NFF Announces Leadership Changes
Dear NFF Community,
On August 15, after almost 10 years at the helm, Antony will be stepping down from his position as our CEO. A talented team of long-standing NFF leaders will take the reins on an interim basis, until permanent new leadership is identified through an extensive national search.
Our Executive Transition Team consists of three accomplished NFF leaders who will manage the organization, effective today. This includes Trella Walker as Executive Transition Team Lead, Kristin Giantris as Executive Transition Team Co-Lead, Client Services, and Andrea Briscoe as Executive Transition Team Co-Lead, Talent & Administration.
Over the past decade, NFF has experienced impressive growth that has allowed us to help many more clients as a lender, consultant, and advocate for the nonprofit sector. This includes increasing our lending to clients by almost five times and expanding our reach to a greater diversity of organizations and communities across the country through our consulting work. To support this, we have doubled NFF’s annual budget to $25 million, and expanded our net assets by nearly tenfold.
Most recently, NFF introduced an ambitious new strategy rooted in efforts to dramatically expand the organization's work on racial diversity, equity and inclusion. To advance this work, NFF recently secured major grants exceeding $25 million from leading donors and funders including MacKenzie Scott, Ford Foundation, and Morgan Stanley, among others.
It is an honor to lead NFF during this period of great change for our organization, the communities we serve, and our country. We are excited for NFF’s future with a strong foundation of amazing team members, a values-oriented culture, inspiring nonprofit clients and partners, enough reserves to be bold, and a compelling strategy. NFF can play a crucial role in helping to close persistent racial disparities in funding for U.S. nonprofits. Now is the right moment to make room for new leadership to bring a fresh vision and voice to realize this potential.
Over the past 10 years, NFF has grown substantially thanks to our remarkable team, clients, donors, investors and partners. We have increased NFF’s loan portfolio by 400 percent, are on a path to more than double our team’s size, and have secured an additional $43 million of unrestricted net assets to invest in our mission. Beyond the numbers, we are especially proud of the way we have organized around intentional values.
Since the summer of 2016, we have deepened our commitment to racial equity. When we first started on this journey, we knew that we were building to a time when a change in leadership would be necessary so that NFF could take this work to its next level guided by a visionary, community-centered leader with lived expertise of the issues we work on. That time is now.
NFF is committed to serving as an exemplar in inclusive financial practices that better meet the needs of nonprofits led by and serving people of color across the nation.
Recent national reporting by leading social investment organizations like Echoing Green and Bridgespan has revealed that nonprofits led by people of color are substantially underfunded compared to white-led organizations. With massive demographic shifts and pervasive racial injustice concerns, NFF has committed itself to deepening racial equity more squarely across its various program and influence platforms.
During recent years, NFF has significantly diversified its board and staff leadership to reflect the changing communities and nonprofits the organization serves. More on NFF’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy is available here.
Throughout the balance of 2021, NFF will undertake a nationwide search for a new CEO who can help the organization advance its expanding commitment to racial equity and inclusion.
Based in New York City with offices in Boston, Los Angeles, Oakland, and Philadelphia, NFF has provided over $1 billion in grants, loans, and federally-supported New Market Tax Credits, as well as financial consulting, to thousands of nonprofit groups since its formation in 1980.
During 2020, NFF transformed its lending, consulting and advocacy work to respond to nonprofit needs and opportunities in the COVID crisis and the uprisings for racial justice. Among other responses, NFF raised $118 million of zero-interest loans for a broad range of education, human services, and arts and culture organizations across the United States, including the $37 million New York COVID-19 Response and Impact Fund.
We thank you for your attention and support during this time of transition.
Best regards,
Henry A.J. Ramos Antony Bugg-Levine
NFF Board Chair NFF CEO