Blog

September 14, 2020

COVID-19 Relief Efforts Mobilize $100M for the North Texas Community

CFT works with individuals, families, and businesses to make significant and lasting investments to help communities stabilize and rebuild after disaster strikes. CFT recommends responding to the complete timeline of disaster management efforts – from immediate relief to recovery and rebuilding.

In addition to establishing relief and recovery funds and making emergency grants to nonprofits, CFT often plays a convening and leadership role during a crisis, helping to coordinate with other philanthropic funders, the City of Dallas, and Dallas County to identify gaps between government and nonprofit resources.

In the unprecedented era of COVID-19, CFT has helped mobilize almost $100 million for nonprofits through our leadership and partnership in new community relief efforts such as North Texas Cares and North Texas Giving Tuesday Now, through our donor-advised funds, and through the creation of a number of COVID-19 related relief funds.

NORTH TEXAS CARES

CFT helped launch and lead a funder collaborative called North Texas Cares, which began in late March to help streamline the process for nonprofits applying for COVID-19 related emergency funding, through the creation of a shared online grant application. While it launched with 15 participating foundations and United Ways, it quickly grew to more than 30 participating funders.

Between April and mid-July 2020, 1,400 grants totaling over $40 million were awarded to 630 area nonprofits through the North Texas Cares application process from the 30+ participating funders. A second-phase funding opportunity opened in August and will close in October, again with the partnership of 30 funders, some new and many returning. Learn more about North Texas Cares and the current priority funding areas at NorthTexasCares.org.

NORTH TEXAS GIVING TUESDAY NOW

In addition to funders collaborating through North Texas Cares, 45,000 donors came together on May 5 and proved that COVID-19 can’t cancel community, generosity, or kindness on North Texas Giving Tuesday Now.

A joint giving effort between CFT, United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, and the Dallas Cowboys, this online emergency giving effort raised more than $20.7 million for more than 2,500 North Texas nonprofits on the NorthTexasGivingDay.org platform. Additionally, more than 9,400 donors pledged nearly 300,000 volunteer hours.
As there will be ongoing community needs due to COVID-19 and beyond, CFT’s North Texas Giving Day team is hard at work planning the 12th annual North Texas Giving Day, scheduled for Thursday, September 17, 2020. Since 2009, CFT’s North Texas Giving Day has become the nation’s single most powerful day of community-wide giving, cumulatively granting more than $290 million to over 3,000 nonprofits. In 2019, $50 million was raised from over 100,000 donors for 3,000 nonprofits.

COVID-19 RELIEF FUNDS AT CFT:
$ 11M RAISED AND COUNTING

In addition to grants from donor-advised funds and leadership of North Texas Cares and North Texas Giving Tuesday Now, CFT has raised more than $11 million for our COVID-19 community response funds. Eight COVID-19 response funds have been established at CFT: CFT’s North Texas Community Response Fund, Dallas County COVID-19 Response Fund, The Dallas Morning News Charities COVID Response Fund, Emma Lazarus Resilience Fund, Get Shift Done for North Texas Fund, Get Shift Done for America Fund, Revive Dallas Small Business Relief Fund, and Serve Our Heroes Fund. CFT also partnered with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas to deploy $1 million to nonprofits across Texas.

View the grants CFT has made from our North Texas Community Response Fund through North Texas Cares at CFTexas.org/COVID19grants and read details about our relief funds on our blog at CFTexas.org/blog.

Read the fall 2020 IMPACT Magazine here