Impact Stories

For 2024, the Business Women's Giving Circle at the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia has awarded funding to these three incredible organizations making a difference in the lives of young women and girls in the region:

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The Loudoun Impact Fund recently awarded $116,000 in grants to 15 nonprofit organizations serving Loudoun County, reaching a milestone of surpassing $1 million in grants distributed since 2014. This year’s grant awards were made possible through the generosity of 64 individuals and businesses that pooled charitable gifts.

The Loudoun Impact Fund brings together individuals and businesses interested in grantmaking administered through a joint effort of the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia and the Community Foundation for Loudoun and Northern Fauquier Counties. Grants from the Loudoun Impact Fund support services for at-risk youth, seniors, and people with disabilities in Loudoun County. Since 2014, the Loudoun Impact Fund has granted a cumulative $1,027,725.

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In 2005 when Eileen Ellsworth assumed the role of President and CEO of the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia, CFNOVA had awarded, since its 1978 founding, about $8.2M in grants and scholarships. As of 2023, we’ve awarded $92,463,995.

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Today, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia welcomes Denise Bellows, PhD as the new Senior Director of Insight Region^®, its Center for Community Research.

Trained in community-based participatory research at the University of Maryland, School of Public Health, Denise has spent 17 years providing research and program evaluation support to clients in the federal sector (e.g., federal agencies under the Department of Health and Human Services and the supplemental nutrition programs under the Food and Nutrition Services (FNS)), the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and academic/medical programs such as the Teen and Tot Clinic at Boston Medical Center and the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center.

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Success doesn’t always come in a straight line. For Vivian Cao-Dao, her senior year of high school was upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. She told the Community Foundation that she was motivated to apply by a communicative school administration, and her guidance counselors. She said, “filling out these applications is kind of like exercising. It’s hard to do, but you know it’s important, and it feels so rewarding when you get it done.”

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On November 14th 2023, a diverse group of Northern Virginians gathered at the Community Foundation’s events space, the Penthouse at Three Flint Hill. A week prior, Virginians, Mississippians, New Jerseyans, Pennsylvanians, and a myriad of other Americans had cast votes, and it was in that context of voting, elections, and the bipolarization of America that inspired Mónica Guzmán to write I Never Thought of it That Way.

Mónica shares in her book that both of her parents voted for Trump in 2016, and she voted for Clinton. As a family, they had to figure out how to talk about their fears and worries by engaging productively. Community Foundation President and CEO Eileen Ellsworth mentioned that her parents, who were born in 1910 and 1915, did not discuss with each other who they voted for, even though they voted in every primary and every general election— which in Virginia, are every November.

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During Eileen Ellsworth's 18 years as President and CEO of the Community Foundation, the Permanent Fund for Northern Virginia grew from $60,000 to $26,844,000.  The Community Foundation now relies upon several permanent community endowments that greatly benefit the nonprofits and other charitable programs serving the people who live here. Watch this video in which Eileen shared her vision for the Permanent Fund a few years ago:

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In 2019, worker mental health represented a salient but relatively uncommon issue for Northern Virginia employers: approximately 11 percent of working adults were experiencing mild anxiety or depression, and 7 percent fell into a clinical range.

During the pandemic, these rates spiked, and have remained high. As of May 2023, 58% of Northern Virginia's workforce was experiencing some level of anxiety or depression, and a quarter were in the clinical range— requiring any degree of treatment or intervention. This research estimates that since 2020, Northern Virginia has lost $8 billion each year in unrealized economic output due to the impaired mental health of its workforce: a quadrupling of losses seen prior to the pandemic. We now know that the Commonwealth of Virginia lost $22 billion in potential gross state product in 2022.

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Dear Community Foundation Friends and Supporters,

Last Friday evening we came together for the Community Foundation’s 2023 Raise the Region Gala to celebrate our home, Northern Virginia, and the change-makers in it who never fail to help meet the region’s challenges and expand its opportunities. Our theme for the event was renewal, as every community, and everything in it, must be continuously renewed and reimagined.

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The 2023 Champions for Accountability Badge, awarded in partnership between the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia and the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce, recognizes more than 40 employers willing to collect, share, and act on data about the diversity of their leadership. To receive the badge, an organization must operate in Virginia, Maryland, and/ or Washington DC; collect demographic data on board members and/or c-suite members and executives; and have completed the application by 31 August, 2023. By accepting their badges, the Champions commit to the following action:  

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