Category: Blog

For a little less than a year, the staff at the Tower Foundation has been exploring diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as it relates to our work. This post is the first of several in which we will share about our path and process, some of the challenges we have experienced, and the opportunities that … Continued

Last October, we wrote a blog about the Advisory Team of young people with intellectual disabilities that helped us review grants from the fall 2019 grant cycle. In that blog, we focused on the creation of the team, the process of coming together to review grants, and the great feedback that we got.  The Advisory Team … Continued

Just about every website you visit these days has a popover window, a banner, or some other techie web-gizmo to make sure you know about the host organization’s COVID-19 response. Time to add our response to the mix. With a number of currently running grants and an upcoming grant deadline, we’ve tried to slow down … Continued

We asked our current grant partners to tell us about the challenges to their organization stemming from the COVID-19 crisis.  Responses to the survey were timely, detailed, open, and sobering. Across the board, providers are working tirelessly to maintain as much continuity of care as they can. Some of the reported issues are captured here. Rapid … Continued

Back in 2012 the Foundation’s Trustees and staff adopted a Results-Based Accountability (RBA) approach to understanding our grant making impact on the fields and communities we serve. As part of adopting RBA, we identified a total of 19 community-wide goals across the issue areas we support (if you’re curious, you can find them on page … Continued

Our guest blogger for this post is Leah Bartlo of the Learning Disabilities Association of WNY According to the Erie County Health Department, thousands of children under the age six are diagnosed with an elevated blood lead level (EBLL) each year in Erie County and thousands more are exposed to lead hazards in their home … Continued

Part 2 [This second (and final) installment takes a look at recent Tower grants and their impact on the target population, grantee organization, and the field at large. This analysis represents 44 grants that were closed between June 2018 and December 2019.] Once again, we wanted to take a look at the somewhat broader impact … Continued

Part 1 [This installment of a two-part series looks at the performance of Tower grants when measured against specific project goals; Part 2 will look at the broader impact of the same grants.] About every year and half or so, we take a look at the latest cluster of closed grants and assess their aggregate … Continued

The Peter & Elizabeth Tower Foundation is pleased to announce its recent grant awards totaling more than $850,000 to eight organizations for projects benefitting Eastern Massachusetts and Western New York. According to Tracy Sawicki, the Foundation’s Executive Director, “These awards recognize and celebrate the creative energy and dedication of our grant partners. Our communities are … Continued