Impact Stories

Community Investment Funds

Turning Talk into Action: English Empowerment Center, 2024 Grantee of the Education Fund

January 3, 2025

Building a Community that Works for Everyone

The English Empowerment Center   is a 2024 grantee of the Education Fund, a component of The Permanent Fund for Northern Virginia. To mark the occasion in September, the Community Foundation’s Sari Raskin and Renée Byng Yancey met the Empowerment Center’s Roopal Mehta Saran, Executive Director, and Michael Mahrer, Senior Director of Advancement. Our team was joined by Benton Fisher, a    who collaborates with us on the Avalon Charitable Fund, which he and his wife Joan established. Benton also serves on the Board of the Justice High School Scholarship Fund. We were also happy to include our donor, Benton Fisher, in the visit! They discussed the Center’s history and work within the greater community.

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Packing Love and Compassion: A Visit with Boxes of Basics

September 3, 2024

Recently, the Community Foundation’s Renée Byng Yancey, Sari Raskin, Jennifer Cochran, Gaby Webster, and Amanda Bomfim visited Boxes of Basics, a local nonprofit that provides schoolchildren in need with clothing. Our team met program manager Sally Crockett and Founder/Executive Director Sarah Tyndall to learn more about their critical work and the inspiration behind it.

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Ji Cheon Myung: A Visit with the Family Counseling Center of Greater Washington

September 3, 2024

Recently, the Executive Director of the Family Counseling Center of Greater Washington (FCCGW), Chun-Shin Taylor, PhD, welcomed Sari Raskin and Amanda Bomfim of the Community Foundation to FCCGW’s office and counseling space. Their conversation was a wonderful teaching moment for Sari and Amanda, as the two learned more about past and present Korean-American culture and the client services FCCGW offers.

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The Community Foundation Awards Over $800,000 in Grants to Advance Equity Throughout NOVA

April 17, 2024

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is awarding $805,940 in grants to 49 local organizations through its 2024 Community Investment Funds (CIF), Environment Fund, and Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts competitive cycles. These grants, supported by charitable endowments and managed by the Community Foundation, will address current and emerging needs in the region.
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No Ordinary Community: A Morning at A Farm Less Ordinary

March 21, 2024
Every day, from Monday through Friday, between early February and late November of each year, you’ll find the growers of A Farm Less Ordinary (AFLO) at one of their two work sites in either Leesburg or Lovettsville, Virginia. On a warm Wednesday morning in March, founder and executive director Greg Masucci gives a tour of the full “life cycle” of their operation, from germinating seedlings, to planting crops, to harvesting mature vegetables.

A Farm Less Ordinary was awarded a Community Investment Fund Grant under the category for organizations serving individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities in 2022. Greg was also featured in one of the videos we shared at the 2022 Raise the Region gala. “We were able to keep some of the growers employed through the off-season with that grant,” Greg explained, “which is something you always worry about, having consistent, meaningful work. Especially for people with disabilities.” He talks through other challenges people with disabilities face in terms of accessible work. Greg mentions how the statistics suggest 65% of people on the autism spectrum don’t drive. In a place like Loudoun County with less transit access compared to Arlington or DC, this could mean not only being cut off from work, but from community itself.

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Cross-Sector Social Responsibility

July 19, 2023
Corporate responsibility plays a major role in the life of the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia, and indeed all nonprofits. A civil society functions best when the nonprofit sector, the government sector, and the business sector work together in tandem to advance the well-being of the people whose lives they touch. For 45 years, CFNOVA has supported and invested in the region primarily through philanthropy and convenings. Our mission to advance equity hinges at those intersections of the three sectors. Most people in this country, in the regular course of their daily activities, will come into contact or collaboration with a nonprofit, a government service, or a major corporation. This relationship, which we can call corporate responsibility, can exist in the form of operational initiatives, strategic transformation, or donations, and sponsorships.

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Community Foundation Awards $763,969 in 2023 Grants

April 25, 2023
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia has awarded $763,969 in competitive grants to 44 local organizations through its 2023 Community Investment Funds, Environment Fund, and Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts, helping support broad-based needs and address complex social issues across the region. This work addresses two of the core pillars of the Community Foundation's strategic work— to build community resilience and advance social and economic mobility for all of Northern Virginia's residents.

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Community Foundation Funds United Community's COMMUN1TY+ Initiative

April 14, 2023
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is delighted to further partner with United Community by partially funding the COMMUN1TY+ Initiative, a project that aligns resources and efforts to support communities based on the needs expressed by residents of Mount Vernon and along the Route 1 Corridor.

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2023 CIF, Arts and Environment Grant Cycles Open Through 2/2

January 4, 2023
Today, our largest annual discretionary grant application process opens with funding available through our Community Investment Funds (CIF), Environment Fund, and Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts. As the Community Foundation works with intentionality to ensure funding is available and accessible to all nonprofits across our region, our team has updated the CIF process this year to provide general operating support, with the flexibility to use that funding where it is most needed.

Learn more about the updates and priority focus areas in the following webinar presented by Sari Raskin, VP of Grants and Community Leadership, and Jennifer Cochran, Manager of Grants and Scholarships.

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2022 Grant to United Community Supports Financial Wellbeing on Route 1 Corridor

December 16, 2022
Rarely has a grant from our Community Foundation made such an immediate impact on the financial wellbeing of families and children as the grant we awarded in the spring of 2022 to United Community.

It began with our Community Foundation applying for and winning a $50,000 grant from a national cohort of funders looking to help community foundations across America help their local residents take advantage of the newly expanded 2021 Child Tax Credit. We matched this award with charitable assets we developed over the years from our Community Investment Funds, then gave $95,000 to United Community. UC then leveraged their deep community roots, hired tax preparation services, and connected 99 households along the Route 1 corridor to those services. As a result, thousands of dollars in income tax refunds poured into the coffers of families that needed it the most. It was an example of “Community Wealth Building” at its very best.

We were so pleased and excited about the outcome of the grant that we created this video story to share with you:

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2022 Grant to SafeSpot Children's Advocacy Center Supports Youth Mental Health

December 7, 2022
In 2022, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia invested time, resources and strategic investments to support access to mental health for Northern Virginia's diverse community.  Its Mental Health grantee, SafeSpot Children's Advocacy Center, provides child abuse victims and their families with a safe environment and support services as they navigate the aftermath of recovery and investigation.

Here is a story from SafeSpot, with a very powerful tale about the impact of this support for children in our region.  If you or someone you know is experiencing child abuse, please contact Virginia's Child Protective Services at 804-786-8536 for help and resources.

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2022 Grant to A Farm Less Ordinary Helps Build Community

November 29, 2022
In 2022, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia launched a new Permanent Fund to support those with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities.  Grants are awarded each year through the Community Investment Funds cycle, supporting the most critical needs throughout our region.

Here is a story from its very first grantee, A Farm Less Ordinary. See how this fund is already making an impact in our region.

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Rebuilding Together Arlington/ Fairfax/ Falls Church Celebrates 300th Project

June 9, 2022
The Community Foundation has long supported organizations that allow our elderly residents in Northern Virginia to live with dignity. The region is home to more than 280,000 seniors, around 80 percent of whom live in a condo or house they own. These aging homeowners tend to have higher rates of disability (about a quarter of whom have a significant cognitive or physical impairment), and are at a higher risk of poverty- about 10 percent are living below 200% of the federal poverty line. Since 2011, the Community Foundation has awarded more than $225,000 to help older adults throughout Northern Virginia stay in their homes.

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Community Foundation Awards $613,725 in Community Investment Fund Grants

April 27, 2022
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia has awarded $613,725 in grants to 50 local organizations through its 2022 Community Investment Funds (CIF), Environment Fund, and Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts, helping respond to need and seed innovative solutions to complex social problems across the region.

As the Community Foundation’s core grants program, funds are invested in organizations serving the northern virginia community in the areas of Aging, Arts, Child and Youth Development, Education, Environment, Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Mental Health, Military Personnel and Families, and Safety Net to Support Basic Needs. This represents the largest ever discretionary grants cycle in the Community Foundation’s history.

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Grant for Nueva Vida supports mental health intervention program for Latinos in Northern Virginia

February 4, 2022
In 2021, Nueva Vida received a two-year grant totaling $30,000 from the Mental Health Fund, a permanent community endowment at the Community Foundation dedicated to the mental health and well-being of all members of the Northern Virginia community. The grant helped Nueva Vida design and implement the Más Fuertes Juntos (Stronger Together) program – a mental health intervention program to assess the emotional well-being and health-related quality of life for uninsured Latinos across Northern Virginia, with a targeted focus in Prince William County.
“The demand for culturally tailored mental health services is a critical need for the overwhelmed uninsured Latino community. Forever funding can help close the vast gaps in equitable mental health care and provide recent Latino immigrants support as they face traumatic exposures of migration, PTSD, depression and stress associated with the immigration experience and the challenges of integration vs. marginalization in the US.”
-Laura A. Logie, PhD, Director of Research, Nueva Vida.

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Community Foundation Opens Three 2022 Grant Cycles

January 5, 2022
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia, a trusted leader in philanthropy in the region announced today the opening of the 2022 grant cycles for its Community Investment Funds (CIF), The Environment Fund, and The Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts. The Community Foundation conducts several discretionary grant cycles each year that help meet critical needs and seed innovative solutions to complex social problems across the region.

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Community Foundation Awards $548,450 in Community Investment, Environment, Arts Grants for 2021

April 28, 2021

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia, a trusted leader in philanthropy in the region announced today it has awarded $548,450 in grants through its Community Investment Funds (CIF),  Environment Fund, and the Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts to 39 local nonprofit organizations. The Community Foundation conducts several discretionary grant cycles each year that help meet critical needs and seed innovative solutions to complex social problems across the region.

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Mental Health Fund Grantees

April 28, 2021

Investments to nurture the emotional health and well-being of the Northern Virginia community


The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is committed to investing in nonprofit organizations dedicated to supporting the emotional health and well-being of all members of the Northern Virginia Community. The following organizations are recipients of annual grants through the Community Investment Funds process, a highly competitive cycle that responds to need throughout the region.

Since 2007, the Community Foundation has awarded more than $940,000 to support mental health across the region.

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Aging Fund Grantees

April 28, 2021

Support for the needs of adults over the age of 65 in Northern Virginia


The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is committed to investing in nonprofit organizations dedicated to supporting the needs of our aging neighbors. Guided by the Community Foundation’s data-driven reports on Aging in this region, the Community Foundation continues to invest in organizations that help the growing number of older adults age in place. The following organizations are recipients of annual grants through the Community Investment Funds process, a highly competitive cycle that responds to need throughout the region.

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Community Foundation Opens Three 2021 Grant Cycles

January 7, 2021

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia, a trusted leader in philanthropy in the region announced today the opening of the 2021 grant cycles for its Community Investment Funds (CIF), The Environment Fund, and The Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts. The Community Foundation conducts several discretionary grant cycles each year that help meet critical needs and seed innovative solutions to complex social problems across the region.

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