NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Blackstone Charitable Foundation today announced that it has awarded grants totaling $300,000 to six organizations that support veterans’ employment and business development. The Veterans Grant Program is the latest initiative in a series of programs Blackstone has introduced as part of its Veterans Hiring Initiative and is aligned with the Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Initiative. In April 2013, Blackstone committed to hiring 50,000 veterans across its portfolio of companies over a five year period in support of the White House’s Joining Forces initiative. The following September, the firm hosted a Veterans Hiring Summit, designed to help hiring executives within corporations learn how to attract and hire veterans. As of this month, Blackstone has hired more than 10,000 veterans across its portfolio of companies.
“Too often, those who put their lives at risk in service of our nation do not receive adequate support when they leave active service. We are proud to extend funding to support veterans’ hiring and foster entrepreneurship in the military community,” said Amy Stursberg, Executive Director of the Blackstone Charitable Foundation. “Veterans bring a dynamic set of qualifications to a diverse group of industries, and it is our duty to help them re-enter the work force.”
The grantees were selected through a Request for Proposals (RFP) process established by the Blackstone Charitable Foundation last November. Over two hundred organizations submitted proposals, of which the top six were selected to receive grants. The grantees hail from Texas, New York, Florida, and California. The six organizations were reviewed by a committee of Blackstone employees and subsequently approved by the board of the Blackstone Charitable Foundation.
The grant recipients are:
Veterans Grant Recipients
- NPower (Dallas, TX), $50,000 – Our funding will allow NPower, an organization that works to build tech skills through workforce development programs, to further scale its services in the Dallas area to provide unemployed and underemployed veterans with hands-on technology training, professional skills training, internships, job placement services, alumni services and counseling.
- Pace University (New York, NY), $50,000 – Our funding will support an intensive seven-week Entrepreneurship Boot Camp at Pace University’s Entrepreneurship Lab that will offer focused training for up to 96 veterans in the Tri-State area.
- Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), $50,000 – Our funding will support a Career Transitions program at Cornell University designed to promote job skill development for 20 veterans with disabilities by providing one-on-one mentoring and guidance to facilitate the translation of military experience to civilian careers.
- Jewish Community Services of South Florida, Inc. (Miami-Dade County, FL), $50,000 – Our funding will allow JCS, a non-profit that provides social and human services throughout Miami-Dade County, to expand and increase employment services to homeless military veterans by providing direct job placement and short-term vocational training opportunities.
- Long Beach Community College (Long Beach, CA), $50,000 – Our funding will allow LBCC’s Small Business Development Center to create an extensive training and advising program that will foster entrepreneurship within the veteran population.
- Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (Corpus Christi, TX), $50,000 – Our funding will allow the campus’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences to support military students as they access distance learning technologies to earn nursing degrees and enter the health care workforce as registered nurses.
About The Blackstone Charitable Foundation
The Blackstone Charitable Foundation was founded at the time of The Blackstone Group’s Initial Public Offering in 2007 with substantial commitments from the Firm’s employees. Influenced by the enterprising heritage of the firm and its founders, The Blackstone Charitable Foundation is directing its resources and applying the intellectual capital of the firm to foster entrepreneurship in areas hardest hit by the global economic crisis. Through its investment expertise across several asset classes and geographies, Blackstone has a unique perspective on the global economy and a heightened understanding of how entrepreneurial activity is often the crucial catalyst in the growth of successful businesses, industries and communities. (For more information, see http://www.blackstone.com/citizenship/the-blackstone-charitable-foundation)
