Donor Highlight - William G. McGowan Fund
Meet Ignite Donor: The William G. McGowan Fund
From the start of our relationship with the William G. McGowan Fund and Fellows, we’ve worked together to create lasting change for the youth in our programs, giving them access to housing, job placement, financial literacy, and more. We’ve been so thankful for their investment in our work, and have been so thrilled to partner with their fellows on several social impact projects to expand our services and reach. Read on to hear from Diana Spencer, the Fund’s Chief Executive Officer, on why their work investing in communities and with Ignite has been so meaningful:
1) What does being involved in the community mean to the McGowan Fund?
As a place-based funder, the McGowan Fund values the expertise and experience of non-profit partners, collaboration, and a comprehensive approach to problem solving. The Fund couples its own research, national data, and conversations with local organization leaders to observe the dynamics of a community that perpetuate outwardly insurmountable challenges. With this approach, the Fund can best support non-profits working in the five communities supported, and together, meet and overcome the greatest needs.
2) What are some of the ways that the McGowan Fund chooses its grantees? Furthermore, what are some of the organizational qualities that the McGowan Fund prioritizes when choosing grantees?
The McGowan Fund partners with organizations that not only help families survive, but to strive and ultimately thrive. By supporting and co-designing programs that build pathways toward mobility, the Fund seeks to remove barriers for individuals and disturb the cyclical nature of generational poverty. Whether an organization supports education for children and youth or employment for adults, the Fund prioritizes programs offering evidence-based practices; data-driven models; and science-informed program development. Fundamentally, the McGowan Fund believes in the possibility for every unique person. When given the tools to build their executive function skills, obtain training and education needed for living wage jobs,and overcome the challenges they face, individuals can achieve more than they ever dreamed possible.
3) How do you feel that Ignite’s work captures the McGowan Fund’s mission?
Ignite provides foundational basics and stability that youth experiencing homelessness need to become self-sufficient. Once a feeling of stability exists, growth and transformation can begin. By providing housing and other supports, Ignite guides youth toward endless possibilities, helping them develop and plan goals, and reach to meet those goals. It is widely accepted that removing barriers is imperative for those experiencing poverty to succeed. Ignite bases their trauma-informed care in research and provides evidence-based programming to remove the radical barriers youth experience. Ignite also works in policy to address and change obsolete systemic approaches. In many cases, Ignite becomes the family so desperately needed by youth experiencing homelessness. With this comprehensive approach, Ignite captures the McGowan Fund mission beautifully.
4) Finally, what do you hope for the youth and young adults we work with at Ignite?
My highest and best wish for youth and young adults is that they can be introspective and realize their experience does not define them but strengthens them, that they gain not only the skills to obtain housing and employment, but the ability to overcome all challenges that life will hold, and that ultimately, they thrive. These bright, resilient youth have a lifetime ahead of them, and Ignite changes their current circumstance from a place of despair to a future of hope and success.
