Media Contact:
Suzi Emmerling, semmerling@broadfoundation.org
A Statement from Gerun Riley, President, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
For over two decades, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has actively invested in and supported the public good in education, science and the arts, making grants in public K-12 education, scientific and medical research, and the visual and performing arts. While we have always been nimble in our grantmaking and willing to change course in order to make a greater difference, the COVID-19 crisis is challenging us to reimagine how we can best support our community and prompting us to ask questions about the pandemic’s impact that may take months or years to answer.
In the short-term, we are working with many of our current grantees to ensure that our funding allows flexibility for them to both respond to the immediate needs of today and to plan for their future sustainability.
We are balancing how we respond to the urgency of the crisis with a deep responsibility to the education, scientific and medical research, and arts institutions that we have built from the ground up and that depend on us for ongoing funding: The Broad Center, the Broad Institute, The Broad museum and The Broad Stage. We are especially proud that the Broad Institute is processing patient COVID-19 tests in partnership with the state of Massachusetts, adding to the capacity of testing labs across New England and reducing the time it takes to turn results around from several days to several hours. Because of their flexible structure and advanced facility, the Broad Institute was able to convert a clinical processing lab into a large-scale, highly-automated COVID-19 testing facility in a matter of days.
Our initial grantmaking related to COVID-19 has been focused on our home base of Los Angeles, which has quickly become one of the nation’s hotspots. We have listened to partners, practitioners and advocates to better understand the gaps that need to be filled and have made three initial time-sensitive grants to: L.A. Emergency COVID-19 Crisis Fund and Angeleno Campaign (a project of the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles) to provide childcare for essential front-line workers and assistance to individuals and families facing economic hardship through the City’s Family Source Centers, a network of trusted direct providers of support services for low-income families; The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation to support the launch of an information and referral system that will connect tens of thousands of individuals and small businesses to critical local, state and federal financial resources; and a grant to One Family Los Angeles for basic needs assistance to LA’s most vulnerable families with school-aged children through a network of school and community-based partners.
We know the Los Angeles community will have more, different and unexpected needs in the coming months and years, so we will continue to assess and strategize how to play an impactful role in the long-term recovery of our great city.