Community Foundation Attacks Twin Pandemics in Historic Effort

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Calling the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial inequity “fundamental challenges to people’s lives in Greater New Haven,” The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven began the year by launching Stepping Forward, an unprecedented commitment of $26 million to address these issues, and the largest community investment in The Community Foundation’s history.

Stepping Forward includes both a major increase over the next three years in The Foundation’s grantmaking and other current spending as well as new monies for endowed funds. The Foundation indicated that it anticipates that Stepping Forward will increase its spending in 2021 through 2023 by $15 million over current levels and will add $11 million to its permanent endowment to create three new permanent funds.

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Stepping Forward is being funded through the use of The Foundation’s discretionary endowments and through donor contributions.  While The Foundation both increased and accelerated its 2020 grantmaking to meet the challenges of COVID, Stepping Forward is intended to go well beyond what was done in 2020.

“COVID’s impact continues to be devastating,” said William W. Ginsberg, CEO of The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, as the initiative was launched. “It poses existential challenges to our local nonprofits and the services they provide. Even beyond that, COVID’s economic impact has greatly increased the numbers of those among us who are vulnerable to hunger, eviction and suffering, and COVID has also exposed the tragic health and education inequities in our community.”

At the first in a series of community convenings around Stepping Forward, held in February, participants highlighted a need for collective organizing, changes to policy, changes to mindsets and new relationships across all sectors of society as among the priorities for Greater New Haven.

Ginsberg noted that “The racially disparate impacts of COVID together with brutal incidents of anti-Black violence this past year have unleashed powerful new energy for advancing racial equity here in Greater New Haven as elsewhere. The challenges of 2020 have shown us that old ways of doing things are not adequate. To help our community move forward in these uniquely challenging times, Stepping Forward will support both the change makers and the service providers.”

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As part of the program initiative, there will be funding to advance racial equity and dismantle racism and gender inequity, new funding opportunities for community-based, grassroots organizing groups that raise community voices, and increased investment in minority and woman entrepreneurs, small businesses and the New Haven entrepreneurial ecosystem, according to Foundation officials.

Foundation donors are responding generously to Stepping Forward, the organization reports, with nearly $6 million already contributed both for current spending and for new endowments. The Foundation is launching three new permanent endowments as part of Stepping Forward: the Racial Equity Fund, the Basic Needs Fund and the Civic Awareness and Engagement Fund.

“When The Foundation was created 93 years ago, its founders wisely envisioned that extraordinary circumstances might arise in the future that would necessitate extraordinary extractions from the endowment,” said Flemming L. Norcott, Jr., Chair of The Foundation’s Board of Directors and retired Connecticut Supreme Court Justice. “Our Board unanimously believes that we are at such a moment in our community today, and that Stepping Forward strikes the right balance as we seek both to meet today’s urgent needs and to serve the community in perpetuity.”

To meet the changing needs in the community, Stepping Forward will also involve important changes in grantmaking priorities and processes as well as capacity building trainings for nonprofits. New priorities will include:

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  • grants for immediate COVID relief,

  • grants and leadership development support for nonprofits led by people of color,

  • grants to those working, advocating and organizing to change racially inequitable systems in health, education, employment, housing and civic participation, and

  • arts grants that advance racial equity and community healing from COVID.

It is envisioned that Stepping Forward will evolve over the next three years as community needs change in response to the changing dynamics of COVID and racial equity.

“For us to be as impactful as possible with these additional resources, we know that we need to understand all that is happening in our community,” said Christina Ciociola, the Foundation’s Senior Vice-President for Grantmaking & Strategy. “This means understanding the data. It means listening to those who are on the front lines in battling COVID and in advancing racial equity. It means partnering with others, both new partners and those we have collaborated with for years. It means supporting organizations that we have not traditionally known of or reached. This is how we approached our COVID response in 2020 and it is our commitment for Stepping Forward as well.”

In implementing Stepping Forward, The Foundation will work with the volunteer leaders of its Community Fund for Women & Girls and its Progreso Latino Fund, and also with United Way of Greater New Haven on COVID relief and with its affiliate Valley Community Foundation in the Lower Naugatuck Valley.

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven in Connecticut is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the U.S. and was established in 1928 as the permanent charitable endowment for New Haven and its surrounding communities.