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We work with some of the best nonprofits throughout New York City. Our grantees spend their days doing life-saving work and they are always looking for sharp minds to help broaden their impact. Check out some available positions with our grantee partners below:
See more open jobs with Robin Hood grantees here: https://www.robinhood.org/grantee-jobs
For the past year, Raysa Reyes has been helping homeless LGBT teens rebuild their lives.
“They’re young. Sometimes it’s challenge to convince them to see past this moment in their lives,” said Raysa, an outreach specialist with the Robin Hood-funded Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest service provider dedicated to LGBT homeless youth. “You have to meet them where they are and I feel AFC does a good job of that.”
Prior to joining the outreach team, she was a youth counselor at one of AFC’s emergency housing sites. Now her days are spent travelling across New York City, delivering food, water, safe sex kits, and information to homeless LGBT teens.
“We don’t profile because it’s hard to say who is homeless and who isn’t. Instead, we just go out to where homeless teens and LGBT teens tend to gather,” she explained. “We talk to everyone. I’ve talked to teachers or professors, who take our kits or flyers because they have students who are homeless.”
Raysa plans on getting her Master’s in Social Work from Hunter College and continuing to help youth.
For Susana Chamorro, helping homeless teens is personal.
“I know what it’s like. I was homeless as a youth. By the age of 5, I was on my own. I basically couch surfed, but when I was 11, the couches ran out. From 11 to 16, I was on the street. I did sex work to survive until I went to Job Corps and I’ve been working ever since.”
Susana is an outreach specialist with the Robin Hood-funded Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest service provider dedicated to LGBT homeless youth. She roams the five boroughs delivering food, clothes, safe sex kits, and information to keep LGBT youth on the streets safe.
“We go to all the hotspots,” Susana said. “Places like Port Authority, the TWC building, Union Square, Christopher Street Pier, Jerome Ave and Fordham in the Bronx, and 149th and 3rd in the Bronx. We even use Facebook to contact clients. A lot of times they don’t have phone service, but they can get free Wi-Fi on their phones at the library, Barnes and Noble, or even at some train stations, so they’re always on social media.”
Lisa spent 24 days on an expedition up Denali, North America’s highest peak. She summited June 1, 2016 and raised $45,650 for our city.
DONOR SPOTLIGHT: PETER MULLER
Peter Muller might be the founder and CEO of red-hot Manhattan hedge fund PDT Partners, but when he’s not guiding his team of number-crunching PhDs, he’s just Pete—an accomplished musician and surfer dude (among other pursuits) whose virtuosity among the quants is equaled only by a determination to stay connected to the world beyond Wall Street. How many other CEOs monitor the Pacific break from a live feed at work 3,000 miles away?
Balance and connection. These are the pillars of a personal philosophy that nurtures “a deep understanding and trust of as many people as possible.” That philosophy explains why Muller has explored so many of his passions. He’s a world-class poker player. He creates crossword puzzles for the New York Times. And, it explains why he has forged a 20-plus-year relationship with Robin Hood that began in the early ’90s, when Muller was a rising star at Morgan Stanley. Finding himself at an after-party following a Robin Hood event, he was blown away by the “thoughtfulness and creativity of the organization, its entrepreneurial spirit and investment intelligence.”
Muller was a fan of a wide genre of music from a young age – listening, performing and creating. Since 2000 his music has taken on a life of its own, and with several albums in his catalogue, this is clearly no side project. “I enjoy what I’m doing,” he says, “and I enjoy the process of continuing to get better at it.”
With the release of his latest album, the jazz-influenced Two Truths and a Lie, last September, Muller performed in New York with his band to support Robin Hood. Last fall, he raised nearly $55,000—100 percent of ticket sales—for New Yorkers living in poverty at a sold-out show at City Winery. And on June 29, he’s going to do it again, this time in a more intimate setting, the Metropolitan Room.
These days, Muller lives with his wife Jillian and two children near Santa Barbara for a chunk of the year, not least to feed his wave-riding jones. And, in the end, it’s this side of him that most informs his current idea of success, whether it’s in music, philanthropy or life. The man who owes so much to math now relies much more on his gut than on the numbers. “You have to believe in your acts of generosity,” he says. “And the litmus test is that it’s got to make the world a better place. If that’s a tough standard, great.” Watch Pete’s cover of Harry Nilsson’s Without You
Join us for an evening with the Pete Muller Trio When: June 29, 2016 at 7:00pm Where: Metropolitan Room 34 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10010 Buy tickets
STAFF SPOTLIGHT: BEATRIZ DE LA TORRE
Q: If you had one day to show and out-of-towner the city, where would you take them and why? A: I would have them cross the Brooklyn Bridge by foot. It provides a wonderful avenue to connect with the city’s history and see the evolution of the waterfront. Q: What is your favorite restaurant in your borough and what do you order? A: This is a tough one for me to answer because I am a part owner of a restaurant in Brooklyn, but I can sincerely say that it is my favorite. It is called Bricolage and it serves modern Vietnamese food. I love the crispy imperial rolls, the pork chop and the whole branzino. Q: What is one book everyone should read? A: Catcher in the Rye Q: Have you volunteered with any grantees? If so, what was the experience like? A: Many years before joining Robin Hood, I was a mentor at The Door, an organization that helps disconnected youth in New York City. I spent several years working one-on-one with a teenage boy who immigrated from Guinea-Bissau after the civil war. He did not know any English when he arrived and did not have a network of family or friends to help him get settled. He thankfully found The Door where my sister was working at the time. I helped him for several years with his English and his SATs when he was getting ready to apply for college. He went on to study at Bard College for a few years and then joined the U.S. Army. I am so proud of him. Q: What is your favorite Robin Hood memory? A: Listening to Jessie’s story at the 2015 Heroes Breakfast. It fueled my energy to work on homelessness and affordable housing issues.
Under-stimulation and the extreme stresses of poverty can have damaging effects on the development of a child's brain in its earliest stages. We’re working on a groundbreaking initiative that will tap into the latest breakthroughs in brain science. Together, we will take the science to the streets so everyone—parents, grandparents, caregivers—can be a brain builder for young children.
Get a glimpse of New York City lit up green in support of our work!
For the first-time ever, on May 9th, Robin Hood will bring together tens of thousands of New Yorkers to help our neighbors in need — in person and online. It’s #NYC4NYC.
Each May, thanks to the generosity of thousands of supporters, Robin Hood’s annual benefit helps raise millions of dollars to fight poverty in New York City.
We’ve launched a revolutionary graduate program that trains over 100,000 teachers. We’ve created innovative programs that have helped end veterans homelessness in New York City. And last year alone, the programs we fund provided 14 million meals to hungry New Yorkers.
But it’s not enough.
Poverty is too daunting an adversary for any one of us to face alone.
In a city of 8.4 million, there is no limit to what we can achieve when we work as one. We must come together.
May 9th is the Night for New York City. In solidarity, landmarks throughout the city will turn Robin Hood green.
And in the same spirit, tens of thousands of caring New Yorkers will join us at events around the city on behalf of our neighbors in need. And thousands more will join us online, creating a borderless community of advocates for the city we all love.
We need your help. Be a part of #NYC4NYC and improve the lives of our fellow New Yorkers living in poverty.
Join us: Night4NYC.org
See you on May 9th!
Our strong, diverse and mission-driven staff allows us to fight poverty more effectively. Learn more about our stellar staff members in our new Staff Profiles series.
Q: If you had one day to show an out-of-towner the city, where would you take them and why?
A: I would take them to Astoria Park. It’s a spacious park with spectacular views. Not to mention it has one of the largest public pools in the city.
Q: What is your favorite restaurant in your borough and what do you order?
A: My favorite restaurant in Queens is Taverna Kyclades. They have the best Greek seafood dishes. I usually get the scallops! For those who live in Manhattan, there is also a location on 14th and 1st Avenue.
Q: What is one book everyone should read?
A: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
Q: Have you volunteered with any grantees? If so, what was the experience like?
A: While in grad school I was a social media consultant for BronxWorks, one of our grantees. Overall, it was a very rewarding experience because I learned a lot about the vibrancy of the Bronx and how close knit the communities are.
Q: What is your favorite Robin Hood memory?
A: While this is only my 10th week at Robin Hood, I would say my favorite memory so far has been listening to Errol Lewis of NY1 speak in our all staff meeting. I usually wake up and go to bed listening to him so it was rewarding to hear from him in person.
We’ll remember David Bowie for his talent & compassion – helping New Yorkers at the the Concert for New York City and our 2002 Benefit.
After a decades-long career devoted to public service and building strong, caring communities, Reynold Levy could have unapologetically walked away from his professional commitments and indulged his many passions: the arts; fitness; reading extensively; writing; traveling with his wife, Elizabeth; and, caring for his granddaughter of 20 months, Colette. Instead, less than two-years after leaving the top post at Lincoln Center – a position he held for thirteen-years - Reynold decided to throw himself back into the workforce full-time; in September he joined Robin Hood as President. It would seem that perhaps the only thing Reynold has failed at in his career is retirement.
“My career has been spent as an institution builder,” says Mr. Levy. “I believe in the management of the Robin Hood Foundation, its board, and more than anything else, I am passionately committed to its mission to fight poverty at every turn.”
Ren, as he’s become known to the Robin Hood staff, has led a dynamic career, marked notably by his work as President of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Reynold was largely responsible for physically transforming the oldest and largest American performing arts center and preparing it for the artists and audiences of the twenty-first century. His work there became part of a recently published book, They Told Me Not To Take That Job, a personal and professional memoir about his career.
Reynold’s leadership of Lincoln Center continued a distinguished career in public service. His work as President of the International Rescue Committee was equally transformative, as was his tenure as Executive Director of the 92nd Street Y. In each endeavor, and many others, Reynold’s efforts are characterized by two critical elements: clarity of vision and fearless execution.
Ren officially commenced his work at Robin Hood on October 1st and his presence is already felt around the office where he participates in a variety of day-to-day activities alongside Robin Hood’s Executive Director, David Saltzman. According to Robin Hood Board Member, Peter Kiernan, who was instrumental in recruiting Mr. Levy for the post, “Bringing Reynold Levy aboard to join forces with David is a powerful way to fulfill our mission. Together, they will lead an invigorated staff and a determined board to address the deep seated challenges of poverty in America’s largest city.”
Just last week the Coalition for Queens Access Code program held its Android demo day at the Museum of the Moving Image.
Access Code equips talented adults from underserved and underrepresented backgrounds with the computer programming skills and entrepreneurial training to launch careers in the tech industry. After six months, program participants took to the stage to showcase their apps. Read more about the apps they developed.
We are excited & proud to announce our computer science partnership with Mayor Bill de Blasio & the NYC Department of Education. Let's make sure all NYC students have equal access to education that will equip them with skills for the future!
Last week students of the Access Code program at Coalition for Queens were tasked with "hacking the data" behind Single Stop Connects, a social service search tool for consumers and case workers. The tool is based on a platform called www.auntbertha.com, which is finding it's way into metropolitan areas around the country, and allows users to search across a broad array social services (eg. job training, after-school programs, food pantries).
I was personally stunned at how quickly the students in the program came up with product ideas, vetted them down to six and broke into groups to build solutions. Many of these students had never coded before they started the 9 month program just 6 months prior to this weekend. Yet, the prototype's built in just 48 hours would have you thinking otherwise. Over the weekend they researched, coded, tested, researched, coded, branded their products and put together a demonstration. These are the resulting apps:
At the finale on Monday night a panel of four judges came by to see the presentations and cast their votes. On the panel were David Saltzman, Executive Director of Robin Hood, Stephanie Hannon, CTO of the Hillary Clinton Campaign, Brian Cohen, Chairman for New York Angels and Andy Saldaña, Director of Operations for New York Tech Meetup.
In the end the judges chose meshNYC for it's feat of engineering and presentation, but it would be no exaggeration to say all the teams won. Of course, from the Robin Hood perspective we see any such collaborative efforts in the fight against poverty as a win for all New Yorkers.
Part of our 2015 summer intern program includes a master class with our Chief Program Officer, Michael M. Weinstein on poverty, policy and metrics. Below are reflections from our interns on what they learned and how they felt after the master class.
Michael Weinstein is one of the most interesting and intelligent people that I have ever listened to. The ease with which he can float between fields of study, interconnect them, and use them to make an articulate point is incredible. But it is more than his shear intelligence that I found inspiring, it is his ability to use his wide ranging knowledge base and use that to benefit the lives of others. What surprised me most about Michael’s presentation yesterday was his ability to convey such complex topics so eloquently to a group of untrained interns. – Henry Molner
A slightly funny but also admirable quality of Michael’s was his ability to answer every single question we threw at him with an interesting and in-depth explanation, even if he prefaced his answer with something like “I don’t know how to answer that question.” – Kate Madoff
Overall from the entire presentation, I took away that Robin Hood can be described as an investment company that solely invests in NYC and just as in a regular investment in the Wall Street stock market, there are risk factors which Robin Hood has to take into account, but instead of having money as the profit, for Robin Hood the profit is improving someone’s life and deterring them from living in poverty. – Marlon Rodriguez
Is it harmful to have too many nonprofits all working towards fighting the same cause? When thinking about how many organizations there are total, and how many of them aren’t successful, I wonder if it would be better if all of the nonprofits came together and pooled resources in order to create a few incredibly strong organizations that reach more people. My biggest takeaway was something that Michael said, “It’s very important to not take credit for things you didn’t do.” I’ve never thought about how important that sentence is when it comes to charitable organizations, but it makes all the sense in the world. – Elly Blum
I learned that policy can really make a difference in fighting poverty. I did not know how effective social security was in reducing poverty, and how much worse poverty would be without it. I also learned the difference between the alternative rate and the official rate, and was surprised to learn that the official rate is so broad and all encompassing even though there is so much difference among different areas in the US. – Molly Chandler
What surprised me most about the presentation was the impact government funding had in decreasing the poverty rates. Social security and food stamps play a huge part in decreasing the amount of people living in poverty because it adds on to the family’s pre-tax cash income. Michael emphasized that policy is actually doing a good job to fight poverty despite its persistence, and we should continue to spend our time modifying the existing policies as well as creating new and better ones. – Yael Bermudez
I really enjoyed the graph that demonstrated what the poverty level in various countries would be without government intervention. Many of the Nordic countries, which are known for their progressive social welfare policies, would actually have similar poverty levels as the U.S. without them. It shows how important nationwide policy changes are….The metrics are imperfect and evolving, but they are good tools for thinking through what a program is trying to achieve and whether it is on track to achieving that. – Crystal Avila
I was very surprised that Michael said that poverty rates are falling. Due to women in the workforce, that makes sense, but looking around, it does not feel that way. There seem to be so many people in need now and I can’t imagine that number being even larger in the past. – Jordyn Bernstein
A key take away for me was when Michael explained that fighting poverty is not just giving people money so that they do not fall in a specific bracket but to take poverty as a whole and find the most effective way to eliminate it within our society as much as possible. Poverty is not only defined by quantity; the quality of someone’s life is just as important if not more important than the financial bracket they fall under. – Francina Genao
I was surprised to learn that the metrics used by Robin Hood is used as a supplemental tool for Robin Hood to use when selecting where to give grants. I thought that the metrics system was a larger part of the decision making process, but after listening to the presentation it made a lot of sense that many other factors go into choosing where to donate. I especially liked the comparison to SAT scores used when applying to college, I thought that it made the process easier to understand and more relatable to our lives. – Brooke Ruffa
I’ve always known that $20,000 was way below what the poverty line should be in most states but I just never had the in depth knowledge about the flaws of the system, nor have taken much time to research a better alternative. – Ish Pieter
Every year, The Dalton School’s ‘house 46’ first grade class runs a post office for the lower school called the Little Dalton Post Office. The children design and sell stamps, postcards, and envelopes for a dime each to members of the Dalton community. These can then be used to send interschool mail for the entire month.
The children researched various non-profit organizations using Charity Navigator and ultimately selected Robin Hood to be the beneficiary of the proceeds from the Little Dalton Post Office this year. They were primarily concerned about New Yorkers’ access to food, shelter, and employment; having enough to eat, having homes and having jobs. They discovered through their research that Robin Hood addresses these issues and more.
Every day, the students collected the mail from mailboxes placed on different floors, counted the mail, voided the stamps, date stamped the envelopes, sorted the mail, and delivered it to the twenty classrooms and faculty mailboxes. By the end of the month, the students had the system running better than the local US Post Office, delivering hundreds of letters each week. In the end, these tiny philanthropists raised $1,260… one dime at a time!
We are honored to be the recipients of this hard work and generosity and we are truly grateful for the Dalton Community for helping to instill a passion for giving in their students.
