Tuesday, October 20, 2009

2009 Grant Award Ceremony & Donor Appreciation Night


We are so pleased to share with all of you the "2009 Grant Award Ceremony & Donor Appreciation Night" was quite a gathering not just because the room was full but because there was a consensus that the reaching out to the community as how as we can is in the right direction to bring the community together. The new 10 grantee partners and participated donors also had a meaningful time together to share their perspectives.
Commissioner Fatima Shama from the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs delivered wonderful encouragement speech and Ms. Eun-Ju Ryu, one of our donors, illustrated dynamic presentation about the BFUSA’s 2009 briefing and President S.J. Jung from MinKwon Center for Community Action shared his thank you message on behalf of all the grantee partners.


As adopting one grant-making cycle, the foundation selected 10 new grantee organizations to distribute $108,000, which have strived to meet the imminent community challenges with effective, efficient and innovative approches.


After thorough review, the Board of Direcfors of the Foundation has gladly accepted the final recommendation from the Grant Advisory Panel consisting of 7 community welfare and grant making experts. As adopting one grant-making cycle, the foundation selected 10 new grantee organizations to distribute $108,000, which have strived to meet the imminent community challenges with effective, efficient and innovative approches. In the past three years since its inception as a community foundation in 2006,the Foundation has distributed $496,426 to 39 social service and educational institutes.


Community Senior Center of Flushing (CSCF), Program : Senior Program $10,000
CSCF’s Senior Program consists of daily free lunch program, education programs and other leisure activity . Currently, CSCF serves 80-120 seniors for lunch program and 20 for education programs(computer and writing class) and 30 for leisure activity (mostly, line dance class). The grant is expected to sustain the program while individual member donations, which take 40% of revenue, have declined due to economic recession.

Hamilton Madison House, Program: Korean Caregiver's Program $10,000
Korean Caregiver’s Program will allow Korean seniors to age in place within Korean community. The program will provide supportive counseling, case assistance, caregiver training and support groups, benefits and entitlements assistance, homecare, informational and referral assistance and supplemental services.

Jabiwon Social Services Center, Inc. ,Operation Fund $5,000
With the mission to enhance life quality of seniors, Jabiwon provides assistance services for seniors who do not speak English to receive government benefits/ assistance such as SSA/SSI Benefit, medicaid & medicare benefits, public assistance for low income people, food stamps, SCRIE,and etc. 2008 year alone, the center has dealt 5,412 cases and served 6,151 visitors.

YKASEC(Young Korean American Service and Education Center),
Program: Immigrant Right Clinic, $15,000

YKASEC’s Immigrant Right Clinic aims providing recent immigrants a comprehensive legal counseling/assistance service. For that, YKASEC has combined tax assistance clinic and immigrant workers right clinic and educational portion under the Immigrant Right Clinic. The Foundation has supported tax assistance clinic (2007 Second Half for $6,000) and immigrant worker’s clinic (2008 Second Half for $10,000). The grant will help the YKASEC to serve 1,165 people across all of immigration law, housing law, labor law, income tax assistance, government benefits, and other legal issues.

Korean American Family Service Center ( KAFSC ),
Program: Women's Domestic Violence Program , $15,000

The grant will sustain women's domestic violence program and continue outreach efforts. The program has served 2,500 individuals with culturally sensitive, linguistically appropriate free services annually. The Foundation supported the same program once for 2008 Early-Half Grant Making ($4,000)

The Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF),
Project Document Achievement to Transform Accountability (Project DATA) $15,000

Project DATA documents the academic success and opportunity gaps within the diverse Asian Pacific American student population of NYC. Once the project completed, the data will be the baseline for Asian American agencies to assess the challenges of Asian youth across the city and to prescribe future policy changes. Project DATA was supported through 2008 Second-Half Grant Making ($10,000). With the support from the Foundation, CACF successfully collected data sets last year and with the new grant injected, it will develop and maintains data sets, conducting quantitative analysis while CACF collaborates on data collection, qualitative analysis, and dissemination.

Day One,
Project: Lowering Youth Violence in Immigrant Communities Project $10,000
Day One is a champion organization dedicated to raise awareness of domestic violence among teenagers, provide educational workshops to middle and high school students , and offer legal assistance to young victims. The grant will be used in sustaining and strengthening Day One’s operation in Queens area where Korean-American teenagers are concentrated.

Korean-American Special Education Network (KASPED)
Project: Exploring Service after School Age, $5,000
KASPED has a mission to inform, education, and empower Korean-American families of children with special needs in the metro New York area by providing resources and services to the families. Exploring Service After School Age program will combine and translate the government benefits/ assistance services available for mentally challenged youth in transition from K-12 to the beyond. KASPED will make the translated information in Korean booklet and distribute it at least to 200 parents and 200 Korean-American CBOs. In tandem, it will host parents workshop to inform about public service available for mentally challenged youth after K-12.

Asian Women’s Christian Association New Jersey Korean Family Service Center , Project: Grace Hotline $13,000
The AWCA New Jersey Korean Family Service center has instated Grace Hotline program to provide prompt service to Korean in mental health crisis. With preexisting counseling program of the center, the Grace Hotline service will assist callers going through a critical mental condition as referring the cases to professionals and related agencies.

Rainbow Center, Project: Shelter Program $10,000
The grant will empower the clients with infants/single-moms in crisis to gain financial and emotional independence by providing safe shelters, transitional housing, crisis support, case management, public and legal assistance, and advocacy. Part of the grant will hire a shelter manager.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Capacity Buliding Project

From left, Moderator JuWon Choi-Vice President for Educational Services of Foundation Center, Panel Albert Chung - Senior Communications Associate of Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Miguel Bonilla - Director of Strengthening New York City Nonprofits at United Way of NYC, Randall Quan - Managing Director of Community Resource Exchange, Bill Chong - Deputy Commissioner of NYC Department of Youth and Community Development




[Capacity Buliding Project] 2009 Giving Conference

Successful Key for NPO management
: Human Resource Capacity

On August 7, the Foundation hosted the Second Seed of Giving Conference at the UJA-Federation of New York from 9AM 3:30PM, focusing on the “Empowering of Human Resource”.

About 90 people from different organizations had come to the conference. It was an opportunity for different non-profit organizations to learn about how to strengthen and sustain human resource functions. Especially the conference was very useful for 3 types of core HR groups in NPOs: Board of Directors, Executive Staffs, and Volunteer Managers.

In the panel discussion, capacity building experts from government, public foundation, and private foundation emphasized that the process of capacity building should be started from reviewing their mission first of all. Then it is needed for every NPOs to forecast 5-10 years of their organizations and consider what what the community needs are and what the organization can offer for the community.

After the panel discussion, there were some group sessions, where participants could choose which session to attend; BOD Capicity1, 2 & Volunteer management. Through whole sessions of the conference, the participants of non-profit organizations were able to think about how to wisely use the human resources that they have especially at this economy recession.



[Capacity Buliding] Financial Management Workshop


On August 14 and 21, as one of our capacity building project, Financial Management Workshops were held for non-profit organizations. These workshops are for the Korean-American service organizations to improve their financial management capability and ability to mobilize resources to improve the sustainability of their programs.


These workshops gave organizations a chance to learn :

* how to set up and execute a budget plan

* how to fill out the IRS990 Form

* how to use QuickBooks software program

* how to deal with financial crisis


Fiscal Management Association consulted the contents for the workshops and Mr. James Yoo (AICPA) gave the lectures. Thank you so much Mr. Yoo and we thank all of you who attended and completed the financial courses.

The 2nd Giving Conference

Dear Friends,


Come and join us at the Second Seed of Giving Conference on Friday, August 7 (9AM - 4PM) at the UJA-Federation of New York.



With the focus of Empowering Human Resource, the Second Seed of Giving Conference will provide a great opportunity to learn about how to strengthen and sustain your human resource functions.From a recent survey conducted by our foundation, we learned that Korean-American CBOs are endowed with relatively strong human resources in terms of the level of educational background and numbers. To reap the best benefits from the richly endowed human resources, we should strengthen the leadership and human resource capacity by nurturing the quality of our human resources.


The Second Seed of Giving Conference is for;

* Board of Directors who want to re-define their roles as board, and want to strengthen strategic planning, and supervising function to accomplish your mission.
* Executive Staffs who want to review their planning and executive strategies and want to tune up their working relation with their board for the success of their mission.
* Volunteer Managers who want to achieve strategic skills in recruiting, training, and continuing working relations with volunteers.



Financial Workshop on August 14 & 21 (9AM - 1PM)
@ Foundation Center, 79 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY (between 15 & 16 st)



The BFUSA has launched a technical assistance grant as part of our grant program. This year, we will focus on improving financial record keeping and management skills in our community based organizations. To apply for the Technical Assistance Grant, applicant organizations should participate in the Second Seed of Giving Conference on August 7 and Financial Workshop on August 14 and 21.During the two-day financial management workshop, participant organizations will learn basic budgeting and other necessary financial skills.

Financial Statements 2007 - 2008

Revenue 2007 -2008




Grants & Expense 2007 -2008

3rd Gala - Beyond Charity Toward Change





Thank YOU!
We thank YOU for your generous support to our 3rd gala
“I Love Nanum Beyond Charity Toward Change”,
held on Friday, May 15.


We hope you had a wonderful evening and also hope that the evening provided you with an opportunity to re-energize and expand the culture of giving and serving in the community. Especially in light of the downturn and difficult economic recession, the success of the turnout of the guests are greatly appreciated and it tells strongly that we all concern and have dreams to outreach to the community in need.


There is still much that needs to be done for the community and many existing projects we must continue to build. We believe that through proper guidance, constant effort, and continued partnership, our ability to serve more strategically and more meaningfully is multiplied each year and we are eager to deliver even greater progress next year.

Thank you again for being a part of our event through your support, and more importantly for being a friend and a believer in the mission of The Beautiful Foundation USA.





Giving for “Sustainable Development”
Jeffrey Lee / Keynote speaker
Keynote speaker, Mr. Jeffrey Lee has 30 years of banking experience, including 12 years as the chief executive. Currently, Mr. Lee is serving as the CEO of Urwego Opportunity Bank of Rwanda (UOB) from February 1, 2009. UOB is a licensed bank, focusing on microfinance serving the needs of the most vulnerable in Rwanda. In his speech, he emphasized that giving can gain tremendous value and meaning with a clear purpose spelled out in it, leading to substantial change in the lives of people and the society. We really appreciate again for his inspiring life dedicated himself to community development.




The 2nd Shinhan Beautiful Spirit Award

We also announced the second Shinhan Beautiful Spirit Awardees on our gala night."Shinhan Beautiful Spirit Award" is designated to recognize an extraordinary individual who has sacrificed him/herself for the benefit of others in the community.
For the 2nd Award, we found these precious three people; Ms. Soon Kim, Ms. Joori Shin, and Ms. Jean Sung.Ms. Kim, 83 years old, has been serving the community 4 hours a day during 22 years. Up to now, her volunteer time is about 9,100 hours and she still challenges herself to achieve the amount of 1,000 hours. Ms. Shin has been dedicating herself to the disabled for three years. No matter how busy with her school and numerous part-time jobs, she is always trying to find her time to give some help to those in need. Ms. Sung is a survivor of teen dating abuse and has volunteered with Day One, a youth-serving domestic violence preventive and legal services organization. Jean demonstrates tireless energy and extraordinary courage in speaking out to help other youth avoid what she went through.
Once again, we are really grateful for the dedicated efforts of all of you.




Meet Our Board of Ambassadors

The BFUSA's Board of Ambassadors (BOA) is born out of a recognition that institutionalizing the involvement of 2nd generation Korean-Americans is a vital part of fulfilling the BFUSA's mission and safeguarding its future. The BOA is composed of a group of civic-minded young professionals in the NY/NJ metro area who are willing to commit to the vision of the BFUSA and prepared to invest in its continued success. We believe that the BOA offers a unique opportunity for 2nd generation to utilize their skills and talents to influence the community in a meaningful way and are excited to welcome them as partners of the BFUSA.

Friday, June 5, 2009

[BFUSA] Request for Proposal 2009

┃The Beautiful Foundation USA Request for Proposals 2009┃

The Beautiful Foundation USA (BFUSA)’s tagline, “Beyond Charity Toward Change,” encapsulates the Foundation’s new strategic direction in its grant-making activities. It is the BFUSA’s goal to act as a catalyst for the Korean American and other community-based organizations in the New York metro area as they evolve to next stage of development. BFUSA aims to strengthen the capacity of CBOs and to facilitate sustainable institutional change so that they in turn can achieve greater social impact on the community.

Overview
BFUSA is pleased to announce the request for proposal of grant-making 2009. This year, there are three categories of support: Project Support, General Operating Support, and Technical Assistance/Capacity Building Support. Grant period is one year.

Organizations can only apply for either the Project Support or General Operating Support, not both. All organizations are eligible to apply for the Technical Assistance/Capacity Building Support in addition to either of the above grants.

Grant guidelines and proposal submission forms are available on the BFUSA web site at www.beautifulfoundationusa.org.

For questions, please contact BFUSA by email beautifulfoundationusa@gmail.com or by phone (201) 461-0060.


Eligibility Criteria
Nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations located in the New York metro area, that have the charitable purpose to improve the welfare of Korean-Americans and others.

Additional eligibility criteria for applicants to the Technical Assistance/Capacity Building Support: participation in the BFUSA’s 2nd Seed of Giving Conference (July 2009).

Restrictions
BFUSA does not provide funds to:
▪ Organizations outside the New York metro area
▪ Individuals
▪ Government agencies
▪ Programs for religious purposes
▪ Endowments
▪ Private foundations
▪ Real estate purchases
▪ Fundraising events
▪ Political causes or campaigns to elect candidates to public offices

Grant Range
▪ For Project Support: up to $ 15,000 per grant
▪ For General Operating Support: up to $5,000 per grant
▪ For Technical Assistance/Capacity Building Support: up to $500 value per grant.

Grant Support Priorities
▪ Project Support
Priorities will be given to organizations that promote welfare of low-income/immigrant community members with programs that:
-Prevent or treat mental health problems
-Provide free/low-cost legal aid/advocacy
-Assist to receive government benefits for free or low cost
-Provide educational programs such as ESL and vocational training
-Support senior citizens’ welfare
-Provide disability programs
-Provide services for domestic violence counseling/prevention/treatment
-Discover scientific/statistical findings about low-income immigrant challenges such as health condition, socio-economic disparity, or educational/economic opportunities

▪ General Operating Support
Priorities will be given to organizations with a proven track record of providing excellent services to improve the welfare of Korean-Americans and others in the New York metro area.

▪ Technical Assistance/Capacity Building Support
This year, the BFUSA focuses on improving financial record keeping skill through technical assistance/capacity building support. In order to apply, participation in the BFUSA’s 2nd Seed of Giving Conference (July 2009 TBD) is required. Preferences will be given to organizations that:
-Provide a vital service in our community
-Have a clearly defined mission
-Have a proven track record for carrying out the mission
-Have been in existence for at least three years.


Timeline: Application Process

Announcement of Application Monday, April 13th, 2009
Application Deadline Friday, July 31st, 2009
Site Visit Notification(Optional) September, 2009
Notification of Grant Decisions October 2009
Announcement of 2009 Grant Distribution November 2009

*All dates are not confirmed and will be determined ASAP.

*Applications must be received by this deadline. We do not accept any late applications, including those postmarked Friday, July 31st but arriving after the deadline. Submission in advance of the deadline, therefore, is highly encouraged. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be returned. Faxed and emailed applications will not be considered. Applications without the requisite number of copies (two copies) will not be considered. No staples and no wired folders. Please use binder clips.

Applications can be mailed directly to:

The Beautiful Foundation USA
1605 John St. #202
Fort Lee, NJ, 07024


*BFUSA first notifies all applicants of its decisions by mail, then issues a press release to local media that highlights the organizations and projects awarded grants. Grantees are encouraged to also publicize their awards themselves and to acknowledge BFUSA support through press releases, newsletters, web sites, and annual reports.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Mission and Principles

The Beautiful Foundation USA is a 501 C(3) non-profit Community Foundation that serves the Korean-American community and others in the metro New York and New Jersey area. Sharing the heritage and legacy of the Beautiful Foundation Korea, the Beautiful Foundation USA strives to promote a culture of giving among Korean-Americans in the metro New York and New Jersey area. As the Beautiful Foundation Korea has created a new culture of giving and has become a force for social transformation in South Korea, the Beautiful Foundation USA hopes as well to help give rise to a new culture of giving by Korean-Americans to help those in need.

Under the motto “Beyond Charity, Toward Change,” the Foundation believes that raising and disbursing funds to support neighbors in need will transform and invigorate the community for future generations.

The Beautiful Foundation of Korea is the first community foundation established through grassroots fundraising. Since the establishment of the Foundation in 1999, more than 20,000 individuals and corporations have joined the One Percent Giving Campaign while growing an initial fund of 0.7 billion won (approximately $700,000) to 38 billion won in 2006. The funds have been raised from thousands of giving hearts in Korea to be disbursed to the impoverished population through the social agencies that serve them.


OUR LOGO- Giving Seed Tree
Trees give humans a wide range of gifts. They give us shade to take rest under, woods to build things, fruits to feed, and seeds to grow another tree. The Beautiful Foundation hopes to be a foundation that gives a wide range of gifts to our neighbors as a tree does to the human.The Seed Tree of the Beautiful Foundation is special. As its name stands for, the Seed Tree is loaded with seeds. Loaded on the tree, the seed grow bigger and at the same time supports the tree to grow bigger. The seeds and the tree symbolize the ideal relation between donors and the Foundation.

The Beautiful Foundation is not made up of one person, one corporation, or one group. It includes every person who engages in small acts of sharing for their neighborhood and society. We believe that the Foundation and donors are reciprocal in assisting to make each other’s dream come true.

Orange colored, each seed beams out warm hearted hope to reach out on the ground and to sprout a tree after another. Someday, the seed will grow a forest of giving for the next generation to dream hope.

PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION
The Beautiful Foundation USA believes that community foundations should guide the community to be more charitable. Toward that end, the Foundation hopes to help improve foundations’ fundraising professionalism and grant-making efficacy so that our communities are transformed. Dedicated to the establishment of a sprit of sharing and giving, the Beautiful Foundation USA operates according to the following set of principles.

IMPARTIALITY
The Foundation believes that an impartial process of grant-making helps to target disbursements more effectively. To achieve the impartiality, the Foundation convenes a special advisory board with the responsibility for grant selection.


TRANSPARENCY

The Foundation cherishes the trust of its donors. The Foundation fully discloses any decisions on its finances, programs, and operations with donors and members of community. This is because the Foundation considers donors as vital partners for health and welfare of our community.


PROFESSIONALISM

The Foundation invites the participation of highly-respected specialists who have expertise in social welfare and in the regional community. Experts in fields such as in religion, law, civic society, social welfare, and non-profit management, volunteer to work with the Foundation.


PUBLIC ENTITY

Raising large amount of donations from just a few donors is not the objective the Beautiful Foundation USA. The Foundation seeks to have a broad donor base.