The Lorie A. Slutsky Fellowship is a proposed program seeking to honor former New York Community Trust President and fellow, Lorie Slutsky, for her outstanding service in community foundations.
This program would expand our four year-long, paid fellowships for graduate students at The Trust. Existing fellowships are focused on competitive grantmaking and marketing/communications. With this new fellowship, graduate students will acquire broader philanthropy and grantmaking skills with a particular focus on the many issues and challenges facing community foundations.
The fellowships at The Trust represent one of the few opportunities in philanthropy that have stood the test of time. For more than three decades our fellows have experienced both a bird’s eye view and an in-the-weeds experience of grantmaking and working at a foundation. Fellows leave with an understanding of how grantmaking is done, an appreciation of the complexities of grantor and grantee relationships, and perhaps most importantly, a better sense of the diverse and eclectic nonprofit field in New York and beyond, from a single-staffed grass-roots nonprofit to multi-billion dollar institutions such as universities, hospitals, and academic medical centers. And because this fellowship is focused more broadly on all the aspects of philanthropy—raising funds and giving funds through a community foundation—fellows will have the opportunity to work with, and rotate through, different departments at The Trust, from competitive grantmaking to donor relations to finance and more. Beyond developing industry-relevant skills, the new fellow will also have the opportunity to connect with others in the New York nonprofit community, allowing the fellow to build upon this network to further advance their own career trajectories. The vast majority of our fellows go on to serve their communities in the nonprofit sector, although several also work for government and the corporate sector.
This is a great opportunity for The Trust to cultivate new professionals in the field of community philanthropy who will follow in Lorie’s steps. Additionally, it will develop strong, capable philanthropy professionals who understand the unique needs of community foundations while assuring a robust future for community foundations in the future. In terms of funding, the program requires a $1 million endowment to sponsor one fellow each year, for decades to come.