Impact Stories

Grants

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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Eleven Northern Virginia Schools Benefit from Healthy Kids Grants

August 22, 2024

Cool Springs Elementary School, a 2024 Healthy Kids grantee, will allow students to use functional fitness and yoga equipment to combine the 5 C's (contributor, collaborator, critical thinker, communicator, creator) with their 5 components of fitness.

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia has awarded $19,130 to eleven schools in Northern Virginia through its 2024 Healthy Kids Grants. Schools awarded will be implementing new or reinforcing established programs focused on students’ nutrition, physical activity, or better mental health in the 2024-2025 school year. Over the course of fourteen years, the Healthy Kids Grants have awarded over $200,000 in support of healthy lifestyles through increased exercise, balanced nutrition, and constructive mental health practices. 

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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 regionprimarily 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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Future Kings and the Innovation Fund

June 26, 2023
There is a need in Northern Virginia for more professionals entering the Life Sciences field. One major barrier to fulfilling this need is the limited workplace experience for graduate students preparing to enter the Life Sciences field. Another challenge contributing to this lack of Life Science professionals is the availability of trained instructors who are familiar with advanced life science concepts and techniques who have mastered college-level life-sciences material that is specially formatted for students in secondary school. The Future Kings have developed an innovative approach that is designed to help solve these challenges. The innovation combines college-level course material specially designed for secondary students with an internship for the graduate students that includes both teaching adolescents and working in a professional lab.

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Fairfax County Park Foundation Goes Mobile

June 15, 2023
“It’s such a poignant moment when a student tells me ‘Oh, I’ve never seen a worm before,’” says Tammy Schwab, the Manager, Education & Outreach, Resource Management Division at the Fairfax County Park Authority. “Being a better steward of the environment takes that kind of spark, where a child or even one of their parents notices the bugs and the birds for the first time.” The Fairfax County Park Authority hopes to bring more of those moments across Northern Virginia, as they will use the 2023 Environment Fund Grant awarded to the Fairfax County Park Foundation to fund a Mobile Nature Center, which will be able to provide programs like this to neighborhoods across Fairfax County.

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Forty-four Organizations Awarded $763,969 in 2023 Grants Cycle

April 25, 2023
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia has awarded $763,696 in grants to 44 local organizations through its 2023 Community Investment Funds (CIF), 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 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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Aging in Northern Virginia

March 22, 2023

Research and Investments to support those 65 and older


Northern Virginia is home to more than 310,000 adults over 65, of which 82 percent are living in a condo or house that they own. These aging homeowners have high rates of disability (28 percent) and poverty (13 percent are living below 200 percent of federal poverty).  Source: American Community Survey, 2015-19; Insight Region® 2023 Growing Old Together in Northern Virginia Report

To address the needs of our aging population, the Community Foundation has produced data-driven reports, developed a permanent endowment, and makes grants annually to support non-profit partners working to support our neighbors 65 and older each year - having awarded $225,000 since 2011 in this field.

Connect with all of our Aging Resources below.

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Community Foundation Awards More than $200,000 in Grants

January 20, 2023
20 January 2023 (Oakton, VA)

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia announces several grants made to organizations through multiple discretionary funds, including the Afghan Refugee and Resettlement Fund, Business Women’s Giving Circle, Healthy Kids Mental Health Grants, the Loudoun Impact Fund, and the Micron Opportunity Fund. These grants, amounting to more than $200,000, will increase equity by supporting educational opportunities, increasing access to social and economic support, and helping strengthen community resilience for residents across the region.

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Afghan Relief and Resettlement Fund Round Five Grants

January 20, 2023

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia launched the Afghan Relief and Resettlement Fund in September 2021 to support Afghans fleeing their home country who either pass through or are resettled in Northern Virginia. To date, grants from the Fund total $282,490, and have focused on critical needs such as food, shelter, healthcare and mental health services, as well as longer-term efforts such as legal services, housing, transportation, education, and English language skills.

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Micron Opportunity Fund 2023 Winners

January 12, 2023
The Micron Opportunity Fund is the result of a collaboration between the Community Foundation and Micron Technology, Inc, to strengthen STEM learning through efforts to build knowledge systems, and capacity in Northern Virginia by ensuring underserved students have access to high-quality STEM learning experiences. 

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Loudoun Impact Fund 2023 Grants

January 12, 2023
The Loudoun Impact Fund is a giving circle of engaged Loudoun County donors managed in partnership by the Community Foundation for Loudoun and Northern Fauquier Counties and the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia. The Fund invests strategically in Loudoun County to promote education, the arts, the environment, and to support the needs of Loudoun families, children and youth. The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia made a grant to the Community Foundation for Loudoun and Northern Fauquier Counties for $29,500, which makes up part of the $112,000 total grant that the Community Foundation for Loudoun and Northern Fauquier Counties is awarding.

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Healthy Kids Mental Health Grants Make Impact at Six Northern Virginia Schools

January 12, 2023
Healthy Kids Grants have traditionally been awarded in the spring and summer for public schools in Northern Virginia that use the funding for a program that promotes nutrition and physical activity. In 2022, the Community Foundation added a grant cycle focused on support for schools offering their students mental health care programming. This is especially pertinent, as rates of youth seeking mental health care treatment have increased, accelerating a pre-pandemic trend. Stay tuned for more about The Shape of Youth Mental Health report, which will be discussed at a Insight Region event on February 1, 2023.

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Business Women's Giving Circle Awards Grants Totaling $50,000

January 12, 2023
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia's Business Women's Giving Circle recently announced the winners of its annual grants cycle. A total of $50,000 has been awarded to three local nonprofit organizations that provide STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Mentorship programs to girls and young women in Northern Virginia in 2022. To date, BWGC has awarded more than $465,000 in grants that have impacted the lives of over 3,250 young people.

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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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