How One Family is Tackling Inequity from the Ground Up

Blog from Maggi Alexander, Senior Partner at TPI

In the wake of the crises of 2020, the philanthropic community has been reaching deeper to become more strategic and more effective. To find out what skills and practices some funders are finding most useful in tumultuous times – and what new lessons they are learning – TPI launched the Adaptable Funder series.

In this post, I sat down with Karen Keating Ansara, long-time TPI client and an inspirational figure in global philanthropy. Karen and her husband Jim established the Ansara Family Fund at the Boston Foundation in 2006 as a donor-advised fund with the mission to help eradicate global poverty. As you’ll see from our conversation, much of their experience as funders is steeped in intentional relationships and a bent towards developing solutions where none yet exist, and they focus a significant amount of their philanthropy in Haiti. In 2008, Karen co-founded New England International Donors (NEID) to create learning and networking opportunities for funders giving across borders. Just before 2010’s devastating earthquake in Haiti, Jim, a former construction executive, had committed to helping Partners in Health build a community hospital there; his work evolved into the co-founding of Build Health International, which now undertakes projects in low-resource settings across 22 countries. Concurrently, Karen partnered with the Boston Foundation (TBF) to establish The Haiti Fund, which later became the Haiti Development Institute and now works to strengthen Haitian-led NGOS by building their capacity and improving collaboration among those who fund them. Karen and Jim give locally through the Boston Foundation and the Essex County Community Foundation, demonstrating how lessons learned abroad can be applied at home. The Ansaras’ responses to this year’s multiple crises provide valuable insights for funders working to address any issue in any geography.