Innovative methods give new philanthropists power to do more.
South of downtown Phoenix sits an African-American and Hispanic community plagued by poverty, noise from the nearby airport and environmental pollution. A host of groups help the needy there, but Janet and Mike Valder thought the underlying problems affecting those neighborhoods were being ignored. The way the Valders attack such root causes is through the Arizona Social Change Fund, which they formed in 1995. The fund supports community, advocacy, environmental and education groups that attack injustices and work to change the social and political fabric of the whole Phoenix area. Such a grant to the Neighborhoods for Justice Coalition, a group of nine community groups active in the Phoenix neighborhood, gave the coalition credibility.