Programs

The USMF carries out its mission through three primary programming areas:

1. Funding Mexican Philanthropy: Supporting Qualified Mexican Organizations

The USMF targets grant-making for high impact, particularly in the areas of education, health, economic development and community development, and civil society engagement. The USMF is also committed to channeling social impact investments to Mexico.

2. Promoting Civil Society Engagement: Strengthening the Nonprofit Sector in Mexico

The USMF promotes an environement in Mexico where civil society organizations are enabled to emerge and to thirve. To that end, the USMF provides resources for strenghtening institutional capacity in the nonprofit sector.

Specifically, the USMF seeks to invest in:

• Capacity building for civil society organizations (CSOs)- in the creation, replication, and expansion
• Sustainability of model CSOs- particularly in those which generate social change outcomes
• Promotion of citizen participation- particularly in initiatives which facilitate an improved regulatory environment for CSOs and which advance rule of law

3. Building Bridges, People-to-People: Facilitating Connections between U.S. and Mexican Citizens

The USMF strives to raise awareness and to foster a better understanding in the United States and in Mexico of:

• The importance of bilateral relationship, especially given the shared responsibility between the two countries for the shared challenges they face
• The value of binational philanthropy in addressing those challenges

In addition to its grant-making focus, the USMF also serves as a bridge for greater bi-national understanding and cooperation between the United States and Mexico. One vital component of the USMF is the Mexican American Leadership Initiative (MALI). Launched in 2010, the MALI facilitates dialogue between Mexicans and Mexican Americans as well as between the larger citizenry of the United States and of Mexico.