Charles H. Revson Foundation

Response to COVID 19

The impact of COVID 19 on the health and welfare of New Yorkers has been devastating.  New Yorkers sadly count too many family members, friends, neighbors and colleagues lost to its ravages.  All too vividly, the pandemic has laid bare the consequences of inadequate health care and housing, unemployment, food insecurity, lack of access to broadband, and inequities in access to education.

The Revson Foundation’s COVID 19 response has focused on our two primary areas of geographic interest—New York City and Israel. At the earliest phase of the pandemic, the Foundation provided support for front line homeless and human services providers to help them respond to the immediate crisis.

In Israel, emergency grants were made to Revson grantees working with young people, who quickly became ‘first responders’–coordinating emergency response efforts and working to relieve food insecurity in underserved communities.

Secondly, the Foundation made grants to strengthen the organizational capacity of selected grantees to meet increased demands and pivot towards new ways to serve their communities.

The pandemic had an especially deleterious impact on the work of the Charles H. Revson post-doctoral Fellows in the Biomedical Sciences.  Labs were shut down in March 2020 and fellows faced myriad uncertainties about the timing and restrictions associated with the re-opening of their labs, disruption of their research, and the impact of the pandemic on their professional advancement.  In response, the Foundation provided fully funded six-month extensions of the fellowship for 13 fellows.

In 2020, COVID Response grants were made to the following organizations in New York City:

Center for Urban Community Services                                      $25,000

Westside Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing          $25,000

New York Community Trust                                                       $200,000
COVID 19 Impact Fund

The Jewish Museum                                                                 $7,500

Bowery Residents Committee                                                   $7,500

Educational Alliance                                                                  $15,000

Hebrew Free Loan Society                                                       $50,000

Hunter College Hillel                                                                 $100,000

Hillel at Baruch College                                                            $150,000

Brooklyn Public Library                                                             $75,000

Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY                                 $21,170
Resilience Fund

COVID emergency response grants were made to the following organizations in Israel:

Maase/Rashi Foundation                                                        $20,000

Elem                                                                                        $20,000

SAHI                                                                                        $15,000

Histradut Hanoar Haoved V’Halomed                                     $15,000