Korean American Philanthropy and the Power of Jeong: Kyung B. Yoon of Korean American Community FDN

There is a persistent myth that Korean Americans - and Asian Americans broadly - are a model minority community that is doing just fine. The numbers tell a very different story. Eleven percent of Korean Americans live in poverty. AAPI organizations receive less than 0.2% of philanthropic giving from foundations - a percentage that has barely moved in three decades. And the needs of Korean seniors, immigrants, and low-income families remain largely invisible in public discourse.

In Episode 13, Dorothy Stuehmke speaks with Kyung B. Yoon, President and CEO and co-founder of the Korean American Community Foundation (KACF), about what it really means to build a culture of giving within an immigrant community - and why this moment in Korean American history calls for deeper investment than ever before.

Kyung's path to founding KACF reads like a masterclass in building toward purpose - from Wellesley College to a master's in development economics at Johns Hopkins SAIS, to the World Bank Institute, to becoming the first Korean American broadcast reporter in New York City at WNYW-Fox 5, to co-founding KACF in 2002 and leading it for more than two decades. Earlier this year, KACF completed a historic merger with KACF-San Francisco - forming one unified national organization and marking a powerful new chapter in Korean American philanthropy.

Together, Dorothy and Kyung explore:

• Why the model minority myth obscures real need - and what Korean and Asian American communities actually face
• How KACF has invested more than $24 million in communities nationwide and what it has taken to build a genuine culture of giving from within
• What jeong - the Korean concept of deep emotional connection and caring - means in practice, and how it shapes KACF's entire approach to philanthropy
• How KACF is empowering the next generation of Korean American philanthropists and standing as an ally to the broader Asian American community

This episode connects to the Do Good on Purpose Giving Circle, where you can directly support KACF and its mission to build the philanthropic infrastructure that Korean and Asian American communities deserve.

🤝 Support KACF through the Do Good on Purpose Giving Circle: https://www.grapevine.org/giving-circle/LjPhN5M/Do-Good-on-Purpose-Giving-Circle

🔗 Connect with Dorothy Stuehmke: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dorothystuehmke/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dorothystuehmke/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dorothystuehmke

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to the Do Good On Purpose podcast, where you can listen to leaders discuss solutions to the most pressing challenges in our world, and where you can also support them by donating through the show's Giving Circle using the link in the show notes. Think of a giving circle as a way to give together, combining what each of us can contribute so that we give bigger, we give better, and we make a much greater impact than any one of us could ever make alone. This episode is personal for me. I am Korean American. I've spent my career at the intersection of diplomacy, philanthropy, and community, including years as a US diplomat working to advance US-Korea relations. And throughout that career, I've witnessed both the extraordinary resilience of the Korean American community and also at the same time a gap that's always troubled me. The profound distance between this community's needs and the resources available to them. There is a persistent myth that Korean Americans and Asian Americans broadly are a model minority community and that they're doing just fine. The numbers, however, tell a very different story. 11% of Korean Americans live in poverty. Six in ten Korean seniors struggle to afford basic necessities. And AAPI organizations receive less than 0.2% of philanthropic giving from foundations, a number that has barely moved in three decades. MIGASE has spent more than two decades working to change that. Kyung Bi Yun is the president and CEO and also the co-founder of the Korean American Community Foundation, the largest philanthropic organization mobilizing Korean Americans to strengthen communities nationwide. Since its founding in New York City in 2002, it has invested more than 24 million in Korean and Asian American communities. They've also empowered the next generation of Korean American philanthropists and stood as an ally to the broader Asian American community facing housing insecurity, mental health challenges, language barriers, and the needs of a rapidly aging population. These are things we typically don't hear about. Earlier this year, KACF completed a historic merger with the Korean American Community Foundation of San Francisco, forming one unified national organization and marking the beginning of a powerful new chapter in Korean American philanthropy. So what stands out the most about Kyung to me is the concept at the heart of everything she has built, Chung. This is a Korean word and an idea of deep emotional connection, of caring and belonging, and the belief that a community that gives together stays together. On today's episode of the Do Good on Purpose podcast, we explore what it really means to build a culture of giving within an immigrant community, why the Korean American community's philanthropic potential is one of the most exciting and unrecognized stories in American philanthropy today, and why paying it forward for this generation and the next is not just an act of generosity, it's an act of identity. Kyung Biun joins us now. Kyung Yoon, I'm so thrilled to have you with me here on the Do Good On Purpose podcast today. You are so inspirational. I've known you for so many years now. You have this incredible background, having been a trailblazer in the Korean American community for so many years, starting first as the Korean, the first Korean American broadcast reporter in New York City to then co-founding the Korean American Community Foundation. And there's so many exciting things that you're doing there. And I can't wait to dig in and have people learn about everything that's happening on the horizon.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Thank you so much, Dorothy. And it was, I was so thrilled actually to connect with you, you know, many moons ago because you're a fellow Korean American and you were working at the time at City Foundation, and just to be able to hold hands and link up with uh fellow um Korean Americans, um fellow Asian Americans, because honestly, for many of us as immigrants and children of immigrants, the philanthropic space is something that is not that familiar terrain for us. And so you were just a really great um thought partner to me as well. And I'm very happy to be here today.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Well, thank you so much for that. That means a lot. And yes, this is a special conversation for me because I am the daughter of immigrant um parents, my mother from South Korea. And I remember when we did meet when I was at the City Foundation, and you were telling me about everything that you were leading at the Korean American Community Foundation, I thought, well, not many people know this side about the Korean American experience and you know that model minority myth that's out there. Um and you know, the support that's needed for this, for this community in the United States. Can you talk a little bit about that and the model minority myth? And what is it that the public is getting wrong and and right about our community?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Well, you know, um, there is this uh stereotype of Asian Americans as the so-called model minority. And I remember having a really interesting conversation um some years back with an African-American friend of mine who said to me, what's so wrong with being stereotyped as hardworking and successful and you know, um just uh being lifted out that way. I would love my community that suffers from other stereotypes, you know, to be considered, you know, that way. And so it really made me think. And my response to um my friend was that um it's true that it's not like such a bad stereotype on the surface, but stereotypes, as we all know, are very broad paint strokes of um just very complicated um communities and people. And so just like I think America or the world, um many communities in general, the Korean American community is not one monolithic community, but you know, it's certainly a time right now with K-pop and K food and K beauty and K drama. It's very cool to be Korean. It just seems like everything, you know, Korean is um, you know, points to success. But just like um, you know, just in terms of reality, we're complicated. There are uh successful Korean Americans, but there are a lot of struggles as well. And just like America, you know, at large. And um, so we need to um I I think be able to embrace um the complexities of our community. And uh there's always a lot of amplification of the success stories, and I think also culturally, um, as Koreans, uh, we kind of want to sweep some of the um, you know, like not so successful stories under the rug. There's a lot of shame and stigma around um poverty, around talking about mental health issues, around domestic violence, lots of things that are, you know, um invisible or rendered invisible, but that doesn't mean they don't exist and that they're going to go away. And so that is what uh one of the things that KACF strives to do to uh really uh rally resources for um needs in our community and beyond, and yet at the same time um, you know, lift up uh, you know, what are those needs, because if people don't know about that, then they're not going to get resourced.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

So can you talk a little bit about what you're actually finding that the Korean American community actually needs in this space?

SPEAKER_00 8:26

So back in 2002, so 24 years ago, I was a part of a small group of Korean American leaders in New York that came together around a conversation about our community. And it was not a random group. We had actually been invited by um the then ambassador, uh, the consul general from of Korea to dinner. And he identified who he saw as sort of the most successful uh sort of next generation Korean Americans. And um, so we definitely there were representation of the doctors and lawyers that our parents always want us to be, and they were like managing directors of uh investment banks, there were a couple professors. I was there because I was visible in the community as the first Korean American um broadcast reporter. I was on Channel 5. Uh Juju Chang, um, who is now the anchor of Nightline, she and I were the two media uh people. But anyway, it was kind of a cross-section across industries of not so much the first generation, but more of sort of like 1.5 second generation Korean Americans. And we all were there, and we as in part of our conversation, we recognized that we were there because somebody and some lots of people had sacrificed for us so that we would not face some of, and these are our parents, the first generation, um, you know, that ensured that we would not have barriers of language or education or just access to opportunities that they might have faced as immigrants in this country. But I think uh we also recognize that in our um growing up in America that there was a lot of uh conversations around the getting, getting a good SAT score, getting into a good college, getting a good job, and getting that foothold into the American uh success ladder. And we'd all kind of followed that. But there hadn't been really any conversations really growing up because, you know, as immigrants, um, about the giving, because we were all just trying to survive in this country, and it's a certain mindset. And so we realized that we are not in that place anymore, thanks to others, and that we were really not about surviving, but how we're gonna thrive in America and also how do we um equip ourselves with the mindsets and the vocabulary and tools to give our children and the next generation um, you know, like um just to think about the thriving and about how we even have the blessings and the capacity to think about giving. And that was the beginning of the Korean American Community Foundation.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

And that was in 2002. And there's so much that you've done since then. You've built so much. And I want to pause for just a second and ask you to explain exactly what a community foundation is and why you chose that model when you embarked on this journey to give back to the Korean American community. Um, and and I love that sort of framing, the whole get, get, get to give to the community. Um, so talk a little bit about what a community foundation is. Um, because I think a lot of people don't really understand um the nuance um that 501c3s have as organizations.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Right. So going back to that dinner time conversation, many of us were not aware of the needs of our own community. You know, we were in our own bubbles. You know, we might have had our 10 Korean friends, but they were like from college, or that our kids go to private school together, or whatever. Like we think, and we could really also think that Korean Americans were all doing well. But as we were talking, we were actually really um uh surprised to learn that so many Korean Americans in New York that they live under the poverty threshold, that are, you know, that um in fact uh at the time it was like three out of four Korean seniors um live under poverty. And our community of seniors has the highest uh lack of English proficiency rates of uh any immigrant group at that time. So these were things that uh we were just trying to think about like what can we do to help uh support uh programs and organizations that are uh lifting people who are struggling to more uh economic security. I have to say personally, too, for me, I mean, even as a news reporter at the time, and then later um at the World Bank, um where I was um executive producer of television, uh I was doing volunteer work, and I was for many years on the board of a wonderful organization called the New York Asian Women's Center. It's now called Womankind, and it supports women and children affected by domestic violence and gender-based violence in New York City. Uh, I was the board chair for many years, and working very closely with the executive director, I saw that there were many needs of a community-based organization that's ethnically focused this way. But often it was the funding. And like that was the prevailing, I mean, you talk to any executive director and they will say, like, I wanted to nonprofit work because I, you know, have a master's of social work or I care about this issue. And then they spend more than half their time having to raise resources, and that's just a reality. But for community-based organizations uh that are proximate and deeply rooted to the communities that they serve, that have leaders that look like the people that they are um supporting, that speak the language, that are, you know, trusted and accessible uh to these communities, they're often just as invisible as the uh clients, you know, and so they are uh uh not getting resources from mainstream, whatever, mainstream foundations. Um they uh are not plugged in that way. Often um, you know, they're just uh just suffering kind of the same uh marginalization that our communities are suffering from, of just being not heard or and invisible. So I saw that firsthand um in my walk and leadership and partnership with um the executive director of Then Womankind. And that's when I thought when we were having this dinner time conversation, we could have just started some other kind of um service organization, or it could have been anything. We were just kind of brainstorming ideas, and I really thought about the funding gaps and creating some institutional infrastructure to build philanthropic giving together in our community so that it's not relying on three or four, you know, like um deep-pocketed individuals, but that it's a kind of a uh base building, it's really community organizing around philanthropy. And, you know, I remember in the early days, we had this slogan called a dollar a day for our neighbors. And it was really, you know, like less than what we spent for a cup of coffee or water, um, just setting aside a dollar a day. And I remember wishing and hoping that some sort of Korean version of Bill Gates, you know, like Bill Kim, would show up and say, I'll give you $365,000, you know, to seed this foundation. But in the end, we thought, what about a thousand of us giving a dollar a day? It would actually be so much more um durable. And um, it's because, you know, one big donor can often walk away, right? But if we build this out, and that is what KACM has been about, about building a democratic, widespread, philanthropic kind of culture of giving and changing our mindset. Because frankly, you know, if we think about the word philanthropist, like and you close your eyes, it doesn't conjure up somebody that looks like us. You know, often it is just somebody who is from a different uh world of privilege and not people of color, frankly. And so that was part of what we were trying to redefine, first for ourselves and then for the community at large. So what we do is we are taking um donations that we can each contribute and then really investing for change, not doing a token or just a random act of charitable giving, but by giving together that it can be more collective, more strategic, and um moving uh maybe systems or uh or policies, even. I mean, we have we we fund direct service, but we also fund community organizing and advocacy. And we saw that it has so much more potential for the change that we want to see in our communities and for our communities.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

I love that story. Thank you for sharing that because I didn't really know the genesis and and sort of the impetus behind how everything got started and um truly an act of coming together in community and understanding that you, as a community in the roles that you had grown into as a result of, you know, the immigrant experience here and your families that sacrificed for you, that you had this moment to pay it forward and give back. But it was also creating this infrastructure through this community foundation where you could give back collectively as people who had made it and succeeded, um, and could give back to all of these smaller nonprofits that were doing the hard work on the front lines to support the community in ways that you've you've you know described earlier on in the conversation, um, the struggles and um the issues that that maybe the community has really kind of wanted to turn away from because of shame, um, maybe not acknowledge. Uh so I think that that's that's huge for the Korean American community. And what you've done, wow, over the past two and a half decades almost now, you know. Um talk a little bit about the model and and the kinds of organizations that you're supporting, the issues that you're really kind of getting in into with the community to support them.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Yeah, our North Star um has always been uh investing in 501c3 nonprofit organizations that are uh doing the most effective work uh to move low-income, vulnerable um neighbors in our immigrant community to a place of economic security. And so, you know, that was important for us to uh define sort of our North Star because as the Korean American Community Foundation, there are many very worthwhile causes that are, you know, even uh Korean language schools or Korean dance programs. I mean, those are it's it's wonderful, but we actually don't fund a lot of arts and culture or you know, language, because we are really invested in um these uh direct service, social service organizations that are helping to address uh root causes of poverty and also to provide immediate relief as well. And as I mentioned earlier, um also organizations that are looking at sort of root causes of um of inequity and why some of um some immigrants are being left behind. And then, you know, so we also fund around um advocacy and community organizing. Um I will say that our model, I mean, we um started, remember I told you that it was a dollar a day, and we were very uh proud. It so this so 2002 was when we had that dinner, and then 2003 was our first year of grant making, and we raised $60,000, and we were very proud of that. We gave out five grants um to organizations that were um helping you know senior citizens, uh domestic violence um survivors, um uh families with children with disabilities, uh you know, workforce this development. This was um, you know, grants of about 12,000 each and with five organizations. Fast forwarding to um last year, we have uh given out more than 20 million dollars in grants. And in the process, uh we have uh scaled quite a bit. We're now funding uh nationally, uh, and so it's not just the dollar numbers, but you know, our average grant size, it went up from 12,000 to more like 75,000 to, you know, and um because we really saw that to make an impact, we want to be able to help organizations with meaningful grants that they can actually hire uh staff and and to uh and we give multi-year grants as well. So that has been our model.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

That's great. 20 million, that's an impressive number. Congratulations on that. So do you think over the past two decades, two and a half decades, that you've been working on these issues and supporting the community, um that the need has grown? What exactly have you seen over the years in terms of trends and numbers? Because I mean, I'm looking at one particular, well, two particular stats. 11% of Korean Americans live in poverty, and six in ten Korean seniors struggle to afford basic necessities. So has that grown worse since you started, or is it just more visible now? What's what's really the issue here?

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's it's a complicated question because our community um also is is evolving. I mean, in our own existence, 24 years, next year will be our 25th anniversary. You know, that's like raising up a child, right? I mean, like we're totally out of our infant stage and, you know, like adolescence, awkwardness, the braces are off, and we're actually we feel like we're just getting going. And things are just like the needs of our community have constantly been evolving. We saw um, you know, we're just seeing right now where um there are um particular funding cuts that are affecting um immigrant-focused organizations. We saw during COVID, our Korean and Asian American um community was disproportionately impacted by the health and financial uh consequences of COVID, meaning that on the business side, you know, our community is overrepresented by service industries. So people, you know, have nail salons or restaurant workers or dry cleaners. They, you know, in the shutdown, it was very um, you know, disproportionate to the number of people who could just pick up their laptops and go home and just keep working and collecting a paycheck. So, um, and then of course on the health side as well, the health sector, um, you know, we're very overrepresented as well. So I think what COVID taught us was at that point in 2020, we were like 18 years in, but it taught us that having all the infrastructure that we had built during those 18 years, like that, like a crisis is not the time to start building something. It is the test of what have you built. And that really was important. The trust that we had with our grantee partners that came to us and told us the situations that we were able to mobilize rapid response grants and but also the trust of our donors who were the ones who took their laptops home generally and then wanted to give. And so we were able to really direct a lot of funding to, you know, even to get Zoom accounts for, you know, our nonprofits that, you know, were just having to pivot very quickly to providing services that were in person to a virtual format, you know, to be able to buy laptops for these organizations and for their staff. I mean, these were just some examples. Another example is that during COVID, uh because I've been doing a lot of work and you know, like I'm just like, you know, how you and I were talking from City Foundation to us, I'm very active with Philanthropy New York. I've been meeting a lot of other foundation people. And so they naturally, when they saw the anti-Asian hate that was coming up, that was like all the, and also recognizing that the Asian community was um, you know, particularly hard hit, they turned to us as like, where should we be directing some extra funding, you know, during COVID? And so we were happy to direct. And we were, so I think when I say that, like, you know, the numbers, maybe they don't move, but there are going to be certain um, you know, like new hits all the time. Um, but at the same time, there, you know, in 25 years also we've seen a huge growth in uh philanthropic participation in the Korean American community and also AAPI community. Because guess what? You know, like um those of us, you know, like you know, and the minute you graduate from college, like you're starting to be, you know, nudge to give to your alma mater. You know, you love the Lincoln Center, arts and culture, you're starting to give to that. And so, and and even like hospitals, and of course, like we should all be doing our giving with the interests and and and passions that we have. We're just creating that space for Korean Americans that we don't forget our own community and that we keep it as part of our um giving a portfolio, just like any smart portfolio. And I think what we're seeing is that when I say we're just getting started, I mean there's a lot more capacity now, but then we've been doing this work to educate and empower and really inspire um uh fellow Korean Americans to be giving back together. So um, you know, that is also why we decided to scale our grant making. Um, and then actually back in uh 2023, it was um we had a uh uh uh a big grant from the from McKinsey Scott. Um and 5 million, right? Yeah, it was a five million dollar grant that helped us. And we could have taken that and I don't know, this like basically it was like so amazing because it's completely unrestricted.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

And it was it a surprise? It just like came one day.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

It's not a surprise in the sense that, you know, I mean, you can't apply for it, but you know, they kind of they find you, you know, like, or they just are like they, you know, they're very thoughtful and they're hearing about the work from peer funders, from other organizations, community-based organizations. And actually, they've reached out to me earlier uh to just be a resource because they were looking to fund AAPI organizations. And you know, KACF is one of the if we don't just fund Korean organizations, we're one of the major funders of the Asian American community. So um, though, so McKizie Scott people had reached out to me just as a peer and just to get advice on who's doing good work in the Asian American communities. I was happy to lift up so much good work and to, you know, and to give them, um, share with them, you know, uh work about our grantee partners. But then they came back to us and said, like, we'd really like to also consider you. And it's pretty rigorous. They uh they go, you know, they ask a lot of really good questions. So it's not just like suddenly, you know, like there's like uh, you know, the Easter buddy comes with the basket. I mean, we kind of knew we were in the running, but then it was amazing to get that news. And I say, you know, when you get a $5 million unrestricted grant, that was a time for our board and our staff to really think about what how do we invest this? You know, KCF has no endowment really, you know, to uh and so that could have been a good start to something to ensure our long, you know, our sustainability. I mean, some, you know, it could have been a great time to think about getting a building or, you know, like there was just a lot, but we decided that was not the time to um when there were so many needs, we're just coming out of the pandemic, and then we saw that other cities that have Korean populations that at this point, and we were about 20 years in then, we had some um learnings that we could share. We also had some funding that we could share, and it was not just the McKinsey Scott brand. We also had some surplus over two years of having done uh virtual gallas where we continued to raise um, like we met our expectations, and yet we didn't have much expenses because we didn't have to do like uh uh steak dinners. So we were able to deploy a lot of that to um open up RFPs to organizations around the U.S. And um and a lot of the funding organically um uh flowed to Southern California. Los Angeles is the biggest population of Korean Americans. I mean, by um, you know, many times New York, which is number two, New York, New Jersey, but also Chicago, Washington, D.C. area, um, you know, uh, Texas. We were able to start um funding in other cities, and that was really exciting. And uh we also bring together nonprofit uh leaders uh around the country, Korean Americans, uh, once a year. We had started doing that even before COVID. And it was been really great to see uh leaders who are working around um senior care or around uh or domestic violence. And they kind of are very have been feeling isolated in their neck of the woods, but meeting fellow Korean Americans, sharing resources, and also not feeling alone. And very exciting kind of coalitions have emerged out of that as well. So I would say KACF's impact, you know, we clearly, you know, as a foundation, we, you know, it's the funding is very important. But I would say, you know, the kind of convenings that we're able to do, we're having a giving summit, um, you know, which we've been doing for many years. Um it's going to be in San Francisco in uh in October this year. And um, so we bring together um the donor community around those kind of dinner time conversations that we never had growing up about the giving, right? And then that is what the summit is all about. And then we also um part of that is advancing this culture of giving in our community. That is a real part of uh our mission, a tripod of our mission, the funding, the culture of giving. I mean, most or most foundations don't have to worry about that because they usually are endowed by like, you know, whatever. They're not trying to um, you know, like build a movement. Um, and then I I think also we are doing a lot of culturally and linguistically competent capacity building for our granty partners as well.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

Wow, there's so much that you're doing. This is incredible. Um, so first of all, congratulations again on the McKenzie Scott grant. That's huge. Five million to essentially invest in whatever you deem and see as necessary and important in this moment in the next few years for the community. Um so that means it's a lot of trust that they place in you, which is absolutely well deserved. You know, well deserved.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

And I was thinking if I was McKinsey Scott, you know, love to be McKinsey Scott, we all would, but if I was her, like, like uh I think she would, I mean, her team, you know, they would be happy, like the the funds are going to make some um impact and difference. But by investing in KACF, her 5 million, it is being generated and regenerated to more giving and more, you know, it is something that is actually sparking, you know, many more times, many more millions in um in resources uh to our community and to helping us to really be a part of like getting that engine going. And that is, I think, what we are showing with KACF.

SPEAKER_01 33:44

Yeah, absolutely. And uh, you know, you raise an important point too that, you know, you as much as you do support the Korean American community, you are very invested in supporting other AAPI communities as well. So that allyship is so central to your mission and um very strong in terms of how you approach working with the community at large. So maybe you can talk just a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Yeah, I mean, I think when we started, because we were also very um, you know, this was our sort of um philanthropic journey as of as a community foundation. So everybody kind of gets the direct service and social service, right? When people are hungry, like about having a food bank or having a shelter program. So we were um our funding was very much um uh indexed to uh direct service, social service, right? And then that you can actually do, you know, just fund like a Korean meal program or whatever. But as we began to see that we don't want to just be putting band-aids on problems, you know, right? Like about just doing addressing immediate needs. We wanted to look more long-term, medium-term, about what are the um uh root causes that create these the the need for these kinds of you know direct service programs. And once you do that, you've gotta can't just be about Koreans. It was about you know allyship and like really investing in more pan-Asian movements around pan-immigrant movements, about also standing up with other communities that have been marginalized as well. So I think for us, um, you know, I think if you look at sort of the typical sort of journey of a philanthropist, like, you know, I mean, some people are will be very satisfied, you know, to, you know, like um, you know, feed the hungry. But of course, there are the people who are like, no, you've got to teach the man how to fish. And then he will, but so then they, you know, investing in not in the education programs. And then there will be the kind of donor that is like really saying, oh no, but we have to look at the uphill work. Like, why are is this particular, you know, why is there hunger issues? Like, what can we, you know, do in terms of policy changes? I mean, it's so exciting and interesting, but that third part is also very long-term work, right? It's not going to be something, I mean, that feeding the person that day is the most immediate. And so there is a correlation that way. I think for us too, like as a foundation, we have walked that journey. And but we don't, it's not like we do one or versus the other. Like we are able to address all sorts of um needs along that along that paradigm. And I think we're also educating our donor community to be thinking that way. You know, everyone gets it when there's an earthquake, and then, you know, like you need to rescue people and it's life and death. But then it's sort of like um, you know, there's so much more around um, you know, long-term uh rebuilding, around sustainability and a repair. But and um, and I think that's what makes this work uh challenging, but also like uh deeply meaningful because we're looking at real substantive, durable change.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

Yeah, no, that's so well said. And it's like the way I like to think of it is, you know, yes, there's a time when we need to react and take action, but there are also times when if we're proactive and we're preemptive in how we think about addressing these root causes, um, that's the part that takes longer to create programs, to measure impact, but it's it's also so needed alongside the reactive kind of grant making and support that's out there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

That's exactly right. And that is what a community foundation can also offer because we are in it for the long term. You know, we provide um multi-year funding, the capacity building support. We help organizations. Um, you know, it's not just a one-time thing. We have like ongoing conversations and and building of um uh of our community to truly be thriving. And that's why I say, you know, a lot of times, because I do, you know, I I am fundraising a lot, you know, because we have to, because we're we're a foundation that's giving out grants and also, you know, having operating costs. But I I feel like uh my joy is really around um it being like the win-win, you know, like there are many fellow, fellow immigrants in my community, and I know it's more universal than just Koreans, but we might be doing well now or doing, you know, or having some bandwidth to even think about giving. But we're not that far removed from um a time, you know, knowing, you know, that knowing people who are really smart and really hardworking, but because they don't speak English well, they just are like not able to um progress in this country. And so we know what that means and why culturally competent, you know, like these organizations are real safety net. So I find our donors have, you know, like a real understanding and and empathy that maybe some, you know, like people who've just had generations of privilege might lose. And I think our children might lose that too. So I feel like there's some urgency for us as okay ACF at this time as well. And I just say that because um that is that is precious, you know, like struggle and knowing it is also precious because we um also dignify the recipients. We know that it's not because they're less hardworking or less anything. And I feel like a community foundation like ours, like we are not, you know, we don't we don't have that dynamic of like who's the giver, who's the recipient, and what color are they, and who are they, you know, like we're saying, like, yeah, we're we we've received, we're also giving. You know, we're creating this like beautiful cycle of what it means to be an American. And uh we um, you know, we really embraced that. I want to just add one story when I was a news reporter in the 90s in New York City, and this was like a time of a lot of racial tensions between Korean Americans and African Americans, and there were a lot of Korean grocers who were like in poor parts of the city, and there was um misunderstanding and cultural differences. Um, often they were um, you know, they didn't speak English well, you know, in Korean culture, you know, like you're not really supposed to look somebody in the eye that's considered disrespectful, so they wouldn't look their customers in the eye, but then their customers would they feel disrespected, you know, things like that. Like, and then there was uh boycott of uh this Korean grocery store um in in Flatbush, Brooklyn, and it was led by African Americans uh because they felt that their their uh customer had been disrespected because the owner accused this uh uh a black Haitian woman of shoplifting. All that to say the narrative at that time, and I was a news reporter that I was hearing was these Koreans, they come to our neighborhoods, they don't give anything, they charge, they take our money, and they don't give anything back. And I remember kind of internalizing that and thinking, um, ah, you know, like Koreans, we need to do some work around this, you know, like, and um I didn't think it would be me, but I remember storing that away. And so I think for me with KACF, like, you know, um 50 years from now, 100 years from now, when none of us are here, I just really dream that people will think Korean Americans, oh yeah, they're the group that came to America and gave, and gave and were generous and contributing and made America better. And that would be sort of the goal.

SPEAKER_01 42:04

That's so beautiful, Kiang. Thank you for for sharing that story. And um I love what you said around, you know, we're not so far removed from having seen the struggle and that the empathy is there because of it. And I can absolutely relate to that and and agree with it. Um What would you say when you when you think about the movement that you're building now among the donors, right? Because there's a lot you're doing with the grantees and the small nonprofits that you're supporting along this journey, but there's also the donor group, the Korean American community that you're bringing along on this journey. Um talk a little bit about the word chung and what that means and how people respond to this movement that you're creating.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Well, so the word chong in Korean is very hard to translate into English. There isn't like a particular uh word that um that captures it. It is about a deep bond and it's about um care, and it's about um being visible to each other and um and lifting and and being connected, you know. So I think of it almost as an invisible golden thread that is around each Korean, you know, around this world, whatever. I mean, and other communities have that as well. You can't really see it, but you feel it, you know. So you just in the sense that I think um when I talked earlier about the three out of four Korean senior citizens um uh who are living under the poverty line, that you, you know, in Korea we say high money, right? Hai money is a grandmother. So like it might not be our own high money, but But if we see this high money, she's visible to us as Korean Americans in a way that she might just be, you know, like others might pass her by. And so we just see the Chong. I mean, I I think, you know, we had, you know, when we have our gala, you know, we have um, you know, like uh law firms or big banks or, you know, there's always a Korean American leader within, you know, agitating and saying, there are needs in my community. And, you know, so that high money could never, you know, walk up to the steps, you know, of um of Citibank, you know, and say, like, help me, you know, I need, but we can help to ensure that we get that kind of support. We give ourselves. But there's been it's been very important to be, as we've seen, you know, more and more Korean Americans ascending to positions of influence and able to help uh raise awareness within whatever it is that their corporate environment, their their social networks, and so on. So that's um, you know, so that is translating the tongue and to, you know, and and moving it beyond. Um so so one thing that we do as again as part of our our work at KACF is um every year, as part of our grant making, we activate a volunteer committee. It's called the Community Grants Committee. And it is a participatory grant making so that you know our program officers could go and like, you know, make these decisions, but we very intentionally create this cohort. And um and it is uh just getting, you know, friends and and would-be donors, and uh it doesn't, it's not really, I mean, of course, we'd love for them to donate, but it really is a educational and kind of bringing together of our community around becoming more thoughtful as strategic um uh givers. And so um the it happens in the fall when we get all of our applications in and we and it's the volunteers have to sign up for um it's a commitment, you know, like but not terribly onerous, but like for about like three nights, uh three evenings after work, like one uh uh one week, it's about coming and getting just learning about issues in our communities. And we'll get speakers who are uh leaders of the of some of our grantee partners to come and talk about their work. And and um then another evening of training is how do you read a grant proposal? You know, what are the ways that you can um really um decipher like what organizations are you know are having the greatest impact and what are the questions to ask? And then they actually get to go and on site visits, and this is we have usually about 25 or so grant um community grants committee members, but they're in teams of like two or three with a staff person, and they go into the community and conduct, you know, the site that see things firsthand. And I will tell you that, you know, it is these CGC members. I mean, we've been doing it for over, you know, uh over 12, 13, 14 years. So we're talking hundreds now of CGC members. They may or may not become donors to KCF, they may or may not, you know, um go into nonprofits, they don't generally, but we are putting them forth. They will join boards, maybe of some of the organizations that they visited, they will volunteer, they're gonna be they're donating to whatever causes. And more than anything, we are seeing that the work we do is just um um generating you know more uh thoughtful and strategic uh philanthropists in our community. I I talked about the Giving Summit earlier, so that's a much larger convening. So we're always, and of course, like any even fundraising events, we always inject a good dose of like why we're here, what are we trying to raise money for together? And so that has been at the crux of our work. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 48:11

I'm so glad to hear that you are continuing to involve um individuals on site visits and really get them involved in the process of how you think through supporting nonprofits uh in the community. Because I think when you can involve people in that way and they can see with their own eyes what the needs are and put their finger on the pulse of those needs, um, people really tend to get involved more. And to be a philanthropist today is much more than just writing a check, right? It's being involved, it's board service, it's volunteering, um, it's you know, um the testimony of of what you see. Um, and and it's it's all of those things. So yeah, it's so great to see that you're doing that.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

You know, it's a time where there's a lot of social enterprises going on, you know, where people like young people, also the next generation, you know, they're thinking about, you know, there's a lot of startups and they all like can be about maximizing profit, but they can bake in very much like what is going to be our social impact as well. So I feel like there's so much uh uh potential and it's a very exciting time.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

Yeah, that's an excellent point too, because you know, when I started uh in this space, you know, you had to work either in government or in the nonprofit sector if you wanted to make an impact. But now you can bake purpose into any model, any business model, right? And so to get that inspiration firsthand is is huge. Yeah, that's great.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

So we see KACF as a real startup as well. I mean, we're sort of beyond the startup phase, but it was something uh created to fill a gap that um that was recognized and just did not exist.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Yeah. So talk a little bit about the merger, because this is super exciting news. Um, you started in New York, you've done some national things, and now you've merged with another entity on the West Coast.

SPEAKER_00 50:09

I mean, so what happened was uh we started in New York, and for the first 20 years or so, we were very intentionally focused on New York, New Jersey. I mean, one, we just didn't want to like spread ourselves too thin, you know, like I mean, we uh we were growing, but we, you know, wanted to make meaningful grants, we wanted to, you know, we just uh felt that we um, you know, we we were we we should focus um geographically on the area that we knew. But about um 10 years into our our our existence, so like in 2013, uh we were approached by a a group of very smart and community-minded Silicon Valley types of Korean Americans who said, we love your model in New York and we'd love to try to replicate something like that here in the Bay Area, and we don't want to reinvent the wheel. So we were like blessing this, you know, like we were, we gave them a seed grant, we shared some of you know, a lot of our uh uh our best practice, our blueprints, uh, we um technical assistance. And um, and and so it was it they and they did they did a wonderful job of like also creating um the you know the culture of giving in their own communities and then also you know the grant making program and really following our DNA. And but they were autonomous, you know, they were their own 501c3. I mean, we didn't have the um the capacity or the interest to helicopter around, tell them what to do. You know, they were like doing their thing, but we but they were an official affiliate of KACF. Um, and they have their own board and uh their own, you know, grant making uh autonomy and fundraising and so on. But as we started to think a few years ago about like going national, it really made sense for us to um take these two you know regional um entities and to say and to really merge into one. And so that has been the the uh journey, the process, and really like um uh we're super excited to um say that we will be one KACF.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

That is so exciting. Congratulations. And I can't wait to see how it all unfolds and all the impact that you'll be making. Um, Kyang, we're gonna wind it down here. Uh I would love to know if folks who are listening are motivated to donate to the show's Giving Circle and support KACF. What would their donations support?

SPEAKER_00 52:55

So that is so um welcome because you know we are always looking to raise awareness and to um you know expand our base of supporters. I would love people to know that we are um not just about the Korean American community. Of course, that is our um sort of bullseye, but we are always mindful of radiating outward, as I talked about before in terms of impact. Um, I would say that one example um is our uh grantee partner in Los Angeles right now. It's called the Carsh Center, and it's actually affiliated with a very um uh old and beautiful synagogue that is in the heart of Koreatown, just like on Wilshire Boulevard. And they are doing, you know, their work and their God's work to be a uh a light to wherever you are planted. And they are planted in Koreatown. So, you know, they give um food um weekly, you know, necessities and backpacks, and you know, every week um, you know, they are there for the community. Now, Koreatown itself is also evolving. You know, Korea Town in LA, it's a lot of restaurants and it's very big, but it doesn't really have that many Koreans living there. It's actually largely uh Latinx communities, too. So this is very interesting. But the people, very vulnerable people who have remained in Koreatown are the elderly. So you go to car center in the morning and you just see this line of um of many Koreans who are standing, you know, with their um wheelie bags. And um, and so, you know, and and but it's not all just Koreans, but I mean we just acknowledge like and just um the partnership and that they need funding. And so that is one of our grantee partners as well. So it's not just about um just Koreans for Koreans per se, but about I think KACF and our sort of um role in um linking hands and uh with people of um other ethnicities, of other faiths, and just the humanity of it all. And so I just hope that um we are able to do more of that. I I also want to say that for as Korean Americans, you know, we are just um also embracing like who is a Korean American too, you know, and we're just like so, it's very important that we expand this. We are, you know, like growing um in our identities in this America, biracial Korean Americans, as adoptees, as you know, Chinese Koreans. I mean, we did the immigrants um here, uh, whatever, you know, and we are just like saying yes and all, and we welcome you. And that chang, that that golden thread, we want to just have that like just bonding all of us more together for our future.

SPEAKER_01 56:07

Kyon Yun, thank you so much for being with me. Uh, I have learned so much about what you've been up to the past couple of years. I remember when we first met and you told me how important this work was for you personally, and I can just I can feel the passion um still radiating. And um just want to thank you again for everything you're doing for the community and the broader community at large. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

Thank you for having me and for amplifying our story, and thank you.

SPEAKER_01 56:39

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode on the Do Good on Purpose podcast. And if today's conversation inspired you, please consider supporting the work through the do good on purpose giving circle, which is linked in the show notes. And if you really enjoyed this episode, please subscribe. Share it with someone who believes in building a better world because change rarely happens by accident. It happens when people decide to do good on purpose.