GMA Funder Community’s short-term pooled giving and learning experience accepts grants from donors eager to identify and fund community-driven solutions to a large-scale problem affecting people across the country. Following focused learning sessions with experts, participants meet with prospective grantees and then decide together how to allocate the Fund’s dollars.
These participant-driven funds take place once a year and have addressed issues like Trauma and Resilience, Responses to the Opioid Crisis, and Environmental Justice. We welcome recommendations for prospective focus areas. Find links below to read about past funds.
2026 Housing Solutions Fund
The GMA Funder Community has launched its 7th annual pooled giving and learning experience—this time focused on equity-driven solutions to housing instability in Eastern Massachusetts.
In one of the most expensive housing markets in the country, what was once a challenge for low-income households is now a widespread crisis affecting working families, young adults, older residents, and essential workers. In Boston, families with children are the fastest-growing group experiencing homelessness.
While this layered crisis demands large-scale systems change, the Housing Solutions Fund will focus on the role philanthropy can play in preventing displacement, building community power, and supporting innovative models that scale.
Through four curated learning sessions, participants will hear directly from leaders in Eastern Massachusetts advancing solutions like tenant-led acquisitions, community land trusts, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs), legal aid, and housing + health partnerships. The program culminates in a collaborative grantmaking process, with funder participants making grant decisions alongside their peers.
The housing crisis overlaps with virtually all aspects of well-being in the Commonwealth. The Funder Community experience promises to be eye-opening and energizing, offering practical insight into how small-scale philanthropy can drive systemic change.
Fund Participation
The participant-directed Fund is a project under the fiscal sponsorship of Philanthropy Massachusetts. Participation is open to private foundations, corporate giving programs, donor-advised fund accounts, and individual donors.
Contact GMA Senior Program Officer Rachel Rifkin by phone 617-391-3097 or email rrifkin@gmafoundations.com to learn more about the GMA Funder Community.
Click here for a one-page description of the Housing Solutions Fund.
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Read about earlier funds launched by GMA:
2025 Fund for Young Adults – Guaranteed Income in Workforce Development
2023-24 Fund for Young Adults
2022 Child Behavioral Health Fund
2021 Environmental Justice Fund
2020 Opioid Response Fund
2019 Trauma and Resilience Fund