The Boston Foundation has been a partner of Dotwell, a collaborative effort of Codman Square Health Center and Dorchester House Multi-Service Center, since 2003, providing more than $300,000 in funding since then. Its mission is not only to tackle serious health disparities among Dorchester’s residents, but also to build social capital across Dorchester’s neighborhoods.

Another remarkable collaboration is the Fairmount/Indigo Line CDC Collaborative, which brings together four community development corporations from several neighborhoods, including Dorchester Bay, Codman Square, Mattapan, and Southwest Boston. The Collaborative has received national recognition for its smart growth, transit-oriented development plan around the new MBTA commuter rail system. The Foundation has made grants totaling $265,000 to this effort over the last three years, including $125,000 this year.

Dorchester is served by 17 schools and the Foundation has supported many of them, especially the neighborhood’s pilot and charter schools. Boston Collegiate Charter School also has received more than $120,000 from the Foundation’s Innovative Schools Initiative Fund since 1998. And just this year, that same special fund gave TechBoston Academy $100,000 to expand from high school into the middle school grades.

Freedom House, one of the oldest community centers serving people of color in Boston, is located in Grove Hall, which bridges Dorchester and Roxbury. The Boston Foundation has a Designated Fund that honors Freedom House’s founders, Muriel and Otto Snowden, which provides some $60,000 annually in unrestricted support. Over the last 20 years, Freedom House has received $1.8 million in support from that fund and from grants through the Foundation’s competitive grantmaking program. Another Grove Hall nonprofit, Project R.I.G.H.T., is one of the most effective neighborhood-based organizing groups in the city. Since 1990, the Foundation has awarded more than $600,000 in grants to this agency.

No survey of nonprofits is complete without mention of Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses (FDNH), formed by merging several old settlement houses into one organization in 1965. This agency has received $1.2 million from the Foundation since 1990 alone. A grant of $55,000 went to FDNH this year for the support of English for Speakers of Other Languages courses for Dorchester’s many immigrants.

Special Initiatives of the Boston Foundation

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