Dana Archer-Rosenthal

In the early 1960s, a seventeen year old Elayne Grant Archer embarked on a solo, 12+ hour bus ride from Toronto to Boston for an admissions interview to Radcliffe College; she didn’t really expect to get in, but saw it as a rare opportunity to travel and see a place she might otherwise not have the chance to visit. She ultimately did get in, and when Elayne eventually made her way to Brooklyn in 1972, she put down roots in Park Slope and knew she had found her home of a lifetime.

Elayne’s Brooklyn roots run deep; those roots are tended by her family, including her daughter Dana Archer-Rosenthal. After Elayne passed away suddenly in April 2024, Dana and her father Clifford Rosenthal established a Donor Advised Fund at Brooklyn Org to honor her memory. But to understand why Brooklyn Org felt like the right home to reflect on her legacy, you have to first understand where Elayne came from.

Elayne’s backstory is one known by many immigrant New Yorkers: displaced by war, her family immigrated in search of better opportunities; she in turn sought a new life as a young adult, moving once again to embark on her own educational journey. Born in England in 1943, her father was killed in the Second World War before she ever knew him, leaving her mother a young widow with two children. In search of a fresh start, her mother immigrated to Toronto, but as a single woman with two small children in postwar Canada, support was nearly nonexistent. For years, Elayne and her brother lived apart from their mother, placed informally in foster care with other families and at boarding schools, which was the only way their mother was able to work in the absence of child care options. Elayne wouldn’t live under the same roof as her mother and brother until she was nine.

Those early years shaped everything for Elayne: her resilience, her compassion, and her staunch dedication to women’s rights and supporting children in need. These causes inform how Dana and her family give through their fund at Brooklyn Org today. As Dana shares, “My brother put it really well when he said that my mom never wanted to see a child struggle because of her own experiences growing up. I think by extension, she just never wanted to see a mother struggling. So we’ve been supporting organizations through our DAF that are invested in women and children and providing them with a range of resources like healthcare, which has been a neat way to think broadly about our giving.”

When Elayne settled in Park Slope with her first husband, they came with big ideas and limited resources, pooling them with another family to buy a home together and live as a genuine commune — sharing childcare, cooking, and the work of keeping a household going. Dana’s father still lives in that house today. Though Elayne eventually became an American citizen, she thought of herself as a New Yorker first, the way so many Brooklynites do. She knew her neighbors, showed up through community organizations like the P.S. 321 PTA, the neighborhood Little League, and Good Neighbors of Park Slope, and remained fiercely committed to reproductive health and abortion access for nearly fifty years. Dana was born and raised into that Brooklyn, has built a career in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector shaped by it, and still lives near Prospect Park today, sharing how she never tires of what it Brooklyn has to offer: “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’m still discovering so much of the borough.”

When Elayne died, Dana, her father, and her brother wanted to honor her thoughtfully. Dana had been giving charitably for years, but her donations had become like an “autopilot,” a hodgepodge accumulated in response to whatever felt urgent. Opening a fund in her mother’s name gave her something different: a framework for intentional, values-driven giving based in a place and a legacy she cares about deeply. “I liked the idea of having a more strategic giving vehicle,” she says, “an opportunity to ask what organizations and causes my mom would really want to support, and that are important to me because they were important to her.”

Exploring Brooklyn Org’s grantee catalog has been a great resource — revealing community-rooted organizations Dana had never encountered, doing essential work close to the ground. She believes deeply in trust-based philanthropy and in the outsized impact a well-placed smaller grant can have on organizations that lack the infrastructure to chase large institutional funders. Brooklyn Org’s approach, she says, speaks directly to that.

The process has also become a family affair. When Dana shared Brooklyn Org’s grantee catalog with her father and brother, they independently pointed to the same organizations — including the Laundromat Workers Center — as ones they knew Elayne would have supported. Dana hopes that friends and neighbors who loved Elayne will think of The Elayne Grant Archer Fund as a way to keep honoring her, and that the community spirit Elayne lived by will keep growing its reach long into the future.

Elayne Grant Archer’s story shows what becomes possible when someone finds their home in Brooklyn, and turns their compassion into action. Elayne arrived in Brooklyn as an immigrant, built a life of connection and commitment, and passed those values on. For Dana and her family, Brooklyn Org has been the right partner for that work as Elayne’s story, in so many ways, is Brooklyn’s story too.

Q&A With Dana Archer-Rosenthal

Why did you open a DAF at Brooklyn Org?

I opened a DAF in memory of my mom, Elayne Grant Archer, who died suddenly in April 2024. I wanted to find a way to carry forward her generosity, her commitment to the causes she cared deeply about, and her love of Brooklyn, where she made her home for more than 50 years and raised me and my brother. I’m exploring starting a giving circle because I want to motivate more people to support this borough that has shaped me so profoundly.

What issue areas are you most passionate about supporting?

The issues that I’m most passionate about supporting are ones that my mom cared deeply about: reproductive health and abortion access, and the well-being of women and children, and economic opportunity. There is obviously a lot of crossover between these issues! I’m also passionate about supporting immigrants, as my mother, her brother and her mother emigrated to Canada from England after my grandmother was widowed in World War II, and my mother continued her family’s immigration story by coming to this country for college in the early 1960s.

How does your DAF help you support Brooklyn and your community?

Having a DAF has been so fun! I love learning about the different communities and organizations that Brooklyn Org is supporting and directing support to them.  I really appreciate that Brooklyn Org is supporting small organizations that are so close to the needs of their community but might not have the same resources for fundraising as bigger organizations. I have been an admirer of Brooklyn Org’s trust-based approach to philanthropy and its responsiveness to community needs for a while, so I’m really happy to have a way to support them with my DAF.