Impact Stories

In 2023, the Community foundation awarded more than $7 million in grants and scholarships, including $1,038,812 in grants from our discretionary funds, and donor advised funds that the Community Foundation awarded to directly support our community. Forty-four organizations were awarded $763,969 in our Community Investment Funds (CIF) cycle. Organizations that receive this funding have proven that they work to support differing needs and address complex social issues across the region. This funding, and the work it enables, is built on two of the core pillars of the Community Foundation's strategic work: to build communitiy resilience, and to advance social and economic mobility for all of Northern Virginia's residents.

Here are just a few examples of how our 2023 CIF grantees are changing lives:

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As more Americans report feeling lonely either all of the time or most of the time, there is a need to build greater community resilience as an antidote to the "loneliness epidemic." Our 2023 annual report clearly shows more strategic action towards the goal of community resilience, one of four pillars of our current strategic plan to help build a community that works for everyone. During this year, the Community Foundation became part of a national movement to help rebuild social trust and civic healing. Through this, we learned that the way back to unity is us. When we show up, do what we can, and hold hope, we become the cure.

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On Friday, February 9 2024, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia hosted its 2024 Shape of the Region Conference in collaboration with 19 regional partners, which highlighted a key problem facing our region, and the whole country today: Americans’ belief that most people can be trusted declined 47 percent from 1984 through 2022, according to the General Social Survey. Only a quarter of Americans say that most people can be trusted as of 2022.

As keynote speaker David Brooks says, “America is fractured and living a quiet crisis of disconnection. We have lost our trust in each other and our institutions. Divided, we face uncertainty, social turmoil, and political gridlock. Yet, within every community lies an answer.” In Northern Virginia, our Insight Region^® Senior Director Denise Bellows discussed the trends in national and local data, showing that all indicators of the Virginia Trust Index are down over the past several years. Only around a third of Northern Virginians consider their neighbors “trustworthy.” You can read the presentation here.

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The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia welcomes Renée Byng Yancey as its new President and CEO beginning January 29, 2024. This appointment follows an exhaustive nationwide search led by the Community Foundation’s Board of Directors, in consultation with Executive Search Firm Sterling Martin Associates.  Renée is the outgoing Chief External Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Officer for the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and is a long-term resident of Northern Virginia.

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The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia’s annual discretionary Community Investment Funds, Environment Fund, and Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts grant have opened as of January 10, 2024.

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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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