Impact Stories

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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On August 29, 2023 The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia’s Insight Region® Center for Community Research released Getting By: How Northern Virginians Respond When There is Less to Go Around. In 2021, one in five families (20 percent) in Northern Virginia did not earn enough money to meet their basic needs for shelter, food, medical care, and other essentials. An additional nine percent could not cover these basic needs, and pay for childcare. The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia published this report which includes perspectives from real Northern Virginians collated by InsideNOVA and Northern Virginia Family Services.

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Healthy Kids Grants are awarded each year to individual public schools in Northern Virginia that implement a program or strategy to encourage better nutrition/ more physical activity, or better mental health among their student body during the school year. In its thirteenth year, the 2023 grants review committee has awarded $28,535 to fourteen school programs.  Healthy Kids Grants are made possible by the Avalon Charitable Fund, the Chin Family Charitable Fund, the Minton Family Charitable Fund, and the JOY Charitable Fund, all of which are component funds at the Community Foundation.

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Often, philanthropy and the nonprofit sector at large may lose sight of just how much even small, incremental investment can make a meaningful change in people’s lives. The real impact of a couple of hundred dollars on some people can be literally life changing.

Karen Lipsey and Christie Worrell became lifelong friends through their children’s friendship, and over the past few years launched the Level the Field Fund, which they moved to the Community Foundation in April 2023. This fund helps Black college seniors graduate college by paying off the relatively small account balances that may be left when commencement season arrives. In the most stark terms, the Level the Field Fund embodies the spirit of large impact with small investment: most of the awards it gives college students are a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. These gifts enable a student to get their degree and set their lives in positive motion. Level the Field’s goal is to help as many deserving students as possible graduate.

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