How The David Prize Is Investing In New York’s Boldest Visionaries—With No Strings Attached
The David Prize 2025 Winners | Credit: Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet
What if all it took to change a city was belief—in a person, their purpose, and their plan?
That’s the founding premise of The David Prize, a $200,000 no-strings-attached award granted annually to five New Yorkers with bold visions for a better city. Now in its sixth year, the Prize continues to prove that real transformation starts with the individual.
Erika Augustine, Executive Director of The David Prize
Backed by the Walentas Family Foundation and named after Brooklyn developer David Walentas—whose long-term bet on the neighborhood of DUMBO helped reimagine it from industrial obscurity into a cultural hub—the Prize channels that same kind of grit and long-game thinking into its philanthropy.
“We invest in people,” says Erika Augustine, Executive Director of The David Prize. “Ideas change with time. They evolve with information. And we look for people that are deeply committed to a vision for New York City, and have lots of levers to get there.”
A Prize Built for Possibility
Unlike most grants or awards, The David Prize is deliberately unconventional. It’s not tied to a nonprofit, a startup, or even a business plan. Winners are selected through a yearlong process that starts with a deceptively simple prompt: What’s your vision for New York City? Why does it matter? And why are you the person to make it real?
The result is a cohort of changemakers with wildly different approaches—but one uniting thread: a relentless, often deeply personal commitment to their communities. As she notes, “Everyone has so much social capital, community capital, knowledge, wisdom to like do the thing that they say they want to do.”
And the Prize doesn’t stop at the check. From intimate dinner parties to city-wide field trips, the Prize curates ongoing opportunities for connection and collaboration—culminating this year in See NYC, a three-day “staycation meets summer camp” for 150 local leaders exploring the city’s past, present, and future.
Meet the 2025 Winners
The David Prize 2025 Winners | Credit: Evelyn Freja
The 2025 David Prize recipients span neighborhoods, identities, and sectors—but each is a powerful example of what’s possible when you back people over institutions.
Barry Cooper is a trusted voice in Bed-Stuy and founder of The B.R.O. Experience Foundation, which supports the emotional well-being of young men of color. Through healing spaces rooted in rites of passage, fatherhood circles, and creative expression, Cooper is reframing mental health care as joyful, community-centered, and culturally resonant.
Colby Xzavier King, a Columbia University graduate and member of the House of Louboutin, is elevating ballroom culture through The Kiki Arts Collaborative (KAC). The initiative provides artist residencies, fellowships, and career access for queer youth of color—bridging creativity and economic mobility while honoring the scene’s deep cultural legacy.
Jennifer M. Bright is rallying New Yorkers around an unlikely place for transformation: the subway. Through her Friends of the Subway initiative, Bright is leading a community-driven movement that uses public art, station activations, and volunteerism to make NYC’s transit spaces more inspiring—and more cared for.
Jhody Devon Polk, founder of the Jailhouse Lawyer Initiative and The Legal Empowerment and Advocacy Hub (LEAH), is redefining legal empowerment. Working alongside NYU’s Bernstein Institute, Polk is building a credentialing program for community paralegals to legitimize jailhouse lawyering—and ensure incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals can shape the law, not just survive it.
Rana Abdelhamid, a Queens-based organizer, martial artist, and founder of Malikah, is scaling trauma-informed self-defense across NYC neighborhoods—particularly within North African immigrant communities. Her mobile safety van builds on over a decade of grassroots organizing, bringing healing, mutual aid, and dignity to the city’s most vulnerable.
A New Kind of Philanthropy
What sets The David Prize apart isn’t just the funding—it’s the freedom. Winners are not asked for progress reports, KPIs, or detailed budgets. The Prize is technically a financial award, not a grant, which liberates recipients to dream, pause, pivot, or scale on their own terms.
As Augustine explains, “We cut a check to an individual. We don’t ask how the money’s spent. We really get out of the way.”
And that freedom is yielding ripple effects. Some winners go on to build nonprofits. Others codify their ideas into curricula, keynote talks, or books. Many reinvest in their communities in unexpected ways.
One particularly poetic example? The Prize’s “Surprise” initiative—a small, unpublicized fund that allows winners to gift $5,000 to another New Yorker doing exceptional work. As Augustine puts it, “It is a way to switch the frame of like, what does philanthropy mean and who gets to make decisions?”
The David Prize 2024 Winners | Credit: Jamie Pearl.
Why This Matters
In an era of institutional mistrust and bureaucratic gridlock, The David Prize offers a radically human alternative: trust the people closest to the problems. Give them space, money, and recognition—and then get out of the way.
As Augustine puts it, “We try really hard to make sure we uplift that and encourage that and resource that — as opposed to get in the way of that.”
And if this year’s winners are any indication, backing them might just be the best investment the city can make.
At Conspiracy of Love, we help changemakers tell their most powerful stories — stories that inspire action, build movements, and create lasting impact.
Find out more about our Values-Driven Storytelling and GPS to Purpose workshops, and how we can help you scale your impact.
