By Alex Daniels

More than two dozen foundations are poised to announce $200-million in new grants over the next five years for programs designed to improve the lives of young black and Hispanic men as part a new effort President Obama is scheduled to announce today at the White House.

Members of the Executives’ Alliance to Expand Opportunities for Boys and Men of Color, a group of 29 grant makers that joined forces last year to boost philanthropic efforts to help young minority males, announced the pledge just ahead of the White House meeting.

Members of the group met with Mr. Obama in the White House last fall. In January, Mr. Obama demonstrated how keenly he was interested in getting foundations to give more to help black men when he specifically called on grant makers to do more in his State of the Union speech.

Several foundations will join Mr. Obama at today’s announcement, including representatives of the Atlantic Philanthropies, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the California Endowment, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations.

The White House announced that the $200-million in new gifts is in addition to $150-million that members of the grant-making alliance had already earmarked for programs to assist young black and Latino men. Over the next 90 days, the foundation members will “design a strategy and infrastructure for coordination of these investments,” according to a White House statement.

The administration will not seek any federal money to advance programs to help young black men, according to the statement, but will form an interagency effort called My Brother’s Keeper Task Force, chaired by Broderick Johnson, an assistant to the president. The committee will seek to identify areas in which the federal government can work with philanthropic organizations to reduce incarceration, increase job placement, and improve education among young minority males.