Impact Stories

Growing Philanthropy

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.

Read More

June 15, 2023
The William J. Foreman Memorial scholarship was launched in 2007 by Louise and Mark Foreman, to honor the memory of their son Will Foreman, who was tragically killed in an automobile accident on February 24, 2006. Will had a generous heart, a loving spirit, and was drawn to helping those less fortunate than himself. He had faced personal adversity during his high school years, but successfully overcame it to graduate and begin college studies in computer science. In those seventeen years, the scholarship has awarded $100,000 to 57 students who, like Will, have overcome adversity. The Community Foundation spoke with Louise Foreman, who offered some thoughts on this remarkable and incredible achievement.

Read More

June 14, 2023
Charitable giving can be nebulous and intimidating, but the millions of small donations made by regular people each day towards causes they care about prove that many give in spite of whatever fears or reservations they may have. In the past few years, people have become fairly familiar with things like a gofundme or a Facebook fundraiser, where people very quickly come together to support a cause or individual in need. But family giving doesn’t always have to look like this. I recently spoke to Marcy Mager and Mimi and Truman Deliee, who launched a family fund in 2022.

Read More

June 13, 2023
In the fall of 2021, Mimi and Truman Deliee were 16 and 12 years old respectively. They told their grandmother, Marcy Mager that since they had everything they needed, she should take any money she intended to spend on holiday gifts and donate it to charity. She was not entirely surprised, since the children had long helped their parents working in food pantries and the family sometimes gave donations in addition to the more typical gifts of clothes, books, toys and electronics.

Read More

May 9, 2023
One year, when I was probably 7 or 8, I was watching the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon with my family. It wasn’t the first time we’d had it on, and wouldn’t be the last, but I remember how excited everyone on the television was as the donations came pouring in. Something – maybe one of the performances? An appeal? Memory fails – triggered me to ask my parents if I could call the number and help. “That’s great!” they said. “You’ve got an allowance; you can certainly give something.” I called the number on the screen and spoke to someone offering $5, or maybe $10.

Read More

April 25, 2023
"Several years ago, my wife Laura and I heard Eileen Ellsworth talk about a new fund with the Community Foundation that could help our region for generations to come. It was a permanent endowment that would help fund the wide variety of community needs that the Community Foundation supports.

Read More

October 11, 2022
Dear Community Foundation Friends and Supporters,

Last Friday evening, we gathered for the first time in 3 years to celebrate our region’s resilience, success, and growing sense of home and place. As always, your support literally helped Raise the Region!

More than 500 guests joined us in person and another 100 tuned in to the virtual live stream. It was an incredibly heartening reunion and opportunity to celebrate the ties that bind us all together. Your support and generosity were unprecedented. The event raised a total of $650,000, which will help the Community Foundation build a community that works for everyone. 

Read More

September 28, 2022
Corporate and individual sponsorships are a critical tool for the Community Foundation to lead and convene the community. One of our 2022 Raise the Region Gala sponsors is Peraton, a tech and cybersecurity firm based in Herndon, Virginia. Peraton have experienced a meteoric rise since their founding in 2017, and were expected to be worth $5 billion dollars in 2021. We spoke with Stefanie Hale, Corporate Citizenship lead, about what community building means to Peraton.

Read More

October 7, 2020
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia hosted its first virtual Raise the Region Gala on Friday, October 2, 2020. Business, philanthropic, and community leaders joined us from their own homes across the region and the nation to take part in this live-streamed event.

Hosted by NBC4’s Leon Harris, 2020 Raise the Region gala is an annual mission-critical fundraiser that enables the Community Foundation to respond to need, seed innovation, and lead and convene the community. The theme for this year’s event was Building a Community that Works for Everyone.

Read More

August 20, 2020
Arlington Arts Center (AAC) and the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia are pleased to present Passage, a site-specific public artwork by artist Lynda Andrews-Barry. The work will be featured on AAC’s lawn at 3550 Wilson Boulevard in Arlington from August 22 through December 13, 2020.

Passageis the result of a unique partnership between AAC and the Community Foundation. The work was funded by the Foundation’s Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts and is undertaken in cooperation with Arlington Public Art. Passage will include 26 large-scale sculptures created from driftwood, rebar, metal hardware, and canvas sails—designed to evoke the ships that transported more than 12 million kidnapped and enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Read More

August 11, 2020
"I'm just really happy that I'm able to make a difference and want to show that Asian Americans are with health care workers and we want to unite," Sebastian Lu says

Sebastian Lu, a 17-year-old pianist in Fairfax, Virginia, who despite having his junior interrupted by COVID-19, decided not to sit on the sidelines, but was motivated to help others impacted by the pandemic by launching a GoFundMe campaign.

Read More

July 20, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has pulled back the curtain and exposed longstanding structural and systemic inequities that exist in communities of color across our nation. From the education system to the labor market, to housing, health, and economic stability the coronavirus has had a disproportionate impact on African American and Latino communities.

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia recently hosted a virtual Town Hall – Build Back – Dream Forward where local leaders representing business, education, economic development, and philanthropy gathered to raise awareness around the uneven playing field that pre-existed COVID-19 and potential paths forward for greater equity in our economic systems.

Read More

June 30, 2020
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia announced today it has awarded $440,000 in its fifth round of COVID-19 Response Fund Grants to 22 local organizations providing relief and services to communities in the region disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, including vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.

Read More

May 27, 2020
(Reston, VA) - For the 16th consecutive year, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia's Giving Circle of HOPE(GCH) evaluated and is awarding grants to eight nonprofits that are serving the needs of families in Northern Virginia. The GCH reviewed 31 grant requests and, through the power of collective giving, will award $56,000 this year--with over $1.25 million over its history--to further the aims of nonprofits working to improve the lives of those in our community.

Read More

May 26, 2020
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is pleased to announce the Round 4 grantees from the COVID-19 Response Fund for Northern Virginia.

So many individuals and families in our region continue to suffer terribly under the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus and its fallout. Applications for unemployment benefits are at an all-time high, and local human service nonprofits now report a 3-5 fold increase in demand for their services. Direct financial assistance to individuals and families hardest hit by the crisis remains a top priority for our COVID-19 Response Fund.

Each of the following Round 4 grantees have the experience, community reach, and infrastructure to deploy financial assistance to our most vulnerable families and individuals. The grants, which total $280,000, will provide direct cash payments, emergency loans, and direct payments of rent, utilities, and groceries to those who most need it, as more fully described below.

In addition, through the grant to CASA de Virginia, we have given special attention to the disproportionate impact of the virus on the Latinx and Hispanic communities in Northern Virginia. Most of our health districts now report COVID-19 cases disaggregated by race and ethnicity. In the Fairfax Health District alone, for example, their most recent data dashboard shows that Latinx and Hispanics constitute 16.8% of the total county population but 63.7% of the COVID-19 cases!

Read More

April 24, 2020
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is pleased to announce the Round 3 grantees from the COVID-19 Response Fund for Northern Virginia.

Organizations offering access to health care, mental health care, and dental health care for low income, uninsured and underinsured residents, and organizations offering direct services to victims of domestic violence which is soaring under stay at home orders across our region, were invited to apply. And while we originally estimated that approximately $350,000 would be awarded in Round 3, strong contributions to the COVID-19 Response Fund and a phenomenal demand for support has resulted in grants totaling $715,000 to the following 35 organizations on the front line of the pandemic.

Read More

April 3, 2020
Today, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia announces the grantees from Round 2 of the COVID-19 Response Fund for Northern Virginia.

Mindful that the coronavirus will have a disproportionate impact on people with the least ability to meet it, the Community Foundation directed Round 2 funding to local organizations meeting basic needs and offering emergency financial assistance to our most vulnerable neighbors. A total of $360,000 has been awarded to the following 28 organizations who continue to man the front lines of the crisis.

Read More

April 2, 2020
The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia recently announced the 2020 Ross-Roberts Fund for the Arts Grantees. This year’s recipients include the Arlington Arts Center, American Youth Philharmonic Orchestras, and Creative Cauldron, Inc. All three organizations received grants of $20,000 for two years in $10,000 installments per year. Programs supported by the grants include performing and visual arts, education and training, and art exhibitions.

Read More

March 31, 2020
In an effort to support the fast-emerging public health needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, VeriSign Inc. of Reston, Virginia announced that it is donating $500,000 to the COVID-19 Response Fund for Northern Virginia as part of a broader effort to support those in the region who are experiencing hardship due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Read More

March 18, 2020

The donation will kick-start COVID-19 response funds  to four local community foundations

CFNOVA DoctorsAmazon has donated $1 million total to kick-start collaborative emergency COVID-19 response funds that will immediately benefit four local community foundations across the Greater Washington region who are working to support vulnerable populations disproportionately impacted amid the coronavirus outbreak. ACT for Alexandria, Arlington Community Foundation, Community Foundation for Northern Virginia and the Greater Washington Community Foundation will each use these funds for grants to nonprofits addressing food insecurity, housing/shelter, and providing emergency financial assistance.

Read More