Announcing Additional 2020 Grants
The Community Foundation announces additional investments beyond our traditional grant cycles to expand the work of organizations organizations working intentionally to advance inclusion and justice in their mission, programming, and staff development.
This year, COVID-19 pushed us to redirect some of our funding to address immediate needs and also starkly revealed the disproportionate impact on people of color in our community. As part of our commitment to confronting racism in Lancaster County, this new round of funding continues the work towards addressing the gap between Black-led social change organizations and philanthropic support for those organizations, while also providing capacity-building resources. Grants are one tool the Community Foundation has to help build equity in Lancaster County through investing in organizations that are actively advancing this work, and our community endowment allows us to invest additional dollars to help catalyze unique community opportunities.
These investments help towards realizing what Adrienne Maree Brown and other organizers refer to as “emergence.” Brown reminds us that “emergence notices the way small actions and connections create complex systems, patterns that become ecosystems and societies. Emergence…is how we change.” We recognize that generations of oppression will take long-term, sustained, and intentional work to address, and while we as a Foundation have only just begun the work of intentionally reckoning with our role in systems of oppression, we are also honing our capacity to help amplify new and proven approaches to doing this work.
Every change begins with one action, and then another, and another. We commit to a continued investment in organizations that are intentionally working to address inequities in our community.
Working inwards as well as out
We know that we continue to have much to learn as an organization. In addition to these investments, the Community Foundation is undergoing a year-long, facilitated racial equity learning agenda. As we continue to learn internally, we commit to transparency and open-source sharing of as much information as possible. Our goal, beyond development of our staff and board, is to inform the community of our work, and starting in the new year, to share knowledge along our organizational journey for others to use as inspiration or resource.
If you are interested in learning more about our work, or have questions, we encourage you to get in touch so we can connect further.