Horace and Amy Hagedorn became a Long Island philanthropic team in 1995, when Horace's firm, Miracle-Gro, merged with the Scotts Company and he invested his share of the proceeds in the donor-advised Horace and Amy Hagedorn Fund in the Long Island Community Foundation. Horace was the founder of the national plant food company and he became one of the best-known funders on Long Island.

Horace and Amy were part of the Long Island Community Foundation advisory board when ERASE RACISM was founded there. The Hagedorns were married for almost twenty years, before Horace's death at age eighty-nine in 2005.

Amy continues to be an ardent supporter of ERASE RACISM. A former early childhood teacher, Amy is a founder and board member of Sustainable Long Island, a non-partisan not-for-profit organization that promotes economic development, environmental health and social equity through community-led revitalization efforts and brownfields remediation in distressed communities and other Long Island places where their services are sought after. She also serves on the northeast regional board of Canine Companions for Independence and the board of North Shore LIJ Health System.