Who We Are
History & Mission
Tiger Foundation’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty in New York City. We do this by investing in outstanding nonprofit organizations that provide New Yorkers across the five boroughs with robust opportunities and supports.
Tiger Foundation partners with community-based organizations that have proven their ability to help individuals and families succeed, and we provide them with financial resources that allow them to build and maintain healthy and strong organizations. Through investments in our three core portfolios, we strive to meet the needs of New Yorkers living in poverty, with a particular focus on families, children, and young adults, and to enable the organizations that provide services to them to sustain and continually improve on their work.
Our three funding portfolios are:
- Education
- Family Support
- Youth, Workforce, and Justice
While the majority of our funding supports organizations that have a strong, proven record of impact, Tiger Foundation also has a Seed and Expansion Fund that focuses on helping to launch work where there is unmet and significant need, and on providing proven models with the resources needed to scale.
We aim to be committed, informed, and consistent partners to the organizations we support, working with them over time to increase their impact. We have a commitment to making our financial support as unrestricted as possible, providing operating resources to strong organizations and programs and allowing them to deploy the resources however best meets their needs. Across all of our grant-making, we are focused on the strength and stability of an organization’s leadership, its commitment to continuously assessing and improving its offerings, and to strong financial and program management.
Core to the foundation's mission and operating approach is our large board of trustees, composed of nearly forty individuals who are actively and directly involved in the grantmaking process. They commit their time, financial resources, and passion, and bring professional experiences that help the foundation work closely with its community-based partners to expand and deepen their work.
Our core principles
Tiger Foundation, in all its funding areas, is committed to the following core principles:
- Dedication to serving individuals and families whose needs have been inadequately met by public systems and programs
- Investment in high-impact, preventive strategies
- Commitment to data and outcomes-driven decision-making
- Provision of general operating support
- A belief in open and transparent communication with grantees and other partners