The Community Endowment Fund of the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation (CACF) is proud to announce $300,000 in grant funding to 16 local organizations. These grants are awarded through the Solidarity program, a Community Endowment Fund initiative overseen by the Foundation’s Community Advisory Committee. The Solidarity program, which completed its pilot year in fall 2024, is among the first philanthropic programs in Virginia dedicated to supporting movement building. To achieve lasting, community-level change, “movement building” groups are those who go beyond providing direct services and instead seek to alter or completely reimagine broken systems.
In February 2025, the Solidarity program launched two new grant offerings in response to pilot year feedback and learnings: Renewal Grants for Healing & Strengthening and Reimagine Grants for Freedom Dreaming & Evolving.
Renewal Grants of up to $25,000 provide movement groups with wellness and reparative support, whether it be spiritual, physiological, or interpersonal. Requests can be for collective healing work, “joyful resistance,” coalition building, conflict resolution/mediation, and even sabbatical support. Reimagine Grants of up to $50,000 seek to encourage nonconformity, creativity, and experimentation by supporting idea research and development, planning, visioning, pausing, resetting, restructuring or, when necessary, closing. Reimagine Grant applicants may also apply for funding to support short-term/one-time professional services support, such as nonprofit legal or accounting assistance, and support for staff/volunteer training that enhances their movement building capacity.
The Governing Board, Community Advisory Committee, and staff of the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation wish to recognize and thank the Solidarity program’s 16 inaugural Renewal and Reimagine grantees.
Renewal Grant Recipients
- Legacy Productions
- Lending Hands
- New Hill Development Corporation
- Rose Hill Baptist Church
- Soul of Cville
- St. John Family Life & Fitness Center
- Wartime Fitness Warriors
Reimagine Grant Recipients
- Black Women Stitch
- Central Virginia Clinicians of Color Network
- Central Virginia Farmworkers Initiative
- Community Voices
- Congregate Charlottesville
- Cultivate Charlottesville
- The Haven
- The RESTORE Project
- Sin Barreras
Beginning July 1 through July 31, 2025, the Solidarity program is accepting Letters of Intent (LOIs) for its third and final grant offering of the year: Reshaping Futures Grants for Transformation. Reshaping Futures awards of up to $500,000 total over 1-5 years (e.g., $100,000 per year for 5 years) will support transformative approaches to movement building in Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Nelson, and Orange counties, and/or the City of Charlottesville. Final funding decisions for the Solidarity program’s inaugural Reshaping Futures Grants are expected in December 2025.
Since 1967, community members have partnered, pooled resources, and invested collectively with the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation in order to make a deeper and longer-lasting, positive impact. Today, the Community Foundation helps manage nearly 400 charitable funds — gifts, grants, scholarships, and organizational endowments and reserve funds — on behalf of our community and donor partners. Together this past year, we reinvested a total of $30 million back into our home.
Read our latest annual impact report online to learn more, subscribe to receive news and updates about grants and additional resources, or contact us to reinvest through the Community Endowment Fund and other giving opportunities.