Intro Image - Community Impact
Photo by Erich Camping

Community Impact

There are multiple ways to tell our story of impact. We could start with more than five decades of grants and mission-aligned partnerships and end with a really big number: $598,268,994 in grants and scholarships distributed since 1972.

Another important angle is how our model of impact continues to evolve in critical ways through collaboration with donors, professional advisors, nonprofits, and other community partners.

Changing the Culture of Decision-Making

We’re on a mission to help all nonprofit organizations (including our own) make better, more data-informed and community-driven decisions. Our initiative ACT Rochester works to improve problem-solving by making credible, independent, timely, and sound analysis and research available to all.

Partners like the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution have helped us understand that scarcity models that force resources – or the perception of resources – into a zero-sum relationship are not only unfair but untrue. Research from Urban Institute shows that racial equity and economic resilience go hand in hand.

Let’s be honest: We also have a moral imperative to make sure everyone in our eight-county region is able to succeed, regardless of conditions surrounding their marginalization in the past and present.

Equity, Vitality, and a Fund for Every Passion

Our two overarching goals of equity and vitality inform our conversations with donors, our community partnerships, and competitive grantmaking framework. We love learning what makes donors “tick” and pairing them with funding opportunities they didn’t know of before they met us.

Our broad field of interest funds promise a giving opportunity for every passion. You can learn how to be part of lasting community change by exploring these areas: