For months, non-profits across the country have been battered.
The Trump administration has slashed funding — or eliminated it entirely — for a vast array of services: youth, international aid, health and wellness, immigration, environmental, civil rights, housing, food, education, arts.
Some organizations have severely cut programs, and/or laid off staff. Some have closed entirely.
Many Americans want to help. But it’s hard to know which groups are affected.
There has been no central resource to identify exactly which programs need help.
Until now.
Charity Bridge Fund is a new non-partisan initiative. It closes the gap created by reduced federal funding.
And one of its key players is a Westporter.
Content and communications manager Isabelle Pieper — a Staples High School Class of 2014 graduate — has a background in strategic planning and analysis. In her higher education career, she managed high-level donor and board operations, and generated campaign strategy.
Isabelle Pieper
She is excited by her new opportunity at Charity Bridge. It’s a way to combine her interest in charitable giving, with her work in technology.
It’s also a chance to work with the organization’s founder and executive director, Kendall Webb. The Weston resident also started More.com, an early e-commerce sites, and Just Give, one of the internet’s first non-profit donation platforms.
Pieper talks to individual donors and donor advised funds.
She does outreach too to organizations across the country. They’re all sizes — from large ones like Save the Children, to much smaller ones like a tribal electrification project.
The Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany, New York has lost employees, and seen programs halted.
Charity Bridge is also working with 2 media outlets: New York Public Radio and Rocky Mountain Public Media.
Pieper is excited that, though still in its nascent stage, the fund has secured a matching grant. All donations up to $10,000 will be equaled, through November.
The first distribution of funds will be made next month.
Charity Bridge already lists 68 projects. Donors can search the site by category to find one or more that resonate, or seem particularly noteworthy or needed.
There is no fee to be listed.
“We’re a non-profit ourselves,” Pieper notes. Charity Bridge will apply for grants to cover their own operational expenses. Donors can also tip Charity Bridge, during the checkout process.
The biggest challenge — one familiar to every non-profit — is finding donors, and getting them to respond.
Meanwhile, whatever funds they raise for non-profits in need will not be enough.
“People will see the effects of the services they’ll lose very quickly. Non-profits make a difference in every community,” Pieper says.
“The current cuts will cause a ripple effect for generations to come,” she adds.
And those ripples will continue to spread. The Trump administration has signaled that more cuts lie ahead, in the next fiscal year.
A quarter of humanity, or 2.3 billion people, face moderate or severe food insecurity. I guess the “Trickle Down Theory “ of the 1980s hasn’t been too successful. Let’s hope that this new program becomes very successful. There shouldn’t be any person in the world who is a trillionaire when so many people face hunger. May this “bridge over troubled waters”be successful. What wonderful people you are!
Kendall Webb and Isabelle Pieper should be the type all young people should try to follow and emulate! The world needs more like you.
Her work may help to eliminate all the phony slush fund charities.