AMRF was founded with a focus on recovery services.
We've undergone significant changes since our founding. In the beginning our efforts were primarily focused on recovery support, providing grants to large treatment centers across the country. Our goal was to expand the services of those organizations as much as possible in hopes that more people could begin and continue their recovery journeys.
Tobi Rosen, Board President
Board President, Tobi Rosen, shared her vision with her fellow Trustees. When they were reluctant to join, she asked them to resign. With a new Board in place, Tobi hired Jason Satterfield as the organization’s new Executive Director. In addition to being an attorney, Jason brought deep expertise in nonprofit management, IRS regulations, and the homeless-response system.
Jason and Tobi co-led AMRF on a journey to redefine its purpose. First, he honed our focus to populations and communities with fewer resources. We began phasing out our legacy grants to treatment centers and increased our efforts to support smaller nonprofits. Second, Jason began to build a team of people with direct service, nonprofit, and storytelling experience–all of whom share a personal connection to some piece of our work.
Through this transition, we noticed philanthropy’s tendency to create a lot of hoops for nonprofits to access grants. These scarce dollars are often combined with a heavy administrative burden and rigid budgets. Given the hurdles to access and manage the grants, smaller, grassroots organizations are the least likely to be awarded funding, even though they are often the most connected to community priorities. Since most of our team had experience working at nonprofits, we knew first-hand that grants could be more impactful with increased flexibility and fewer barriers.
Inspired by the Headwaters Foundation in Montana, especially the then CEO Brenda Solórzano, AMRF formally adopted principles of trust-based philanthropy by launching our GO Grants strategy, an initiative to reimagine a more accessible and equitable distribution of funds that invests in community leaders often marginalized by traditional philanthropic efforts.
Today, we define our work more holistically with an emphasis on behavioral health, which looks at the intersection between mental health and substance use, as well as healing, especially at the community level.Our goal is to provide financial and non-monetary resources to support community-led wellness efforts.
With every action, we consider the potential for long-term systemic change. We developed internal systems of accountability to ensure that community voices are centered in our decision-making. We seek meaningful feedback from our partners to co-design our grant programs. We also adopted a co-leadership model and made a commitment to sunset the foundation within seven to ten years.
Looking forward, AMRF will continue our journey to center community wellness and comprehensive care that allows people to disrupt cycles of trauma and addiction. With a growth mindset, our Trustees and staff are eager to challenge traditional thinking, including our own, about how to make a positive impact.
