When the Ryver Fund, a Queens, N.Y.-based charity that offers services to communities in need, was struck by an increase in demand due to the outbreak of Covid-19, New York-based Tiedemann Advisors helped find a solution.
Tiedemann Advisors CEO Michael Tiedemannn, who now chairs the River Fund’s board of directors after volunteering with the organization for 15 years, led an $800,000 three-week fundraising effort on behalf of the fund to keep it 100% operational.
River Fund offers grocery deliveries to the homebound, mentorship to needy children, employment services and legal and medical expertise. Over the past five weeks, it has distributed over 1.1 million pounds of food. It has also established an extreme hardship grant program for households who were already struggling with poverty.
“Supporting organizations and communities in need is in the DNA of Tiedemann Advisors,” wrote the firm in an announcement on its website. “Our culture is based on integrity, shared learning and partnership. This means conducting ourselves with honesty, respect, courage and candor, learning together, and sharing success with our clients and employees, as well as with our local communities.”
In an interview with Financial Advisor in April, Michael Tiedemann discussed how Tiedemann Advisors was increasing its philanthropic efforts.
“As a firm, we want to be a leader in our respective communities,” said Tiedemann. “Two years ago we established a corporate charitable office, organized by office, and we’ve used it in the past for relief and recovery efforts, like Houston after Hurricane Harvey and the northern San Francisco Bay area after the Camp fire.
Tiedemann President Craig Smith said in April that the firm was also assisting its numerous charity and foundation clients in adjusting their own work amidst the pandemic.
“Among our client base, our private foundations, privately operating foundations and public charities, most of them, are accelerating their giving for the year, especially private foundations and privately operating foundations,” said Smith. “They are sharpening their mandates and very much focused on the Covid-affected elements of their existing mandates and missions.”
Smith himself has worked over the years with the Ali Forney Center, an organization supporting LGBT youth, that responded to Covid-19 by converting an entire hotel into temporary housing and providing food to families and individuals in need.
