OVERVIEW: The NoVo Foundation seeks to transform society from one based on dominance to one based on equality. It recently underwent a comprehensive restructuring, eliminating its distinct grantmaking programs. Areas of giving include sustainable food systems and agriculture; Indigenous, racial, gender and immigrant justice; community development and storytelling related to social justice movements.
IP TAKE: This progressive funder has made substantial grants toward several important social justice goals, but is driven by the personal interests of its founders. It recently relocated from New York City to Kingston, New York, where it has committed to supporting a range of initiatives in this city for the next ten years. Coinciding with its physical move, the foundation is taking some time to “re-orient” its work, although its mission to promote a “holistic, interconnected and healing vision for humanity” remains the same.
NoVo uses a bottom-up approach in its giving, and likely expects its grantees to do the same. The foundation also prizes holistic thinking, and a program that ties these together is more likely to attract attention than one that just focuses on a single facet. This funder does not accept unsolicited proposals, but organizations working in Kingston may find it worthwhile to reach out with ideas and questions.
PROFILE: The NoVo Foundation was established in 2006 by Peter Buffett, youngest son of Warren Buffett, and his wife, Jennifer Buffett. NoVo’s initial endowment came from a gift from Warren Buffett of 350,000 shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock, worth approximately $1 billion at the time. NoVo is committed to supporting “initiatives that promote a holistic, interconnected and healing vision for humanity.” In 2024, NoVo rearticulated its priorities and values at a moment in history it describes as “the most unstable time since the Civil War” when “historically marginalized and oppressed populations in this country (and around the world) are in ever more precarious positions with no indication that circumstances will be improving.” The foundation is dedicated to “[w]orking on solutions now so old patterns of power can’t, once again, re-form to rebuild and continue to repress.”
NoVo’s current grantmaking and engagements support “a broad range of communities and initiatives that are bound together as a single body of work with sub-areas of focus.” Focus areas include:
- Regenerative bioregional-scale communities;
- Indigenous communities and Indigenous ways of knowing and being;
- Growing food and growing children; and
- Novo in Kingston, which supports communities of the Kingston area in the Hudson Valley region of New York.
Grants for Food Systems, Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Conservation
Equitable food systems and related work for environmentally sustainable agriculture are main areas of focus for this funder’s grantmaking in New York and elsewhere. While Novo doesn’t name specific strategies for this giving, it appears to focus on community- and Indigenous-led initiatives and programs that help communities produce, distribute and share healthy foods.
- A significant portion of this grantmaking is conducted through thematically related initiatives at the Tides Foundation including the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance.
- Grants in the hundreds of thousands have supported national organizations including the the American Farmlands Trust, Land Institute, which conducts research and develops policy on sustainable agriculture, and the Institute of Afrofuturist Ecology, which promotes regenerative farming for just and sustainable future food systems.
- NoVo also supports placed-based work and community-led initiatives and projects, especially in the Kingston, New York area. Grantees include the Hudson Valley Agribusiness Development Corporation, the Chester Agricultural Center, the Soul Fire Farm Institute and the Catskills Agrarian Alliance, among others.
Grants for Indigenous and Racial Justice, Women and Girls, Immigrants and Refugees
NoVo demonstrates strong commitment to supporting communities and groups that are led by and for people who have been historically marginalized and remain most vulnerable in times of transition and crisis.
- Recent giving has emphasized Indigenous groups in the Hudson Valley and elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada.
- Among the foundation’s largest grantees receiving upwards of $1 million are the Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, the Indigenous Knowledge Holder’s Fund at RSF Social Finance and the First Nation’s Development Institute.
- Other grants have supported the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, Arizona’s Hopi Foundation, the Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi, the First People’s Fund and the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network in Lahaina, Hawaii.
- Women and girls represent another strong area of interest that overlaps with the foundation’s BIPOC-centered grantmaking. The foundation maintains an ongoing partnership with the Tides Foundation as the “lead funder” of its Advancing Girls Fund. Other grantees include the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services of New York, the Hopi-Tewa Women’s Coalition to End Abuse and the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, among others.
- Other grants for racial justice and immigrants rights have supported the Proteus Fund’s Embracerace racial learning project, the Tides Foundation’s Immigrants Belong Fund, the Reher Center for Immigrant Culture and History in Kingston, New York and Black Women’s Blueprint in Boonville, New York.
Grants for Community, Democracy, Journalism and Media
Since its founding in 2006, the NoVo Foundation has placed underserved and marginalized communities at the core of its grantmaking. In addition to support for community organizing and movements for social justice, a portion of this work is conducted through film, journalism and other storytelling projects.
- Community development and organizing grantees include the Democracy Collaborative Foundation, Southerners on New Ground, the Urban Indigenous Collective and the Uprise Collective of Beaverton, Oregon.
- Grants related to film, media and storytelling include Curious Communications, Allied Media Projects’ Visionary Organizing Lab, the Filmmakers Collaborative and Radio Milwaukee’s 88Nine Amplifier.
Grants for Kingston, New York
The NoVo Foundation established NoVo in Kingston in 2013 with the purchase of what was known as Gill Farm and its transition to the Hudson Valley Farm Hub. The purpose of NoVo Kingston is to provide funding to local nonprofits providing direct services to the greater Kingston community, to “to build resilience for an uncertain future that is becoming more apparent every day,” and to fund and oversee a selection of major capital projects for the community.
- Capital projects include the Kingston YMCA, new studios for Radio Kingston, the Andy Murphy Neighborhood Center and the Pine Street Family Health Center, among others.
- Other local grantees include Kingston’s United Methodist Church, the Community Foundations of the Hudson Valley, the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center and the United Way of Ulster County.
Grants for Education and Youth Development
Education and youth causes are a smaller area of giving, but the NoVo Foundation does steadily support schools and youth-serving organizations in the Hudson Valley and around the U.S. Some of the foundation’s giving for youth overlaps with its Indigenous communities focus.
- The foundation appears to prioritize Waldorf and Rudolf Steiner Schools and has supported the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City, the Lakota Waldorf School in South Dakota, the Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, New York and the Mountain Laurel Waldorf School in New Paltz.
- NoVo also regularly supports multiple chapters of Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCA organizations in the Hudson Valley as well as places like South Dakota and Oklahoma.
- Other youth initiatives to receive grants in recent years include the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project in New Mexico, Lakota Youth Development of South Dakota and Youth FX of Albany, New York.
Important Grant Details:
The NoVo Foundation’s grants range from $20,000 to about $23 million. The foundation’s median grant size is about $150,000 and it made over 500 grants in a recent year. Many grantees receive ongoing or multi-year support.
- The NoVo Foundation’s grantees run the gamut from large national and global grantmakers like the Tides Foundations to small community- or Indigenous led groups working at local levels.
- The U.S. is the main focus of NoVo’s giving, but community, environmental and Indigenous groups in Canada also receive support. Less often, the foundation supports groups that conduct work internationally in Africa, Latin America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe.
- This funder is deeply invested in community development work in Kingston, New York and the surrounding Hudson Valley Region.
- NoVo does not currently accept unsolicited proposals.
- The foundation may be contacted via a form at the bottom of its webpage or via telephone at (212) 808-5400.
- Contact NoVo in Kingston using the form on its contact page.
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