Member Spotlight: Holly Fogle
Holly Fogle, Co-Founder of The Monarch Foundation
Brief Bio:
Social entrepreneur. Farm girl turned New Yorker. Dog lover. Champion for the voiceless and vulnerable - including Mother Earth. Voracious reader. Mom to two teenagers. Tireless warrior for a better world.
Holly Fogle grew up at the end of a dirt lane on a farm in Appalachia on the Ohio/WV border where she witnessed the power of a community of women. She founded Nido de Esperanza and The Bridge Project, both focused on early childhood poverty. Whenever possible, she avoids board
seats, galas, naming rights, and restricted giving. She relishes authentic one-on-one conversations with people trying to change their corner of the world.
She graduated from The Wharton School and was a partner at McKinsey & Company, where she worked for 13 years serving healthcare clients. She ran McKinsey’s New Jersey Office and served on their global partner selection committee. She is a lifelong Methodist.
What is the mission of your organization, and why is this pursuit important to you? My family’s foundation, The Monarch Foundation, focuses on ending childhood poverty and climate justice through simple and scalable solutions.
What is a project you are working/have recently worked on that you’re passionate about? What was the impact of this project? How did you demonstrate that impact? I am passionate about The Bridge Project. It provides pregnant women living in poverty unrestricted cash for the first 1000 days of her child’s life. By year end, we will have 1,500 babies in the program across NY, CT, and WI. We are excited to bring The Bridge Project to Appalachia in January 2025. It recognizes that people know what they need to do for their families but often don’t have the cash to do it. It also treats people with respect and dignity- two values I learned in spades growing up on a farm.
The impact is far-reaching. Food security increases. A mother’s ability to buy diapers increases. She starts to build up savings. The overall stress level of the household goes down, and she is able to spend more time with her children. In some cases, she is able to leave an abusive partner, rent an apartment for the first time, or go back to school. We are working with The University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Guaranteed Income Research as well as Columbia University to gather data and impact.
What do you see as the greatest strength of Central Appalachian communities? To me, the greatest strength is our sense of community. Some of my best teachers in life were the old church ladies. When the church needed a new roof, no one had $12,000 so they figured out how many spaghetti dinners they needed to host in the church basement over two years – and then we had a new roof! When I was a teenager, a young man was killed in a car accident in our town. The family didn’t have enough money for a funeral or a lunch afterwards. The family didn’t attend either church, but the church ladies knew that no family should struggle to bury a child or have to do it alone. So the hat was passed and passed again until there was enough money to bury him. Then both congregations came together and held a luncheon for the family in the church basement after the funeral. It was a small example but left a deep imprint on my mind about the power of community and truly “seeing” our neighbors.
What is one thing you’d like to see improved in how funders work together in Central Appalachia? I have spent the last 30 years of my life in New York City working on urban child poverty. So I enter this space with a lot of humility. I am eager to learn from you all and contribute in whatever way I can.
What questions do you think funders in Appalachia should be asking regularly about improving their grantmaking processes? For me the questions are: Am I taking enough risks? Am I betting on great leaders? Can I make a multi-year grant vs one year? Can I make it unrestricted? Whenever possible, at The Monarch Foundation, we try to grant multi-year, unrestricted grants. We don’t ask for reports, rather we want to engage in conversations about what is working and what isn’t. We relish making mistakes- as long as we learn, it means we are taking risks and growing.
-What is the one experience from your past, personal or professional, that most influences the work you do today? Growing up, I heard repeatedly “Of whom much is given, much is required”. The old church ladies didn’t mean money because none of us had any of that. But they drilled into my head that I had an obligation to use my gifts- my brain, my energy, my work ethic. My talents have changed over the years, but I feel a deep obligation to give back to the communities I live in and grew up in.