Brooklyn Community Foundation and Alloy Development Collaborate on Better Brooklyn Fund
When a new condo development opens in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood in late 2020 or early 2021, residents will get a unique request when they move in: an invitation to donate to a new philanthropic fund to support social causes in neighboring communities.
Called the Better Brooklyn Fund, the first-of-a-kind fund is a collaboration between Alloy Development, the developer behind the building, and the Brooklyn Community Foundation, a public foundation that will administer the fund. When the developers approached the foundation about the idea, the foundation immediately recognized the potential.
“Brooklyn is gentrifying very rapidly, and real estate developers are everywhere,” says Cecilia Clarke, president and CEO of the Brooklyn Community Foundation. “I think a lot of people have spoken about, ‘How can developers give back?’ or, ‘Do developers support their community?’ Usually, honestly, my answer has been ‘no’—we haven’t really partnered closely with developers. And so this is an opportunity for a developer to kind of break out and say, ‘Well, we’ve created a model that we think could work that would sincerely give back to the community.'”
Alloy Development has worked in Dumbo for the last 13 years; the cofounders themselves live in the neighborhood and realized that some people moving into new developments want to be part of the community and help support positive change in areas ranging from justice reform to immigration rights and education...