2011 Holiday Donations

Below are some of the deserving organizations Gerstein Fisher has supported this holiday season. Please click on their name if you would like to learn more about their good works.

1. 9-11 Memorial: The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is a private not-for-profit (501c3), honoring the lives of those who were lost during the terrorist attacks of February 26, 1993 and September 11, 2011. The organization is dedicated to developing and sustaining the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
2. Akshaya Patra: The Akshaya Patra Foundation is the largest school meal program run in the world. The organization feeds 1.3 million underprivileged children across India every school day. The meal is an incentive for the children to continue their education; it helps reduce the dropout rate, and increases classroom attendance.
3. ALS: The ALS Association leads the fight to treat and cure ALS through global research and nationwide advocacy while also empowering people with Lou Gehrig’s Disease and their families to live fuller lives by providing them with compassionate care and support.
4. Art Start: The purpose of Art Start is to value and nurture the voices, hearts, and minds of under-served children and teenagers and help them transform their lives through the creative process. Art Start uses a multi-disciplined approach to arts education that is centered on the kids and their interests and equips them with learning, creating, and communicating skills. Offered in a nurturing environment, Art Start's programs challenge each child to develop his or her inner gifts and acquire tools to succeed in life.
5. Best Friends Animal Society: Best Friends Animal Society is guided by a simple philosophy: kindness to animals builds a better world for all of us. Through grassroots efforts they place dogs and cats into good homes, and reduce the number of unwanted pets through effective spray and neuter programs. Since their inception in the early 80s, the number of dogs and cats being destroyed in shelters has decreased from 17 million to 5 million. Their goal is to bring this number to zero.
6. Bronx Museum of the Arts: The Bronx Museum of the Arts was founded in 1971 to serve the ethnically diverse population of the Bronx and to stimulate community interest in the visual arts. Exhibitions and complementary public programs offer visitors the opportunity to learn about themselves, their heritage, history and culture while gaining insight into other cultural groups. The museum focuses on contemporary and 20th century works created by American artists, and it has hosted exhibitions of art and design from Latin America, Africa and Asia, as well as American descendants from those regions. Its permanent collection consists of more than 800 paintings, sculptures, photographs and works on paper.
7. Bulldogs Care Foundation: The Bulldogs Care Foundation was founded in memory of four Yale University students who lost their lives in a fatal car accident. The organization seeks to support disadvantaged youth as they pursue personal development through programs in athletics, education and mentoring.
8. Community Resource Exchange: Community Resource Exchange is a nonprofit management consulting firm that makes New York City's nonprofit organizations stronger and more effective in fighting poverty and advancing social justice. For over 30 years, Community Resource Exchange has worked to create a more just, equitable and livable city for all New Yorkers by offering strategic advice and technical services to over 300 community-based nonprofit organizations.
9. EcoHealth Alliance: EcoHealth Alliance is an international organization of scientists dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity. For more than 35 years, EcoHealth Alliance has focused its efforts on conservation. Today, they are known for innovative research on the intricate relationships between wildlife, ecosystems and human health. EcoHealth Alliance, a conservation science innovator, specializes in saving biodiversity in human-dominated bioscapes where ecological health is most at risk because of habitat loss, species imbalance, pollution and other environmental issues caused by human-induced change.
10. Family Promise: Family Promise helps homeless and low-income families achieve sustainable independence by integrating educational outreach, smart programming, effective policies, and the hands on work of thousands of volunteers. Family Promise provides food, shelter and support services for homeless families and advice and advocacy for at-risk families to prevent their becoming homeless. They also educate people about poverty and the means to combat it.
11. Interfaith Committee of Remembrance: Interfaith Committee of Remembrance was started about 15 years ago to celebrate life by honoring the memory of 6 million men, women and children that were killed simply because of their religious beliefs. The organization presents musical and artistic concerts/events about the Holocaust, with the belief that music is an international language, to bridge the barriers that separate people.
12. Leukemia & Lymphoma Society: Since 1949, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has been dedicated to curing leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. They are the world’s largest voluntary nonprofit health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer research and providing education and patient services. Their mission is to help patients with blood cancers live better, longer lives.
13. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: Memorial Sloan-Kettering is one of the world’s premier cancer centers and is committed to exceptional patient care, leading-edge research, and superb educational programs. The close collaboration between their physicians and scientists is one of their unique strengths, enabling them to provide patients with the best care available today. They also work to discover more effective strategies to prevent, control, and ultimately cure cancer in the future.
14. Mt. Kisco Child Care Center: The mission of the Mt. Kisco Child Care Center is to provide high quality affordable childcare to a diverse group of children in a safe, healthy and developmentally appropriate environment. They strive to promote each child's intellectual, physical, emotional and social development with an emphasis on enhancing his/her feelings of self-esteem, and are committed to ensuring the ethnic, social and cultural diversity of the student body, based on the belief that this policy is beneficial to all children and has long-term benefits for the community as a whole.
15. NARAL: National organization advocating for and providing comprehensive information on reproductive rights in the U.S.
16. Phoenix Academy: Since 1999, Phoenix Academy has provided a nurturing environment with standards of academic excellence for even the youngest toddler. Children from ages 2 1/2 through kindergarten, at age 6, blossom socially, emotionally, and academically.
17. Revlon Run/Walk: The Revlon Run/Walk is an annual fundraising campaign to raise awareness and significant funds to help prevention education, early diagnostic indicators, treatments and ultimately, a cure for women's cancers. Proceeds are distributed to a variety of charitable organizations leading the fight against breast and ovarian cancer.
18. Teach for America: Teach For America aims to end educational inequity through the recent college graduates who commit to teach for at least two years in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders in expanding educational opportunity.
19. The DOME Project: Developing Opportunities through Meaningful Education (DOME) was founded in 1973 to challenge the myriad threats to youngsters who had fallen through the cracks of the traditional school system. Since its inception, The DOME Project has dedicated itself to meeting the complex needs of young people in trouble with the law, their schools, and themselves, and has helped thousands of young people to develop the necessary skills to regain a sense of self-worth and prepare for success in their education and beyond.
20. Tony Hawk Foundation: The Tony Hawk Foundation seeks to foster lasting improvements in society, with an emphasis on supporting and empowering youth. Through special events, grants, and technical assistance, the foundation supports recreational programs with a focus on the creation of public skateboard parks in low-income communities. The Foundation favors programs that clearly demonstrate that funds received will produce tangible, ongoing, positive results.
21. University at Buffalo Foundation: The mission of the University at Buffalo Foundation, Inc., is to support and promote the activities and programs of the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. This is accomplished by providing advice and counsel regarding philanthropy and fund raising, managing gifts and grants on behalf of the university, providing a wide range of financial services for the various units of the university, developing and managing real property on behalf of the university, and providing a strong base of private-sector support for the university through the foundation's trustees and directors.
22. Upwardly Global: Upwardly Global creates employer partnerships that benefit the more than 1.5 million immigrants in the U.S. who are college-educated, have the legal right to work, but are unemployed or significantly underemployed. They provide customized training and support for these new Americans to give them an equal opportunity to find and secure opportunities and achieve full economic potential in the U.S.