Community Foundation Presented Truist Promise Award
The Southeastern Council of Foundation (SECF), in partnership with the Truist Foundation, has presented the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation with an inaugural Truist Foundation Promise Award. The award came in recognition of the Community Foundation’s “innovative response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to Janine Lee, president and CEO of SECF, “a response that leveraged multiple forms of philanthropic capital and provided [the] community with rapid support when it was most needed.” Read More.
Hiring: Director of Operations
The Charlottesville Area Community Foundation is seeking a director of operations. Reporting to the president and CEO, the director of operations provides organizational leadership and anticipates and addresses the operational, technical, and communication needs of the Community Foundation. Read more.
City Schoolyard Garden Receives Shaping Futures Grant; Birth Sisters of Charlottesville Advance Work
City Schoolyard Garden, in partnership with Charlottesville City Schools, has been awarded a five-year, $500,000 Shaping Futures grant from the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation. That group’s project is designed to improve the health of Charlottesville youth through healthy school meals, engagement in school gardens, and cultivating leadership and lifelong healthy living skills. Meanwhile, the Birth Sisters of Charlottesville, a nonprofit organization whose trained doulas provide childbirth education, labor support, and postpartum care to women of color, continue work on their Shaping Futures grant—awarded in 2016 and the first such grant from the Community Foundation. Read more.
Community Recovery & Catalyst Grants Awarded
The Charlottesville Area Community Foundation has awarded Community Recovery & Catalyst Grants to 124 area nonprofit organizations totaling $2,218,250. These grants are made possible through generous contributions from the Bama Works Fund of Dave Matthews Band, the University of Virginia Health System, the Twice Is Nice Fund, Dorothy Batten, and Enriching Communities, which is managed by the Community Foundation. While these four grant programs typically hold independent grant rounds in the fall, this year they have combined into one effort to maximize resources dedicated to community recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic and to help address continued racial injustice. Read more.
Watch Our Investments Update Webinar
As Jim Beckett wryly noted, during our Investments Update webinar on October 13, "It's been an interesting time." So to check in our investments and look to the future, we gathered members of the Community Foundation's Investment Committee and Wells Fargo Private Bank. Our panelists included Kristina Koutrakas, portfolio strategy director for the Virginia Retirement System; Alice Handy, founder and former CEO of Investure; Kristin Henningsen, managing director of CornerStone Partners; Frederick Nolde, director, Investure; and Beckett, an investment advisor at Wells Fargo. Read more.
Recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day
At the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, we believe that the history of our region does not lie in the past. Instead, it lives deep inside communities today, lending essential context to the successes we have enjoyed and the challenges we continue to face. And what context could be more essential than the recognition of peoples who came before us? Read more.
Our Equity Journey
The Community Foundation was founded on a keen awareness of our interconnectedness as a community of people sharing a region. Our futures are intertwined, and in order to thrive together, we need to ensure that we are contributing to conditions that enable everyone to meet their full potential regardless of the circumstances of one’s birth. Read more.
Statement on the Murder of Black People
At the Community Foundation we are heartbroken by the events of these past weeks: the murder in Georgia of Ahmaud Arbery, the murder in Louisville of Breonna Taylor, and the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd. They were murdered by individuals sworn (at the time or in the recent past) to protect them and their communities. Now their names have been added to a long list of souls whose nation has failed them. Read more.
