Behind The Scenes: Brooklyn Org’s Origin Story

Learn about Brooklyn Org’s origin story in this excerpt from our new white paper, The Foundation of Our Future, which documents our distinctive, community-led philanthropic model and reflects more than 15 years of work building and refining an approach rooted in Brooklyn’s neighborhoods: 

Brooklyn, home to nearly three million people, has grown over recent decades to become a launch pad for ideas, culture, and enterprises that shape the globe. New York City’s largest borough is defined by creativity, and pride of place that inspires the best and brightest from around the world to follow its lead. And Brooklyn Org (BKO) is its champion: an inclusive partner and platform for local philanthropy that gives everyone a role in creating change from the ground up.

Founded in 2009 as Brooklyn Community Foundation with assets stemming from the borough’s oldest savings bank, Brooklyn Org is the first — and remains the only — public foundation solely dedicated to this storied community. With over $150 million in grantmaking to date, BKO is the borough’s main mobilizer of local giving, with an eye toward long-term change.

Brooklyn Org’s founders set out to correct a stark and persistent imbalance: while Brooklyn is home to over one-third of the city’s population and one-third of its nonprofits, organizations based in the borough receive a surprisingly small share of New York City’s charitable dollars — accounting for just 7.6% of charitable funding in 2019. This philanthropic disparity mirrors a wider lack of attention paid to the borough from political and corporate leadership that focuses primarily on the city’s traditional center in Manhattan.

Because of this ongoing underinvestment, Brooklyn has been ripe for new philanthropic leadership to leverage the borough’s rapid growth in population, wealth, and economic activity. Despite Brooklyn’s renaissance as a cultural and business powerhouse, neighborhoods across the borough continue to experience striking disparities in employment, health, and educational outcomes.

The evolution of Brooklyn Org reflects the ambition and influential power of the borough itself. Casting off the limitations of the traditional foundation, Brooklyn Org has embraced a new model for a community-led organization. The idea is simple: an organization that strives to touch the lives of everyone within the community, that seeks to serve the needs of the entire community. Brooklyn Org’s success at expanding its programs, the reach of its fundraising, and connections with nonprofits shows that this ambitious task is not only achievable but can and should be replicated in communities across the United States.

Rather than a traditional top-down funding model, Brooklyn Org is a hub for investment that is a natural extension of the vitality of Brooklyn’s communities. Brooklyn Org is offering every resident a path to become a changemaker in their own neighborhood — from volunteering and joining community conversations with local elected officials, to membership, small business partnerships, and Donor Advised Funds. This is work that BKO has been engaged with since its founding in 2009. The relaunch as Brooklyn Org in 2023 was designed to expand the scope of BKO’s impact and broaden its base of potential supporters. Since 2019, the most recent year not impacted by the pandemic, Brooklyn Org has nearly doubled its assets under management to more than $146 million in 2024 from $74 million. Likewise, Brooklyn Org’s annual grantmaking to nonprofits reached $19.5 million in 2024, up from $7.4 million in 2019.

Brooklyn Org is guided by a simple belief: philanthropy should be democratic. This is a renewal and recommitment to the core vision and mission that inspired BKO’s founding 16 years ago. BKO’s approach to engaging communities, highlighted by a participatory grantmaking model where funding decisions are driven by resident advisors, gives Brooklynites have a real seat at the table, ensuring that solutions are not imposed by distant institutions, but are developed and implemented by the people who know their communities best.

This white paper reflects Brooklyn Org’s growth as a funder and track record of accomplishment as an incubator for innovative community programs and visionary leaders. This paper also lays out the vision for BKO’s next chapter as an organization that continually adapts to meet the needs of the Brooklyn community.

And in this time of increasing political polarization, economic instability, and government funding cuts, Brooklyn Org launched the Brooklyn Backs Brooklyn campaign to build a movement of neighbors helping neighbors. When national solutions dissipate, local action becomes the most powerful tool for change. Brooklyn Backs Brooklyn is a rallying cry for inclusive, community-led philanthropy designed to meet the challenges of a booming, complex, and hopeful borough during a moment of national crisis and philanthropic retreat.

Executive Summary

Brooklyn Org (BKO) is redefining community philanthropy with a democratic, resident‑led model that aligns resources, skills, and power with neighborhood priorities. With an organizational transformation and rebranding launched in 2023, BKO is answering a funding gap that has persisted even as Brooklyn’s economy, wealth, population, and cultural influence have surged.

Through year-round engagement programs, including neighborhood listening events, community forums with elected officials, participatory grantmaking, and nonprofit capacity building, BKO translates community voice into community investment. BKO is the connective tissue of Brooklyn’s nonprofit ecosystem, supporting community changemakers through block-by-block funding programs and through high-profile, boroughwide vehicles like the annual Brooklyn Org Spark Prize. With the federal pullback from funding essential services, Brooklyn Org’s transformative model of mobilizing neighbors, businesses and donors to forge local solutions for local problems demonstrates how a reinvigorated community foundation model can meet the challenges of the next century.