Giving together can unite your family across generations, geographic areas, and life situations. No matter the age of your children, integrating philanthropy into your family is a great opportunity to pass on healthy attitudes about money matters and helping others.
Charles Grymes and Catherine Ring have a donor-established fund with the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia through our Family Giving Program. We recently asked them to share some thoughts on how this fund helps them build a legacy of giving for their entire family.
"Together, I believe we can set a new foundation for a robust
economy now and for our next generation of business leaders
in Northern Virginia"...Sheila Dixon, Executive Director, Northern
Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce
The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t just put stress on minority-owned businesses in the Northern Virginia region, but also on the chambers of commerce that serve them. The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia today announced it has awarded grants totaling $43,000 to five area Chambers of Commerce: Northern Virginia Black Chamber of Commerce, Asian American Chamber of Commerce, Virginia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, NOVA Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce.
Like many of you, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is saddened at the rise of Anti-Asian violence as most recently evidenced by the murders of 6 Asian American women in Atlanta Georgia.
Below are two statements, one from the Asian American Chamber of Commerce in Northern Virginia and one from the Virginia Asian Chamber of Commerce, that we would like to share with you. They are heartbreaking testaments to the devastation and fear being suffered by our Asian American / Pacific Islander neighbors.
We are one community, one region. When we choose to care about what happens to each other, everything shifts. Please take a moment to share some words of comfort and support with your AAPI friends and neighbors and with the leaders of these 2 critical chambers of commerce that serve our region.
Thank you!
The Board and Staff of the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia.
On Thursday, March 11, 2021, we presented the 2021 Shape of the Region Conference in partnership with 12 regional organizations to inspire our community about ways our region is coming together to institute real change. More than 300 people registered to attend the virtual event.
This year’s conference, Co-Creating a New Northern Virginia: An Emerging Vision of a More Inclusive, Sustainable, and Equitable Region examined strategies for advancing a more inclusive economy in our region while facing some of the biggest challenges of our day – entrenched poverty, structural racism, and environmental sustainability.
Today, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is releasing its Every Voice Counts: Count the Region final report that provides a comprehensive understanding of our efforts to support the 2020 Census with our “get out the count” initiative. This report will also serve as a roadmap for the next census count in 2030.
READ FULL REPORT
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia released its 2019 -2020 Annual Report, “Build Back -Dream Forward,” which highlights our response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact.
The past year has tested pretty much everything we are as human beings, as a country, and as a local community. The Community Foundation, therefore, spent considerable time during 2020 in response mode, helping the region address not one, but two crises – the COVID-19 pandemic and racial injustice.
Food insecurity has been a problem in America long before the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. But it’s clear the virus has exacerbated the problem, with images of long lines at food distribution sites shining a light on the harsh reality.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, food pantries across Northern Virginia quickly shifted into high gear, after experiencing a surge of residents in need of food assistance. In Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the Nation’s wealthiest regions, more than 70,000 people live in poverty, according to government figures.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted education in so many ways, forcing most school districts in Northern Virginia to adopt a virtual format to deliver instruction. But some officials across the region have expressed concern over how the switch to online learning could increase learning challenges for underprivileged students in the region.
In response to this challenging time, a group of longtime area educators got together last summer to form EduTutorVA, a new education nonprofit working to connect tutors with K-12 students at risk of falling behind in their classes during this pandemic. The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is supporting the program through its new EduTutorVA Fiscal Sponsorship Fund.
by Elizabeth Hughes, Senior Director of Insight RegionTM
Insight Region recently released its first research brief, Unequal Burden, which highlighted the state of housing affordability in Northern Virginia. The brief and the release event that we held on January 13th (watch here) have generated a lot of questions about how we move forward as a region.
In this post, I am joined by my colleague Michelle Krocker (MK) from the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance to begin to answer some of those questions. Please check back as we continue to update this page with more responses.
As the coronavirus crisis unfolded across our region, food banks had to expand their services to address not only the increase in the demand for food aid, but also healthcare, housing assistance, and other services.
Today, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia announced it has awarded $100,000 in grants to four organizations in a new round of funding through its Build Back – Dream Forward COVID-19 Response initiative. The grant recipients include ALIVE!, Arlington Free Clinic, Capital Area Food Bank, and The House, Inc. Each organization received a grant of $25,000 that will be used to support creative and innovative solutions for food access and distribution to residents in Northern Virginia.