Charlottesville Area Community Foundation Celebrates 40th Anniversary By Launching Catalyst Grant Initiative
Last Updated Feb 2008
The Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF) is celebrating its fortieth anniversary with the launch of a new strategic grantmaking program known as the Catalyst Grant. This new program allows CACF to address current unmet needs in the community. By bringing critical issues to light the Foundation will draw attention to community problems while leveraging dollars to fund innovative solutions.
CACF’s initial Catalyst Grant will focus on the need for affordable housing in the Foundation’s service area. The Catalyst Grant will be directed to affordable housing projects for the next three years before moving onto another community concern.
“In recognition of its fortieth anniversary the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation is delighted to launch the Catalyst Grant Initiative to highlight pressing community needs. Through this new program the Foundation will not only commit significant new resources, but will also seek to rally additional philanthropic resources from other local grantmakers and individual donors. The Foundation encourages the community to join this effort to respond to affordable housing needs in the community by supporting the Catalyst Grant Initiative,” said John Redick, President of the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation.
Today the Foundation is pleased to announce that the inaugural Catalyst Grant will go to support workforce rental housing with a $75,000 grant to Albemarle Housing Improvement Program (AHIP)’s Treesdale Park.
Treesdale Park will provide 90 units of new environmentally sustainable and affordable rental housing for low and very low-income workers, those earning approximately between $20,000 and $40,000 a year.
Theresa Tapscott, Executive Director of AHIP states; “Treesdale Park is a community-wide commitment to greater Charlottesville’s working families—people who play an essential and often overlooked role in our schools, hospitals, shops and service providers. AHIP and its partners are committed to helping our families ease their housing burdens and achieve success and stability in their jobs, in their schooling, and in their home lives. Stable and healthy housing means stable and healthy communities. This is good for all of us.”
AHIP has purchased the land for Treesdale Park ensuring that the development will remain in the permanent affordable rental housing stock. Treesdale will include a separate multilevel community center building that will serve as a community hub providing many resources to Treesdale families. In addition, Treesdale will obtain EarthCraft, LEED and Energy Star certifications making it the first multi-family environmentally sustainable housing project in the greater Charlottesville area.
The CACF Catalyst Grant to AHIP’s Treesdale Park will have a direct impact on the affordable housing challenge in the community by providing high-quality, innovative and sustainable affordable rental housing – housing that will benefit the environment, the surrounding communities, and each and every resident who calls it home.
To make a tax-deductible contribution to the CACF Catalyst Grant please make checks payable to the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation with a note in the memo for the Catalyst Grant. Mail checks to CACF, P.O. Box 1767, Charlottesville, VA 22902 or go to www.cacfonline.org.
The Charlottesville Area Community Foundation is a permanent endowment dedicated improving the quality of life in Charlottesville and the Counties of Albemarle, Greene, Orange, Louisa, Fluvanna, Buckingham, and Nelson. CACF makes grants of more than $3 million annually through its Community Endowment and its many donor-advised funds. Since its inception in 1967, the Community Foundation has made grants of more than $21 million to hundreds of nonprofit agencies.