Together, We Prosper

A 10-Year Framework to Pursue Economic Justice in the Greater Washington Region

Some say the racial wealth gap is too big to solve; we believe it’s too urgent to be ignored. And we’re taking action.

Greater Washington is home to nine of the 20 wealthiest counties in the United States — but families in our community are not equally sharing in this wealth.

Greater Washington isn’t unique in facing this challenge. Yet, what sets us apart is the stark inequities that have led to some of the nation’s wealthiest zip codes being just a short drive from some of its poorest. 

As home to the nation’s capital — and all the prestige, influence, wealth, and power it provides — we can and must do better. And that is what we intend to do.

We believe that by pursuing economic justice, we will ultimately improve the quality of life for everyone who lives, works, and raises a family in this region.  

We are galvanizing a united coalition of donors and doers to advance a bold vision – grounded in equity and economic justice – that will grow opportunity and secure prosperity for all who call this region home.

Together, we can achieve this Vision. Together, our entire region will prosper.

Our Commitment

We will provide strong leadership to do the difficult but essential work of identifying the most promising ways to make progress, and then mobilizing the resources and support to make it happen.

At The Community Foundation, we have framed our community leadership approach around the following goals:

  • Pursue economic justice by investing in strategies to increase economic mobility and close the racial wealth gap.

  • Address Critical Community Needs, including responding to crises, to stabilize and improve the quality of life for our neighbors and communities.

  • Strengthen Neighborhoods and Community Institutions by using data to direct resources toward neighborhoods with the greatest needs and the community-based organizations that serve them. 

  • Connect Philanthropy to Impact by leveraging our unique value and expertise to mobilize resources for this community.

Our Levers for Change

  • Research: Commission and disseminate cutting-edge research that grows our understanding of the most critical issues and proven solutions.

  • Community Engagement: Center the lived experiences, leadership, and voices of our community.

  • Policy Advocacy: Advocate for and advance economic interventions that will produce better outcomes for our neighbors and communities.

  • Neighborhood Investment: Organize and deploy place-based strategies at the level of neighborhoods that allow us to go deeper to identify proven solutions that can be applied at scale.

Our Focus on Neighborhoods

To achieve our vision of a region where every person prospers and thrives, we have developed a place-based strategy to focus our discretionary grantmaking and community leadership work on high opportunity neighborhoods.

Using data from The Brookings Institution, the Metropolitan Washington Council on Governments, and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), we identified Priority Areas at the zip code level – representing places in our region where people are experiencing the deepest disparities in homeownership, income, educational attainment, and other areas. This includes directing resources toward historically underinvested communities and partnering with the community-based organizations with deep roots serving these communities. 

By prioritizing these Priority Areas, we are looking to go deeper in places that are rife with opportunity for impact. What we learn from our work in these places can then inform our work around the region as well as advocacy around key interventions that are evidence-based and ready for wider adoption, including for public investment. 

Moving Forward, Together

We spent a lot of time listening — and we’ve heard loud and clear the voices of our donors, partners, and community members who have grown impatient for meaningful change.

We invite you to join us on this journey toward creating a just, equitable, and thriving community — one in which everyone has the opportunity to prosper from economic stability and opportunity; thrive through greater access to quality education, health care, and housing; and heal by fully exercising their talents, creativity in ways that benefit themselves, their families and neighborhoods, and our entire community.

Together, we can make it happen. Together, we prosper.

Frequently Asked Questions for Nonprofits

  • The Greater Washington Community Foundation’s mission and work have always been centered on creating a just, equitable, and thriving community. Our previous community leadership framework was grounded in the broad areas of education, workforce and economic development, housing and homelessness, community and civic engagement, disaster response, and arts and culture. Our new strategic vision reflects a sharpening and refinement of our focus recognizing that race, place, and identity intersect across these issues, thus creating a need to move beyond silos to address root causes to our region’s greatest challenges.

    We will continue our partnerships with nonprofit organizations through existing programs, such as the Partnership to End Homelessness, Sharing Community Funds, Workforce Development Collaborative, among others. We expect to offer new opportunities for community engagement and learning together, and for partnerships to address our goals and the evolving needs of our community, especially guided by our equity lens. As our work evolves, we commit to sharing updates with our partners, soliciting feedback to inform our work, and remaining responsive to community needs.

  • The Community Foundation will continue to award discretionary grants from several funds through a competitive application process, usually during scheduled quarterly grant rounds and occasional solicited (invite-only) grant opportunities. We will continue to use grant committees to complete a rigorous review of each application based on criteria established to fulfill the charitable mission of the specific funding opportunity.

    We have added a “Commitment to Equitable Grantmaking” to our discretionary grant RFPs, along with specific questions to understand how our grant funding and our nonprofits partners impact the diverse communities that we serve and create more equitable outcomes.

 

Frequently Asked Questions for Donors

  • Our Community Leadership framework represents the range of ways that The Community Foundation, our donors, and partners support and advance tangible, lasting impact for this region. As such, we remain committed to responding to critical community needs and opportunities as they arise, and to connecting our donor’s philanthropy to impact.

    As a community foundation, our job is to help our donors find the most rewarding and impactful ways to give back to this community, and beyond. While we offer many ways for our donors to align their giving with our vision for this region, our donors will continue to make grants through their funds according to their philanthropic passion and purpose. We hope that our donors see how their interests intersect with our vision for this region and will be inspired to join us on this journey to build a more equitable and just Greater Washington.

    The major change for our donors is there will be more opportunities to join us on this journey. We will offer more events to explore how to pursue economic justice for this region. We will expand investment options and collaborative funding opportunities, including new field of interest and community endowment funds that allow our donors to co-invest with us to address critical community needs. And we will offer more opportunities for our donors to align their giving with our vision and work in this region.

  • The Greater Washington Community Foundation welcomes individuals, families, and businesses with a wide range of philanthropic interests to establish a fund. Our community of givers includes hundreds of families and organizations giving millions of dollars locally, nationally, and internationally. We do not dictate the focus of grants made from our donors through their funds – with the exception of restricting grants to Specially Designated Nationals (according to the PATRIOT Act) and hate groups as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Donors of all sorts are invited to join us in the pursuit of an equitable, just, and thriving region.