We seek to support community and ensure nonprofits’ success by building trusting relationships with nonprofit organizations across the region that are doing life-improving work in the community. This includes grantmaking as well as “more than money” support to advance our shared goals.
We will engage the community we serve by listening to diverse community voices and by responding to needs as they emerge by:
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Using a racial justice lens, with attention to organizations led by and serving BIPOC communities, by increasing the percentage of funding to BIPOC and under-resourced communities and streamlining our application process to make it easier to receive resources from us.
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Relying on community members’ firsthand experience and conducting our own research to identify areas of need where we can offer resources and support social change. We commit to engaging the community to help us identify challenges and opportunities and work with us to address them and integrating community-led grant-making and funding processes.
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Committing to transparency and sharing our experience and data to show the impact of Foundation investments, reporting on where we and our partners have been successful, where we have not and where we need more information to make a judgment.
We will focus our Foundation-directed grantmaking on the community issue areas listed below, and we will intentionally engage the community in establishing priorities across these areas.
- Arts and culture: To strengthen small-to-mid-sized arts organizations and support individual artists by fostering a diverse, healthy and just arts ecosystem.
- Basic needs: To provide direct assistance to low-income individuals and families to attain food, shelter, physical and mental health care, child care, education and employment.
- Economic mobility: To reduce the racial wealth gap in Allegheny County.
- Environmental action: To help communities at risk of environmental harm and prevent exposure.
- Equity and social justice: To support civic participation and community organizing to achieve policy changes that will address the root causes of economic and racial inequities.