The 2024 call for nominations for the Donald K. Ross Founders Award and Risk Taker Awards are now open!
EGA members, Adelaide P. Gomer, President of the Park Foundation, Farhad A. Ebrahimi, Founder and President of the Chorus Foundation, and The JPB Foundation Environment Team, are honored for their leadership on just resource redistribution in environmental philanthropy.
From left to right: Jennifer Patrick, Senior Program Officer at The JPB Foundation, Farhad A. Ebrahimi, Founder and President of the Chorus Foundation, Rachel Leon, Executive Director of the Park Foundation, Ogonnaya Dotson Newman, EGA Board Member and Senior Program Officer at The JPB Foundation, and Dawnette Zuniga, Program Manager at The JPB Foundation
At the 2023 EGA Fall Retreat in Montgomery, Alabama, we honored leaderful members at our first-ever EGA awards ceremony. EGA members, Adelaide P. Gomer, President of the Park Foundation, Farhad A. Ebrahimi, President of the Chorus Foundation, and The JPB Foundation Environment Team, were celebrated for their efforts to shift power and resources in environmental philanthropy.
The winners were nominated by the EGA community for the Donald K. Ross Founders Award and the EGA Risk Taker Award. The Risk Taker Award recognizes visionaries in two categories: Visionary/Individual and Visionary/Organization. Learn more below about each award and the awards recipients.
The Donald K. Ross Founders Award honors the tenacity, dedication, commitment, and creativity of an individual EGA member who is innovating for effective philanthropy. It was established in memory of one of EGA’s founders, Donald K. Ross, whose vision and forethought set in motion our association, which is now the largest and oldest within environmental philanthropy.
The EGA Risk Taker Award honors the vision, creative power, and boldness of a valued member and member team of the philanthropic community. The award amplifies the legacy of exemplary leaders in philanthropy whose leading-edge thinking has translated to game changing work in racial equity. Recipients inspire the future of resourcing for people and planet. Guided by our Racial Equity POV, Environmental Grantmakers Association oversees the selection process of this annual award bestowal.
Inaugural Donald K. Ross Founders Award Recipient:
Adelaide P. Gomer, President of the Park Foundation
Adelaide Gomer’s leadership at the Park Foundation in the fight against fracking in New York, contributed to a movement that eventually led to the 2014 fracking ban in the state. Adelaide’s leadership exemplifies Donald’s pugilist spirit and focus on working with community and government to protect citizens’ health and ecosystems.
Rachel Leon, Executive Director of Park Foundation, accepted the award on behalf of Adelaide. In Adelaide’s own words:
“Park Foundation helped fund on-the-ground-grassroot activists and scientists in an effort to ban fracking in [New York State]. These efforts were bolstered by music and film to help bring these issues to a broader audience. It was a powerful effort and served as proof that environmental struggles led by the fighters can make a difference.”
Watch Rachel give this heartfelt speech on behalf of Adelaide here
Inaugural Risk Taker Award Individual Recipient: Farhad Ebrahimi, Founder and President of the Chorus Foundation
EGA commends Farhad Ebrahimi’s visionary leadership as Founder and President of the Chorus Foundation, with the individual Risk Taker Award. Farhad’s leadership in philanthropy has motivated many to direct increased resources to communities whose work accelerates racial justice and a just transition.
During the awards ceremony, Farhad called on funders to assess their understanding of risk. The biggest risk is what funders fail to do if philanthropy doesn’t change:
“Funder organizing is…about developing leadership, building power, and affecting structural change within the philanthropic sector itself. It’s about challenging power within our sector and institutions.”
The Chorus Foundation is completing their ten-year spend down by 2024. Watch Farhad’s full acceptance speech here.
[Read] Crafting a path for change: the imperative of a multisector strategy for spending down.
Inaugural Risk Taker Award Team Recipient
The JPB Foundation Environment Program
The JPB Foundation’s Environment Program team’s leading-edge work is supporting environmental and climate justice organizations at historic levels, leveraging philanthropic power to bring essential stakeholders together; the creation of new formations and shifting funds to reach excluded grassroots leadership.
The JPB Foundation Environment Program team members, Dawnette Zuniga, Jennifer Patrick, Kayla Patel, Serena Iacoviello, and Ogonnaya Dotson Newman, accepted the award. Jennifer shared remarks on behalf of her team:
“We take our risks by advancing our work in a meaningful way - by listening to grantees and learning what they have to tell us. And, our work is not done. The Environment Team started with one person, Dana Bourland. The risk taking began with her and continues on through all of us.”
Watch Jennifer’s full speech here.
"The Donald K. Ross Founders Award and the Risk Taker Award comes at a time when investments in environment, climate, people, species, and land are at an inflection point. It’s really important for EGA, as the oldest and largest philanthropy-serving organization focused on environmental grantmaking, that we take a chance to look back and see where we came from.” –Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, EGA President and CEO
Learn more about the EGA awards here. The 2024 call for nominations is now open!
Interested in supporting EGA’s new programs and initiatives? Get in touch with EGA Program Director, Michelle Velez.
