in the same boat. At our last advisory board meeting, nonprofit and philanthropic leaders from around the state engaged in conversation on this topic. We reminded ourselves that while some are choosing to be unvaccinated, many others want the shot but have difficulty accessing it. Let me share one example of thousands… Read more »

Is it ever enough? This is the question that drives me, haunts me, inspires me, and motivates me more than any other question in these times. I feel it most acutely as I watch and read and learn about what is happening around the world and in our own country and in my community. I feel it as we enter into this next phase of the pandemic and acknowledge that this is not a temporary way of life like many of us thought in 2020, but a way of being that is likely to be measured in years not months. What can I do? How can I contribute? Where will it matter? Is any of that enough? I feel these questions bubbling up for me about my own actions, and… Read more »

Earlier this summer we asked you to help us better understand the landscape we are operating in, especially in light of COVID. Surveys are challenging on a good day, but in a time of so many unknowns and the desire to truly know, I am sure the number of surveys in your inbox is more than you want to tackle. Fair enough. We are grateful to each of you who did take the time. We had a sufficient enough response that I think you all might find yourself in these results. Before we dive into the findings, I want to share a few thoughts that are not as obvious in the survey results but provide the emotional underpinnings of the results. Perhaps I can best sum up this emotional state… Read more »