Exploring Intersectionality: A Series of Conversations


Author: Nicholas Randell

Intersectionality Webinar #1, November 20th, 2023 (12:00-1:30) Please join us at 12:00 PM (EST) on November 20th for an online conversation about the intersection of incarceration and substance use.  We’ve invited panelists from several of our grant partners to discuss the ways in which their work with recently incarcerated youth is affected by substance use … Continued

NE Arc Blog
Grant Partner Spotlight: Northeast Arc Ambassadors Represent


Author: Nick Randell, Program Officer

In the fall of 2022, the Tower Foundation’s Community Experts Fund awarded a total of $200,000 to agencies that support programming for young people with intellectual disabilities and/or behavioral health challenges.  The Fund was entirely designed and administered by a group of young adults that represented our funding regions and that had lived expertise across … Continued

Tower Foundation and INP: A Community-First Model of Partnership


Author: Yolanda Coentro, President and CEO, Institute for Nonprofit Practice

When the Institute for Nonprofit Practice (INP) received our first grant from the Tower Foundation in 2009, little did we know that this investment would blossom into a transformative partnership spanning many years and multiple communities.  Last month, while attending the graduation ceremony for INP’s first-ever Western New York cohort of Core Program graduates through … Continued

Think Bigger Do Good Policy Paper Series Advocates for Increasing Medicaid’s Commitment to Home Visiting


Author: Nicholas Randell

We are pleased to share an update from Think Bigger Do Good Policy Paper Series, a collaborative project of the Thomas Scattergood Foundation, Peg’s Foundation, the Peter & Elizabeth Tower Foundation, and the Patrick P. Lee Foundation. Each paper in this series identifies a specific challenge and recommends clear strategies to advance the delivery of mental … Continued

Community Experts Fund Awards $200,000


Author: Nicholas Randell

Actions and Voices In September, the hard work of the Tower Advisory team culminated in grant awards to 12 organizations in support of their mentoring and counseling work with youth. The ten members of the team independently reviewed a total of 26 applications, then came together to deliberate across two dynamic evening sessions. All the … Continued

Changes in Store for Advisory Team 2022


Author: Nicholas Randell

This year, the Tower Advisory Team heads in an exciting new direction. In 2022, a dozen or more advisors will come together to launch and execute a grantmaking initiative of their own making. The young people that make up the advisory team (target age is 18-30) represent a mix of the communities where we fund … Continued

Tower Foundation Advisory Team Hits Its Stride


Author: Nicholas Randell

Blog posts in this space have traced the evolution of the Tower Foundation Advisory Team in some detail.  In the fall of 2019, we told you about the initial formation of a seven-member advisory team, made up of young Western New Yorkers with intellectual disabilities. This fun and dynamic group helped us review applications in … Continued

Mental Health Stigma and Community Data: A Conversation Starter


Author: Nicholas Randell

One of the aspirational goals for our mental health grantmaking at the Peter & Elizabeth Tower Foundation is pretty simple: Stigma related to mental illness is eliminated. The recently launched TowerDATA Dashboard looks at community data that may be able to tell us if the counties where we fund are seeing movement towards a reduction … Continued

Children’s Mental Health Campaign


Author: Nicholas Randell

In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, we would like to take an opportunity to spotlight the work of the Children’s Mental Health Campaign (CMHC), a Massachusetts-based initiative. CMHC was created in 2007 as a partnership between the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC) and Boston Children’s Hospital.  The idea was … Continued