Employee-Directed Grants
A hallmark of the Ares Foundation is the engagement and dedication of Ares’ employees to join efforts to give back to communities globally. As such, employees contribute their talent and expertise to help determine philanthropic giving, a key component and critical differentiator of the Ares Foundation’s grantmaking. Employee-directed grants help connect team members with nonprofits to further foster the kind of purposefulness that helps embed the Firm in communities worldwide.
In 2023, the Ares Foundation awarded five employee-directed grants totaling $1,831,988 to deserving organizations whose innovative initiatives seek to help problem-solve economic inequity. 8
Asia
Career Preparation and Reskilling
Localizing Tertiary and Vocational Educational Opportunities for Nepalese Youth
$450,000
to expand access to quality education for less advantaged Nepalese youth in remote communities to prepare them for post-secondary careers as well as to create knowledge products and resources that help scale programming to reach global audiences
Career Preparation and Reskilling
ACE IT Talents Project for Software Quality Assurance Training
$298,018
to help address Hong Kong’s high, post-COVID unemployment rate among less advantaged young people through job training that equips them with subject-specific IT skills, strengthens their problem-solving capabilities and empowers them to develop a systemic career plan against which to track their long-term professional goals and advancement
Career Preparation and Reskilling
Refined Chefs
$378,400
to provide highly experiential culinary training, with the aim of leading to careers in the food and beverage industry so that less advantaged women build their self-confidence, feel prepared to explore job opportunities outside their hometown, and acquire practical skills that will allow them to either enter the workforce or pursue entrepreneurial endeavors
U.S. East Coast & Midwest
Entrepreneurship
Advancing Equitable Economic Opportunity in Real Estate Development
$205,600
to undertake research on the success drivers of top revenue-generating Black- and Hispanic-owned real estate development firms in the U.S. as well as to conduct a landscaping of women real estate developers to seek to address their underrepresentation in the field so that these historically marginalized entrepreneurs can better scale their businesses and overcome equity gaps.
U.S. West Coast
Personal Finance
Wealth-Building Through Work
$499,970
to undertake research that informs the creation of a dynamic, no-cost toolkit for U.S. employers that includes options, pathways and strategies to support their implementation of equitable workplace wealth-building strategies that are designed to cut across dimensions such as race, place and gender for low- and moderate-wage employees
Where We See Progress
Age bias affects those at both ends of the age spectrum as well as those in between, with societal and economic consequences for everyone. The Ares Foundation’s grant to CoGenerate funded the organization to design the framework for the CoGen Challenge, an ongoing scope of work that encourages intergenerational teams of entrepreneurs to jointly devise solutions to societal challenges. In addition, the grant funded the first challenge — the CoGen Challenge to Advance Economic Opportunity — to bring older and younger people together to build a world where economic opportunity draws on the strengths of every generation.
Ten awardees each received $20,000 to advance their programs, along with six months of coaching in program development, fundraising and storytelling.
Learn more about the CoGen Challenge here.
CoGenerate
WorkingNation
People with disabilities in the labor force face enormous challenges in hiring and promotion. The Ares Foundation funded WorkingNation to help shine a light on these issues in the original, Emmy Award-winning television special, Breaking Barriers: Embracing Disabilities in the Workforce.
The show explored disability inclusion in the workplace and how employers can better tap into this underutilized talent to diversify the workforce and address nationwide worker shortages.
Watch a clip here and then view the full episode at www.workingnation.org
CARE International UK
Unpaid care work is a critical barrier to women’s economic justice. The Ares Foundation supported CARE International UK (“CIUK”) to gather and disseminate evidence on this topic through a policy brief, collection of case studies on women entrepreneurs, high-profile event with Members of Parliament, and ongoing advocacy among a broad network of political and civil society influencers. These activities helped the organization advocate the UK government’s accountability for its commitment to support women and girls globally.
Moreover, CIUK and the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women partnered to further raise awareness about inequalities in unpaid care work, including how investment in the care economy can strengthen women’s entrepreneurship, work opportunities and gender equality while helping governments achieve their economic development goals.
Read the report at www.cherieblairfoundation.org
8. Recommendations for these grants commenced in 2023, with the grant agreements executed in the first half of 2024.
