In response to the earthquakes in southern and central Turkey in February 2023, WoodNext moved quickly to make grants to support both short- and long-term recovery efforts.
Disaster philanthropy is one of WoodNext’s priority areas of focus and in line with our broader approach, we strive to fill critical gaps in the existing funding landscape. In response to disasters, many donors focus on short-term relief, so we intentionally choose partners who also have longer-term recovery in mind. Funders also tend to select large, well-known international relief agencies, which in some cases means fewer dollars make it to community efforts due to overhead costs. In contrast, for this disaster, we intentionally sourced intermediaries, such as Turkish Philanthropy Funds and Bridge to Turkiye Fund, who directly fund local organizations and efforts in Turkey. In addition we made passthrough grants through GlobalGiving to two Turkish disaster response organizations, Mavi Kalem Association and Support to Life. To support food banks in Turkey’s earthquake-affected regions, we made a passthrough grant via the Global Foodbanking Network to Turkey’s umbrella organization for food banks, TIDER for its earthquake response.
Infrastructure-related recovery efforts are also often overlooked, so some of our grants focus on short- and long-term infrastructure assistance. We made a grant to Water Mission to both provide immediate safe water solutions and help restore water treatment systems in the longer term. We also funded Good360 to help ship and distribute corporate donations to Turkey earthquake survivors, while we supported Medicine for All People (MAP International) to specifically distribute medicines and health supplies.
