Matthew Dolan

Detroit Free Press

A group of local and national foundations plan to spend nearly $125 million to help Flint as state and federal officials continue to debate additional funding for the city's years-long drinking water crisis.

Leading the pack with a pledge of up to $100 million for the city over the next five years is the Flint-based Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The foundation named for the businessman and former Flint mayor said it will donate $50 million to recovery efforts in the city this year alone, according to its president.

A formal announcement is expected Wednesday.

“Flint’s water crisis is far from over," Mott President Ridgway White said Tuesday. "While some funds and services have been provided, we’re still waiting for the state and federal governments to step up, replace damaged infrastructure and make long-term commitments to the health and education of children. Today our foundations are stepping in to help."

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Other philanthropic supporters are the Carnegie Corp. of New York ($1 million), FlintNOW Foundation ($10 million), Ford Foundation ($1 million), the Hagerman Foundation ($1 million), the Kresge Foundation (up to $2.5 million), Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ($1 million), Ruth Mott Foundation ($1 million), Skillman Foundation ($500,000 immediately, with up to an additional $1.5 million in the future) and W.K. Kellogg Foundation (up to $5 million).

Additional partners are expected to announce their support soon, organizers said.

"Quite honestly, we felt like this was a crisis in our backyard and we had a civic and moral responsibility to respond to support the residents in Flint," Tonya Allen, Skillman's president and CEO, said in an interview.

Overall, foundation leaders identified six areas where they believe their funds can help: ensuring safe drinking water; meeting health needs; supporting early education; building a robust non-profit sector; promoting community engagement and revitalizing the city's ailing economy.

As one part, there will be a dollar-for-dollar match of up to $5 million on donations made to the Flint Child Health & Development Fund through Dec. 31.

The fund was established at the Community Foundation of Greater Flint with an initial donation from Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, whose research on elevated blood-lead levels among Flint children demonstrated the severity of the crisis.

Money in the fund is intended to support for two decades for Flint children exposed to lead, a bill estimated in excess of $100 million.

Michigan's seventh-largest city by population has been embroiled in a water crisis for two years after a disastrous switch to the Flint River as a drinking water source. For months, Flint has been under a state of emergency after unsafe levels of lead were confirmed last fall in the drinking water supplied to city residents.

State officials had said that they had hoped to stop lead leaching from pipes and restore drinking water to the city in stages, with a full assessment of the system completed by mid-April of this year. But random spikes in lead continue to plague the water system. More testing is expected through the summer as residents continue to use filters on their taps and seek out bottled water.

"Working together to solve problems and help the people of Flint is what we all need to focus on," Gov. Rick Snyder said in a statement Tuesday. "This is a tremendous effort by organizations well known for their philanthropic support of communities and people around the state."

In some ways, the joint philanthropic effort appears to echo the kind of coalition behind the so-called grand bargain assembled to speed Detroit’s exit from municipal bankruptcy.

The centerpiece of Detroit's bankruptcy blueprint was an $816-million investment by the State of Michigan, some of the nation's leading foundations and the Detroit Institute of Arts to preserve the city-owned art museum collection in exchange for helping to pay down the city's crushing employee pension debt.

"I can't say that the grand bargain was something that I didn't think about as we started to have these conversations," White said of Mott's effort to bring together the group of foundations. Mott pledged $10 million to the effort in Detroit.

But Allen downplayed the comparison, "I don't think this is a grand bargain," she said. "We're mobilizing the philanthropic sector to support the community. It's not trying to replace what government should do."

The cash infusion from the collection of foundations for Flint, a poverty-stricken city long suffering from population loss and disinvestment, is not meant to replace government funds that have been proposed to replace lead pipes and provide basic health care, according to foundation leaders.

Instead, the funding is designed to augment funding that philanthropic officials argue should be provided quickly.

Elected leaders "need to respond and they need to respond immediately," said La June Montgomery Tabron, president and CEO of the Kellogg Foundation, which committed up to $5 million over the next year to support children’s education, health and well-being in Flint. "There is no way that philanthropy can rebuild the pipes."

Last week, the state Legislature wrapped up approval of a $4.4-million appropriation to expand Medicaid coverage for up to 15,000 people in Flint. But the body has yet to approve the bulk of the nearly $200-million aid package proposed by Snyder earlier this year.

The Legislature approved $9.3 million in October to help Flint reconnect to the Detroit water and sewerage system, $28 million in January for a variety of services and $30 million in February to help pay for water bills for residents who were being charged for water that they couldn’t drink because of lead contamination. City leaders including Mayor Karen Weaver say millions more are needed immediately to speed the replacement of lead-leaching pipes.

A federal measure which could provide as much as $100 million to help Flint replace its water pipes and infrastructure and would commit even more to modernizing water lines around the country as well as funding public health efforts related to lead contamination, has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Experts see the expanded role of philanthropy in some of Michigan's hardest-hit cities as a positive, but should not be viewed as a substitute for the traditional — and much larger role — of government and businesses to shape a community's future.

"Philanthropic funds have always been a drop in the ocean compared to the resources that government and the private sector have," said Katherina Rosqueta, the founding executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy and adjunct faculty of the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. "The annual budget of a big city school district or the price tag for a major corporate acquisition dwarfs the endowments of even the biggest foundations."

Still, Rosqueta added, philanthropy can "sometimes be more nimble and move more quickly to help. There is growing recognition that the problems communities face require the work of all sectors."

Weaver, the city's mayor who won office last year on a tide of voter discontent over the water issue, praised the latest effort as a sign of hope that Flint has not lost the nation's attention.

"If there is a silver lining in the dark cloud that’s been hanging over the City of Flint because of this man-made water disaster, it’s that this crisis has brought so many people and organizations together," she said in a news release Tuesday. "People from all over the country have been stepping up to help us as we work to recover."

Contact Matthew Dolan: 313-223-4743 or msdolan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @matthewsdolan. Staff writers Kathleen Gray and Todd Spangler contributed to this report.​