Learn what’s happening at the Foundation and in the communities where we work. Hear from staff and partners about their accomplishments and lessons learned along the way.
Click Here for our most recent e-Newsletter, as well as archived copies of previous editions.
A New Landscape Analysis Explores the Tower Foundation’s Role in Advocacy 2026 marks an important milestone for the Peter & Elizabeth Tower Foundation. This year, we’re taking a closer look at how we can use our voice and resources to advance change through advocacy. For more than three decades, the Tower Foundation has supported nonprofit … Continued
Earlier this year, we asked our grant partners across Western New York and Eastern Massachusetts to tell us how things are going: what’s helping, what’s getting harder, and what you need from funders like us right now. We’re grateful to everyone who took the time to respond. We heard from 70 organizations, a mix of … Continued
In 2025, the Tower Foundation commissioned Dr. Kimberlin Butler of The L.E.A.D. Agency to complete a program evaluation of our participatory grantmaking initiative, now in its fifth year, the Community Experts Team (CET). Dr. Butler worked with us throughout the year to deliver, not just a summative document when the year’s work was complete, but … Continued
The Community Experts Team (CET) has been an exciting piece of the Tower Foundation’s funding since 2022, when this group of young people with lived experience was given decision-making power for a grant opportunity. However, since the team has been created – there has been a need for a unifying image: a logo that could … Continued
This post represents the renewal of a blog series dating back to 2013. Four times between 2013 and 2019, we looked at a batch of grants that had recently closed — anywhere between 22 and 54 of them — to ask the question: Are we making effective grants? A resulting blog post assessed the overall … Continued
Over the course of the last three posts in this series (part one, part two, and part three) we’ve looked at a high-level refresher on Results-Based Accountability (RBA), and population accountability in particular. Just to jog your memory, RBA is an “ends-to-means” approach to creating and measuring change at the community (i.e., population) and program … Continued
Earlier today, the Peter & Elizabeth Tower Foundation sent the following announcement out via our e-newsletter. It describes the Foundation’s response to the current political and funding climate, more specifically the uncertainty around federal funding and the assault on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Dear Grant Partners and Community Members: You’ve no doubt been following … Continued
About three-quarters of parents in Eastern Massachusetts communities disagreed that it would be best for persons with intellectual disabilities to live and work in special communities (76%, up from 46% just two years ago). While the majority of Western New York parents report that youth with intellectual disabilities do not receive equal education opportunities, about … Continued
The 2024 Community Experts Team (CET) just came to a close, after holding its first in-person retreat in Buffalo, NY. The Community Experts Team is a group of young people from geographic areas that Tower funds: Erie and Niagara Counties in Western New York, and Barnstable, Dukes, Essex, and Nantucket Counties in Eastern Massachusetts who … Continued
The Tower Foundation has been on a five year-long journey to bring people with lived expertise in the Foundation’s areas of interest into our work. This includes young people in and around their twenties with intellectual disabilities, learning disabilities, mental health challenges and substance use disorders. Below is an image of the Public Engagement Spectrum, … Continued
