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The Southeastern Council of Foundations (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.”

The Community Foundation established its Community Emergency Response Fund on March 13, 2020, to address the immediate medical and economic needs created by the pandemic. In the beginning, $4.56 million went toward the Community Resource Helpline, providing direct aid to more than 5,000 households across the region, impacting an estimated 18,000 people. In addition, $847,000 funded grant awards to twenty-eight nonprofit organizations.

Over time the effort evolved into a broader, ongoing response to the longer-term challenges of the pandemic, which have often overlapped with issues of racial justice. In October, the Foundation awarded Community Recovery & Catalyst Grants to 124 area nonprofit organizations totaling $2,218,250.

Brennan Gould, president and CEO of the Community Foundation, thanked the more than 800 donors from throughout the region who made the response possible. The largest contributors included the Batten Family, Bama Works Fund of Dave Matthews Band, the University of Virginia, Quad-C Management, Adiuvans Relief Fund, Wick and Bonnie Moorman, Hilltop Foundation, Quantitative Foundation, Pumpkin Seed Fund, Saraswati Fund, Wells Fargo, Tremaine Family Foundation, Bank of America Charitable Foundation, and three anonymous donors.

Community partners, including Cville Community Cares, the United Way of Greater Charlottesville, the City of Charlottesville, and Albemarle County, also were essential in the effort.

Gould stressed, however, that the work is not finished. “We are grateful for this recognition and to all of our donors and partners who made the work possible,” she said. “I’m also incredibly proud of our amazing team members who gave tirelessly to this effort. We know the pandemic is worse than ever and people are still suffering. This still remains a scary and challenging time for so many people. What’s most important is that we continue to find ways to meet the needs of our community in this difficult time.”

Based in Atlanta, the SECF is a membership association of more than 360 grantmakers working together to strengthen, promote, and increase philanthropy in 11 southeastern states, including Virginia. The Truist Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Truist, a bank formed out of the merger of BB&T and SunTrust.

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.

CITY SCHOOLYARD GARDEN RECEIVES SHAPING FUTURES GRANT

The Community Foundation established the Shaping Futures grant in partnership with the Martha Jefferson Hospital Foundation and with a generous annual gift from Dorothy Batten. The goal is to support programs that aim to improve outcomes for a population affected by a community-health trend.

Last year, City Schoolyard Garden (part of Cultivate Charlottesville), in partnership with Charlottesville City Schools, received the second-ever Shaping Futures grant for their Just Food for Charlottesville program. The grant is funded with help from the University of Virginia Health Systems and Dorothy Batten, and is designed to improve health outcomes identified in the MAPP2Health 2016–2019 Community Health Improvement Plan.

The Community Foundation sought proposals for projects scaled to produce population-level change for a specific demographic in such areas as healthy eating and active living, mental health and substance abuse, equity and accessibility, and the fostering of a healthy and connected community for all ages.

Just Food for Charlottesville was launched to improve food security and health outcomes for Charlottesville youth through increased access to and consumption of healthy school meals, engagement in school gardens, and cultivating leadership and lifelong healthy living skills.

While the COVID-19 crisis affected the program’s timeline, Cultivate Charlottesville helped bridge the service gap in the school-nutrition department during school closures. In collaboration with other community partners, Cultivate prepared meals to support Charlottesville City Schools students when the district was not providing meals, including spring break, Memorial Day, and Labor Day.

“We are excited to collaborate with Charlottesville City Schools in launching this grant that builds on goals defined by Food Justice Student Interns, parents, and community partners. Through amplifying youth voice and choice, increasing fresh, from scratch and local foods, building CCS infrastructure, and engaging students in nutrition and garden education, we aim to implement a meal program that builds equity and health for CCS students to thrive,” Jeanette Abi-Nader, the executive director of Cultivate Charlottesville, said.

“This project gives us the opportunity to build school infrastructure to increase from scratch and fresh-meal options while partnering with students to learn about what foods work for them,” Carlton Jones, the schools’ nutrition director, said.

BIRTH SISTERS FIRST SHAPING FUTURES RECIPIENT

In 2016, the Community Foundation awarded the first Shaping Futures grant to Birth Sisters of Charlottesville, then known as Sisters Keepers Doula Collective. The group seeks to address systemic racial disparities faced by Black women seeking maternal healthcare. At first the group received its grant funding through a fiscal sponsor but this year reorganized as a 501(c)(3) called Birth Sisters of Charlottesville. They have since leveraged an additional $150,000 from the Early Childhood Funders Network, a committee-advised fund at the Community Foundation.

The Early Childhood Funders Network was founded in 2017 to create a long-term, focused philanthropic response to the needs of young children and their families in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. “One of our goals has been to demonstrate the power of collective philanthropy,” the group said in a statement. “We are thrilled that six of our members have come together to support the critical and systems-changing work of Birth Sisters.”

“The grant highlights our commitment to addressing health disparities in the communities we serve.  The doulas are expert healthcare navigators, and their services continue to make significant differences in pregnancy outcomes for Black women in our community,” said Kimberly Skelly, the executive director of the Martha Jefferson Hospital Foundation, co-funder of this Shaping Futures grant.

“We are grateful to the Community Foundation, Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital, and the Early Childhood Funders Network for recognizing the need for radical change through their significant contribution supporting our mission,” the Birth Sisters said in a statement.

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. 

“The pandemic has had a significant impact on our nonprofit sector and has laid bare longstanding racial inequities in our communities,” Brennan Gould, president and CEO of the Community Foundation, said. “Out of a deep dedication to our region, these four grant programs provided all of their available grantmaking resources to this special grant round. The Bama Works Fund also gave an additional amount, for a total of $1 million, to make these grants possible.”

The Community Response & Catalyst Grants program was designed to help organizations recover, sustain, and build their services. Grants from this round will support organizations that are addressing topics such as mental health care, affordable housing, opportunity youth development and mentorship, accessible childcare, food insecurity, and racial equity in the arts.

“What we love about these projects is that they are about catalyzing change,” Gould said. “They look to the future not as a return to normalcy but as an opportunity to create something better for our community.” 

In addition, 182 area nonprofits were awarded subscriptions to a capacity-building organization called Catchafire. Catchafire connects organizations with talented professionals looking to give back, allowing them to access expertise in areas such as marketing, web development, operations, strategy, and more.

“We are really excited to partner with Catchafire to offer this unique opportunity. At the Foundation we know support beyond grantmaking is critical to driving the impact that we want to see in our region. We look forward to learning from this pilot program,” Eboni Bugg, the Community Foundation’s director of programs, said.

The grant round was the third major effort associated with the Foundation’s Community Emergency Response Fund, established on March 13, 2020, as a means of providing resources to households and organizations in Central Virginia impacted by the pandemic and subsequent economic crisis. An outpouring of generosity from large and small donors alike contributed more than $5.5 million in eight weeks. The Community Resource Helpline, operated in partnership with Cville Community Cares, United Way of Greater Charlottesville, the city of Charlottesville, and Albemarle County, disbursed $4.56 million in emergency financial aid to more than 5,000 households in Central Virginia. A special round of Rapid Response Grants distributed almost $900,000 to twenty-eight nonprofit organizations providing essential health and social services. 

After listening to the needs of the community and nonprofit organizations, the Foundation along with its funding partners, launched the Community Catalyst & Recovery Grant program in July. 

See a list of recipients. 

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.

“This webinar was a welcome opportunity to connect our fundholders with those who guide the investment practice of the Community Foundation,” Jan Dorman, director of finance, said, adding that the subsequent questions and suggestions from fundholders help shape policy. Watching a recording of the webinar and examine Beckett’s slides.

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?

Governor Northam has declared today Indigenous Peoples Day, and we want to acknowledge that our offices and the wonderful region we serve are located on what originally was the land of the Monacan Indian Nation. The Monacan people were among several groups of Siouan-speaking Indians living here who were violently displaced by English invaders. Over several hundred years, they were the victims of war, disease, and enslavement. Many migrated or assimilated to European or African ways, some voluntarily and many others by force.

These indigenous nations struggled to maintain distinct identities and cultural traditions. The Racial Integrity Laws of the 1920s, in particular, sought to erase the identity of indigenous people And yet today, after a decades-long legal and political battle, the Monacan Indian Nation is state and federally recognized, its people proud custodians of their land and their heritage.

The quilt pictured above commemorates the return of seven-and-a-half acres of Monacan land to the tribe in 1995, land that is now the site of a museum and tribal center. This radio report explores Monacan history and culture, while this is a helpful and more general overview of indigenous people in Virginia.

It will never be enough to remember that Virginia Indians were once here; we must know that they are still here – still facing the challenges bequeathed from history, still battling the systems that marginalize them today, still bringing valued contributions to our communities.

Quilt by Pat McCauley; courtesy of the Monacan Indian Nation / Virginia Indian Archive

Jan Dorman, director of finance at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, will retire, effective December 2020. The Foundation has begun a search for her successor.

Dorman joined the Foundation team in May 2015, building on a career developing businesses in the education and healthcare sectors. In the five years since then, the organization has grown in its commitment to the community, promoting transparent, collaborative, creative grantmaking and investing; partnering with donors and grantees; and reimagining what it means to be a community where everyone can thrive. This has included responding to multiple local and national crises as well as centering the Foundation’s work in equity.

“I’m not one to reminisce,” Dorman said. “I tend to be forward-looking, seeking deep understanding of where we’re headed and why.” She described her role at the Foundation as multifaceted—participating in a vibrant executive  leadership team, managing both investments and administrative operations, and providing guidance to donors and area nonprofits. She praised the Foundation’s staff and board for their dedication and camaraderie.

“I do love the work we do and the opportunity to learn together,” Dorman said. “There’s a real willingness to listen here, to be collaborative and open.” It has allowed the Foundation to continue to be innovative in its philanthropy. “When a donor or organization comes and says, ‘I want to try this new thing,’” she said, “we respond by saying that sounds like a good idea. So let’s figure out how to do it.”

“It is a pleasure and an honor to work closely with Jan,” Brennan Gould, the Foundation’s president and CEO, said. “We are extremely fortunate to have had her skills and leadership at the Foundation over the past five years. Our organization is where it is today because of her great service, professional excellence, tireless work, and creativity.”

Dorman said she plans to help the transition to her successor. “The Foundation right now is doing some of the best work we’ve ever done,” she said. “Where we’re headed—it’s really exciting.”

The posting for chief financial officer can be found on the Foundation’s website.