Arizona

The Arizona Community Foundation (ACF) has announced grant, scholarship, small business relief, and loan distributions totaling $147,193,601 during the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2022. The total includes funds from ACF’s statewide affiliates in Cochise, Flagstaff, the Gila Valley, Sedona, Yavapai County, and Yuma. Excluding small business relief grants and impact loans, ACF and its donors distributed more than $113 million across 7,345 grants, a 22 percent increase from FY21. Both discretionary and advised grants and scholarships were awarded in five strategic priority areas: Health Innovations (nearly $46 million), Community Improvement & Development ($6.8 million), Environment & Sustainability ($4.9 million), Arts & Culture ($5.7 million), and Quality Education ($33 million).

California

The Humboldt Area Foundation and one of its affiliates, the Wild Rivers Community Foundation, have announced a fund to address the murders of Indigenous women and girls. On May 5, while marking Missing and Murdered Indigenous People’s (MMIP) Awareness Day in partnership with tribal communities in the Pacific Redwoods region, the foundations launched the Pacific Redwoods MMIP Crisis Action Fund with seed funding from individual donors and the foundations’ discretionary funds. Believed to be the first of its kind created by a U.S. foundation, the fund will work to close technical assistance gaps and help support regional research, policy advocacy, and crisis response and recovery. In addition, the fund will foster continued partnership with tribal leaders and Indigenous experts to encourage community support and address the root causes of the public safety threat, which is the third leading cause of death for Indigenous women and girls.

The Orange County Community Foundation in Newport Beach has announced the appointment of Joanna Kong, Kristen Monson, Bob Whalen, and former ambassador Gaddi H. Vasquez to its board. Kong is executive director of the Sun Family Foundation. Monson retired in 2012 after serving most recently as executive vice president of the Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO). Whalen is a public finance attorney. And Vasquez served in the energy industry before being tapped in 2006 to serve as U.S. ambassador to the U.S. Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome.

Massachusetts

The Latino Equity Fund (LEF) at the Boston Foundation has announced $200,000 in grants to eight Latinx-focused organizations as part of LEF’s COVID-19 Response Fund partnership with the foundation. The funds will support grantee partners as they continue to provide enhanced services to help Latinx communities recover from the strains caused by COVID-19 and its longer-term economic challenges. Recipients include Maverick Landing Community Services, Mujeres Unidas Avanzando, the Latinx Health Collaborative, and Sociedad Latina.

The Cambridge Community Foundation has announced scholarships totaling more than $410,000. Eight seniors from Cambridge Rindge and Latin School received scholarships through CCF and its donors, including five who were awarded Falcon Pride Scholarships, which offer $10,000 of support over four years of their postsecondary education. In addition, the Legends Live Forever, Xavier Louis-Jacques Scholarship, which helps promising graduates attending a historically Black college or university, named two awardees, and a talented young artist received the Walter Knight Sturges Visual Arts Scholarship.

New York

The New York Community Trust has announced grants totaling $1.05 million from its GoVoteNYC Fund in support of 11 nonprofits. The groups will conduct get-out-the-vote activities and ranked-choice voting education, produce candidate forums and guides, and deliver language-specific events and materials to diverse New Yorkers. Recipients include the Hispanic Federation, MinKwon Center for Community Action, New York City Employment & Training Coalition, and New York Civic Engagement Table.

The Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo has announced that president and CEO Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker will retire at the end of 2022 after 18 years. She will be succeeded by executive vice president Betsy Constantine, who joined the foundation in 2009 and has served in her current role since 2017.

Ohio

The Dayton Foundation has announced that the Tornado Survivor Pathways to Homeownership Program was awarded the 2022 Innovative Project of the Year by the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) in recognition of its efforts to address the needs of families affected by the 2019 tornadoes that tore through the greater Dayton region. In the wake of 19 tornadoes on May 27, 2019, thousands of individuals and families, including many who live in the region’s most vulnerable communities, were left in need of shelter and basic necessities. While the repair and rebuild work for homeowners was managed by the Miami Valley Long Term Recovery Operations Group, the Tornado Survivor Pathways to Homeownership Program helped qualified, tornado-impacted renters become first-time homeowners, while also helping to stabilize tornado-impacted neighborhoods through investment in new, owner-occupied housing and to disrupt generational poverty cycles.

The Columbus Foundation has announced the launch of the Equitable Small Business Fund, which is focused on closing the racial wealth gap in the Columbus region by increasing access to capital and services for entrepreneurs of color and Black-owned and -led businesses in particular. To that end, the foundation aims to make, on average, 10 investments of $500,000 each to entities that catalyze capital and/or build capacity in the small business ecosystem for small businesses owned by people of color.

Oregon

The Oregon Community Foundation has announced that it will reinvest $480,000 in 24 community-based, culturally led organizations to bolster their success and further their positive impact across the state. The organizations have been part of a pilot advisory think tank developed in 2020 called the Oregon Black Student Success Network (OBSSN). Recipients include Elevate Oregon, Black Southern Oregon Alliance, Eugene Springfield NAACP, and Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center.