Below is an excerpt from a recent paper I've written on foundations and NGOs in post-Katrina N.O. It doesn't explain the BDF and FK!F entirely, but make no mistakes, these are not small organizations with limited budgets.

These are very powerful proxies for wealthy developers and other interests. They represent and instrumentally push the agenda of the local growth coalition. BDF is an extension of longstanding foundations with an interest in pushing up real estate values. The link to the Greater New Orleans Foundation (and by extension the Ford Foundation) places BDF in a long lineage of community redevelopment vehicles going all the way back to Chicago in the 1950s.

The Golf is not just about land values. It's a big favorite of the city's tourism and convention's businesses. A major PGA level tournament would mean many millions of dollars. Small tournaments would mean millions more. The cover story that we aren't supposed to mess with is that Fore!Kids will be giving money to little kiddies. But this is chump change. The real money will be generated by all of the hotel and services companies that will be feeding of the golf tournies.

Keep in mind that there may be no actual "corruption" behind any of this (but there probably is). The money doesn't have to directly flow from the government to the non-profits and back into the hands of Nagin's best buddies, or Alph Jacksons'. What makes this sort of project politically hard to defeat is that it has the support and legitimacy of a very big coalition of powerful businessmen, and corporations. This is the growth machine at work.

-darwin

The Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF) was established in 1983
with $5 million in assets. It reportedly controls $134 million in
total assets as of 2009. The Foundation grew out of a prior
philanthropic organization established by New Orleans' elite old
money circles called the Community Chest.

In 2007 the GNOF created the Community Revitalization Fund (CRF)
with $25 million in capital contributed by eleven national and nine
local foundations. CRF's mission will be to “direct these dollars to
local nonprofits, national intermediaries, government, and advocacy
organizations that are working to promote equitable and effective
housing development.” According to the GNOF, “the vision is a
stronger New Orleans of mixed-income and mixed-race neighborhoods,
each anchored by community facilities, schools, hospitals,
pedestrian-friendly streets, and dynamic public open spaces.” These
“mixed-income and mixed-race neighborhoods” are almost entirely
being rebuilt on the ruins of decimated black neighborhoods,
including in and around the major public housing developments that
were closed down and demolished by the city and federal government.i
Nearly all of these redevelopments involve the construction of far
fewer affordable units among many market rate apartments and homes.
Grants made by the GNOF are to both non-profit and for-profit
developments of these “smart-growth” projects.ii
One of the larger CRF facilitated project is the Bayou District
Foundation's “new New Orleans community, charter school, and City
Park recreational facility,” a massive real estate redevelopment
that will replace the St. Bernard public housing development with
“mixed-income” housing and a PGA-level golf course.iii This “new,
New Orleans” project is the joint work of Columbia Residential, a
major Atlanta-based real estate developer with a long history of
tearing down and rebuilding public housing into privatized forms.
The now demolished St. Bernard Development consisted of more than
1400 public housing apartments before Katrina. After locking out the
residents in late 2005, HUD, HANO and the City Council moved forward
with full demolition of the 52-acre site. Columbia residential plans
to rebuild 900 units of housing in the area, less than half of which
will qualify as “affordable,” and all of these being privately owned
and managed by Columbia whereas previously they were publicly owned
and operated housing units.iv The golf course will be built into
City Park and managed by the Fore!Kids Foundation, an organization
that has received funds also from the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.
Fore!Kids estimates that it will raise $1.5 million per year for
children's programs in the redesigned neighborhood by hosting golf
tournaments. The city's hotel and entertainment lobbies have looked
very favorably on this project.