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By the Numbers

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Each December, I prepare a huge batch of summary reports for our trustees.  This is good news for them, as we all tend to have nothing but free time and unassigned bandwidth that time of year.  Or … maybe not?  Nonetheless, we are data geeks, and this generally ends up among my favorite activities for us as an organization.

We look at data on all of the applications we receive, and how we have responded.  We consider what we have been asked to do around the state, and how that compares to our expressed strategy.  We analyze our investments, reviewing multiple years of data on which communities, demographic groups, and component strategies have received the most (and least) funding.  We talk about our decision-making process, and how we can continue to hone our work together to be the best possible stewards of the resources we have been given.

This year, I thought our partners around the state might like to see how some of the numbers shake out.  This isn’t everything we track, but it’s some of the bits we find most interesting.

To paraphrase Rich, we look at these numbers to help inform—but never to dictate or constrain—our future investment.  We learn from them, while staying flexible and open to how we might best partner within Vermont’s philanthropic community in the months and years to come.

BY THE NUMBERS (2015-2019)                                                                                                    

The Tarrant Foundation has been active in Vermont since 2005, investing more than $30 million since then in the charitable organizations, communities, and people of our state (Rich and Deb Tarrant have contributed more than $45 million in that time including their personal giving).  The statistics below represent a snapshot of the foundation’s activity, encompassing data from 2015-2019.

Community Grants Program

The Community Grants Program is one piece of the Tarrant Foundation’s grantmaking portfolio.  Each program within that portfolio has a distinct strategy, budget, and review process. The Community Grants Program is available exclusively to Vermont organizations, and accepts new submissions at any time.  Information on this program’s guidelines, strategic priorities, application requirements, and review timeline is available here 

Total Dollars Requested[1]: $9,574,006
Average Dollars Requested per Year: $1,914,801
Biggest Year: $2,652,600 (2019)

Total Dollars Granted: $1,538,710
Average Dollars Granted per Year: $307,742
Biggest Year: $399,610 (2015)

Total Number of Requests Received[2]: 332
Total Number of Grants Made: 145

Total Site Visit Miles Driven[3]: 15,814
Biggest Year: 4,080 (2017)

Total Meals on the Road: 60
Favorite Road Meal: One in Every County
Biggest In-Car Road Meal Disaster: Also One in Every County

Counties where Percent of Dollars Awarded is Larger/Smaller than Percent of State Population:[4]

Larger than Population: Chittenden, Essex, Grand Isle, Orange, Washington, Windham
Smaller than Population: Addison, Bennington, Caledonia, Franklin, Lamoille, Orleans, Rutland, Windsor
[Note: Seven counties are within 2%; five other counties are within 5%. The greatest difference is in Washington County, where it is 7.6%.]

Demographics and Strategies

The Tarrant Foundation’s Community Grants Program focuses on the particular experiences of distinct demographic groups: Youth, Working-Age Adults, and Seniors (see the program’s Guidelines for more information).  The following statistics look at requests and grants in each of those broad categories, and at clusters of articulated needs and strategies within them.

Percent of Total Dollars Requested/Granted per Demographic Group:

Requests: Working-Age Adults (45%); Youth (38%); Seniors (17%)
Grants: Working-Age Adults (42%); Youth (37%); Seniors (21%)

Primary Strategic Focus of Requests/Grants per Demographic Group (in Dollars)[5]:

Youth:
Requests: Out-of-School Time (60%); Employment Readiness & Training (16%)
Grants: Out-of-School Time (86%); Addiction Recovery (5%); Employment Readiness & Training (3%)

Working-Age Adults
Requests: Housing (33%); Employment Readiness & Training (23%); Addiction Recovery (15%)
Grants: Housing (45%); Employment Readiness & Training (22%); Addiction Recovery (15%)

Seniors
Requests: Congregate & Delivered Meals (31%); Activities & Enrichment (19%); Home Health (15%)
Grants: Congregate & Delivered Meals (41%); Activities & Enrichment (21%); Housing Solutions (17%)

Number of Grants Awarded for General Operating Expenses: 50%

Full Grantmaking Portfolio

In addition to the Community Grants Program, the Tarrant Foundation manages a series of other initiatives.  Together, these programs comprise our full grantmaking portfolio.  Each program is discreet, and the partnerships involved feature substantially different strategies, levels of investment, anticipated impact, and evaluation protocols.  Currently, the foundation accepts unsolicited applications only in the Community Grants Program.  The statistics below derive from our full portfolio, again between 2015-2019.

Total Dollars Granted: $8,964,943
Biggest Year: $2,206,042 (2016)

Total Grants Made: 291
Biggest Year: 69 (2015)

Number of Grantees: 131
Grantees that Received an Award in All Five Years: 7

Average Percent of Total Assets Granted Annually: 24.3%

Foundation Overhead as Percent of Total Expenses: 7.9%

Number of Grantees that are Vermont Organizations: 87%
Dollars Invested in Vermont Organizations: 97%

Looking Ahead

In 2020, we expect to grow both our total budget (5.4%) and our Community Grants program (35.7%).  We look forward to learning more about important work taking place all around the state, to new partnerships, and to many more miles (and meals!) on the road.

If you have any questions about our grantmaking process, please let us know at (802) 857-0495 or info@tarrantfoundation.org.

Footnotes:
[1] Formal Letters of Interest only. Does not include capital campaigns, requests from out-of-state organizations, general appeals, or other solicitations.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Does not include miles within Chittenden County
[4] Applications are encouraged from all counties. Applications received are not in proportion to relative population.
[5] Only top 2-3 strategy types shown in each category.


Lauren A. Curry has served as Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

Award Season

Monday, October 17, 2016

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry

Recently I shared news that Rich and Deb had been honored with the Lifetime Achievement in Philanthropy Award from the UVM Foundation. It was a wonderful honor, and a great opportunity for me to reflect on the many things accomplished through the Tarrants’ generosity to our communities.

Rich would be the first to tell you that we can’t do any of this on our own. Our work is only as good as the many incredible people out there who turn our investments into action at the community level.

Top of that list in our minds is Dr. Penny Bishop, Associate Dean and Professor in UVM’s College of Education and Social Services, and Director of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at UVM. For the past decade, Penny has contributed outstanding leadership, vision, wisdom, and hard work to manage our investments in middle-level education throughout the state. Her partnership has turned that investment into something far more meaningful and far more effective than could ever have been achieved without her.

But don’t take our word for it.

amle-penny-award

Last week at the Association of Middle Level Education’s (AMLE) national conference in Austin, Penny received the John H. Lounsbury Award for Distinguished Achievement. This prestigious award is the association’s highest honor, given only in those years when a sufficiently meritorious candidate emerges.

It was a great pleasure to see Penny honored for her many important contributions to the field of middle level education, and for the groundbreaking work she undertakes here in Vermont. Our board and staff are incredibly lucky to benefit from her leadership of the Tarrant Institute, and from her friendship as well.

Congratulations, Penny! You earned it.

amle-student

Penny’s award wasn’t the only highlight of this year’s AMLE conference. Members of the Tarrant Institute team made a record 14 presentations at AMLE, featuring stories, strategies, and research from their many partnerships with Vermont educators. Attendees even got to visit directly with some Vermont students (above) to learn about how personalization through technology is working for them!

For more information on the AMLE sessions or about the Tarrant Institute, check out their blog here.

                                                                                                                                                               

Lauren A. Curry has served as Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

Lifetime Achievement

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry

It’s a funny thing to talk about Lifetime Achievement. The words suggest summation. A grand total. A backward look.

This past weekend, Rich and Deb Tarrant were presented with the 2016 Lifetime Achievement in Philanthropy Award from the University of Vermont Foundation. The award was given in recognition of the tremendous investments made by Rich and Deb, and by their Foundation, in efforts to improve middle-level education, advance medical research, and strengthen the University.

lifetime-achievement-2016

I could not have been prouder. And, I think it’s safe to say, Rich and Deb could not have been more uncomfortable.

Neither Rich nor Deb likes to be praised for their generosity. You’ll hear Rich say in the video below that even the word philanthropy doesn’t sit well with him. It’s too soft. Rich considers the resources he and Deb invest in communities and programs around Vermont to be just that – investments. In exchange for those investments, he expects a non-monetary return, in the form of lives impacted, communities strengthened, and futures changed.

Rich and Deb accepted the award, with characteristic modesty, graciousness, and big serving of humor. They shook hands, smiled, and stood for pictures. Then they did what they do best: get back to work.

In just the couple of days since the award presentation, Rich and Deb have met with numerous leaders who are tackling some of our state’s biggest challenges. They have talked statistics, theory, efficiency, and impact. They’ve emphasized the crucial balance between thinkers and doers. They’ve considered scope and next steps and how, as ever, to make the very most of the resources they have.

As much as I love to see Rich and Deb honored for all that they have done, for them the conversation is always about what lays ahead. What’s been done is only ever a tiny part of what can be done. Our job is to get focused, get organized, and tackle what’s next.

Onward.

                                                                                                                                                                

Lauren A. Curry has served as Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.

Momentum Moment

Monday, April 6, 2015

Contributed by Lauren A. Curry.

Foundations work a bunch of different levers tackling the sets of challenges that constitute our agendas.  Most obvious is the money lever, as in aggregate we grant some $50 billion each year throughout the United States.  Makes a lever long enough to move some awfully weighty issues, if not quite the world.

Our most successful work, though, comes when we add other resources to the mix: our experience, creativity, sweat equity, leadership, relationships and voice.  Rich calls these “force multipliers” – the things that can stretch the value of our invested dollars and increase our impact.

Last week yielded a bit of a force multiplication opportunity.  We were invited to the Statehouse to describe what we see as a time of great innovation in many Vermont schools, and our role in contributing to the broader positive momentum now building throughout Vermont’s education system.

Find below a reprint of testimony given to the Senate Education Committee during a few precious hours of spring sunshine.

 

Investing in the Future of Education

Prepared for the Senate Education Committee

Lauren A. Curry, Executive Director

Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation

April 3, 2015

 

Thank you for the opportunity to address the Committee this afternoon.  I will keep my comments brief so we can all get out to enjoy Vermont’s fine spring weather.

My name is Lauren Curry and I am the Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation.  We are seldom participants at the Statehouse, and though I have previously addressed your colleagues in the House, this is my first appearance before the Senate Education Committee.

Over the last decade, the Tarrant Foundation has been one of Vermont’s most active philanthropic agents.  Our corpus is comparatively small, but we spend aggressively – investing roughly three times the resources in Vermont communities each year as a typical foundation our size.

Our largest single investment is in Vermont’s education system.  Since 2005 we have funded an independent team of researchers and educators at the University of Vermont to partner with teachers and school leaders around the State.  Their object is to help schools provide learning opportunities that better fit who Vermont’s students are, how they learn, and the world in which they live.  

The technical description of the team’s approach is embedded, sustained leadership support and professional development to increase student engagement through learning that is student-centered and technology-rich.  Said more plainly, we believe in engaging today’s youth, with today’s tools, for tomorrow’s jobs and society.  

The Tarrant Foundation is compelled in our investment by a clear need to better serve today’s youth.  In other areas of our grantmaking we see the impact of a stubborn achievement gap, and of comparatively low rates of post-secondary education and training.  

We are more troubled still by the disproportionate share of these burdens borne by young Vermonters who are economically, traditionally, or geographically disadvantaged.  We join Secretary Holcombe in her urging about those who fare statistically worst in our system, as she recently declared:

… one of our highest priorities as a state needs to be improving the learning of our boys who are growing up in poverty.

Equal to these needs, we believe, are the opportunity and strength found in Vermont schools.  Our education system is among the highest performing in the country – and by some measures the world.  We enjoy strong leadership, involved communities, and legislative tools like Act 77 that can facilitate crucial innovation.  Committed partners including the Tarrant Foundation, the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation, and the Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children help further strengthen that system and its outcomes.

UVM’s Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education has now partnered with more than a dozen schools in five counties, reaching over 5,000 students and their teachers.  The Tarrant Foundation’s recent new investment in the Institute will enable it to dramatically expand its work, now on course to involve at least half the middle schools in Vermont in the coming years.

The Tarrant Foundation’s continued investment in the Institute and in Vermont schools – already more than $12M – is fueled by several factors:

1.     Early research indicators.  A longitudinal study is now underway, but discreet results from the Tarrant Institute’s pilot sites are compelling.  In one school, the Institute observed a 21.2% decrease in male student absenteeism after just one year.  More meaningful still, reduced absentee rates for boys and girls persisted through high school – long past the active phase of their program.

Students, teachers and parents further reported improved student engagement, participation, behavior, and core academic outcomes – all harbingers of increased academic and earnings success later in life.

2.     The courage and commitment demonstrated by Vermont’s educators.  This is intensive and transformative work, requiring teachers and school leaders to establish clear goals and new infrastructure that develop schools as innovative organizations, reflecting in our schools the same agility and dynamism demanded of organizations beyond their walls.

Every day, school leaders are guiding their teams and communities through new conversations, teachers are leaving behind established habits and curriculum, and students are encouraged to take up new responsibility as leaders in their own education.

A teacher at one of our partner schools described what he observes, saying:

I think it’s getting easier to keep [students] excited about things because we’re not teaching them to use the tool anymore. They already know how to use the tool better than any of the adults or teachers could show them. So we can refocus on the content, and the information we want to get across to the students … This year I’ve really seen them go farther than I could imagine.  (Joe Speers, Peoples Academy Middle Level)

This is just one of countless comments we’ve heard from educators, students, and parents capturing the impact, vulnerability and great potential of this evolutionary journey.

3.     A clear moment of opportunity.  Conversations that ten years ago started with “if” – if technology should play more of a role in education, if employers would be asking for new skills in our workforce, and if schools could make fundamental changes to how they deliver learning – are now focused wholly on “how”.  How teachers can get the time and support they need to innovate, how to ensure learners have access to relevant tools, and how schools can use new technology to create efficiencies and increase learning opportunities for all students.

More than 40 schools reached out to the Tarrant Institute this year to pursue what most acknowledge as the most intensive and challenging school change they have ever undertaken.  The Institute sees this – and their daily experience in classrooms – as evidence of an incredibly and productively dynamic moment in Vermont’s education history.  As a Foundation, we see it as evidence of an investment in change that’s working – an indication that schools, teachers, families and communities are ready, able and excited to move forward.  

Next week the Tarrant Foundation will join the McClure Foundation and the Vermont Community Foundation as hosts to 45 funders from around Vermont and New England.  We will gather for a day to listen to experts in the education community speak about goals, pressures, tools and opportunities they perceive in Vermont’s system.  

As co-convenors of that meeting, the Tarrant Foundation believes greater shared understanding of education in Vermont will give important context to arguably all philanthropic activity in the state, regardless of field of interest.  We more specifically hope this will serve as an opportunity for funders to consider new ways to support Vermont learners and schools.

I think each of us here today could point to numerous examples showing that people all over Vermont – in word and deed – are aligning themselves with the notion of change: change to increase opportunity in education, change to create greater equity, and change to ensure the sustainability of our system – and our communities.  

I’m proud of the Tarrant Foundation’s role in fueling that momentum.  I’m also grateful to those who work in Vermont’s education system – and who are charged to support it – as you work carefully and with courage to ensure the greatest possible future for every Vermont child.

Thank you.

                                                                                                                                                 

Lauren A. Curry has been the Executive Director of the Richard E. and Deborah L. Tarrant Foundation since 2005.