What
We Do
Our Strategic Vision
The Greater Washington Community Foundation is powered by impactful partners and generous donors. Together, we are committed to building a region where every person prospers.
Our region remains one of the most powerful and prosperous in the country. Yet our prosperity is not shared equally; many of our neighbors face significant barriers to opportunity.
We believe that by increasing economic mobility and advancing economic justice, we will ultimately improve the quality of life for everyone who lives, works, and raises a family in this region.
Our Goals
At The Community Foundation, we have framed our community leadership approach around the following goals:
Pursue Economic Justice
By investing in strategies to increase economic mobility and help narrow the racial wealth gap.
Address Critical Community Needs
Including responding to crises, to stabilize and improve the quality of life for our neighbors and communities.
Connect Philanthropy to Impact
By leveraging our unique value and expertise to mobilize resources for this community.
Strengthen Neighborhood & Community Institutions
By using data to direct resources toward neighborhoods with the greatest needs and the community organizations that serve them.
Our North Star
We recognize that our region’s biggest challenges stem from economic injustice and persistent inequities.
Our strategic vision is to pursue economic justice and help close our region’s racial wealth gap so that people of all races, places, and identities can reach their full potential.
We are galvanizing a united coalition of donors and doers to advance a bold vision that will grow opportunity and secure prosperity for all who call this region home. We imagine a region that has moved beyond simply surviving to becoming a welcoming and inclusive place where we can all prosper, together.
Our Focus on Neighborhoods
To achieve our vision for a thriving region, we have developed a place-based strategy to focus our discretionary grantmaking and community leadership work on high opportunity neighborhoods.
Using data from The Brookings Institution, the Metropolitan Washington Council on Governments, and the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), we identified Priority Areas at the zip code level – representing places in our region where people are experiencing the deepest disparities in homeownership, income, educational attainment, life expectancy, and other areas. Our strategy includes directing resources toward historically underinvested communities and partnering with the community-based organizations with deep roots serving these communities.
By prioritizing these communities, we are looking to go deeper in places that are rife with opportunity for impact. What we learn from our work in these places can then inform our work around the region as well as advocacy around key interventions that are evidence-based and ready for wider adoption, including for public investment.
For more information on the community priorities near you, visit our Community pages.
District of Columbia
Ward 7/8—east of the Anacostia River*
Columbia Heights*
Mt. Vernon/Shaw
Montgomery County
Takoma Park, Langley Park
East County*—White Oak, Burtonsville
Upcounty—Germantown*, Gaithersburg
Wheaton, Aspen Hill
Prince George’s County
Langley Park, Chillum, Adelphi (Purple Line)*
Seat Pleasant, Largo Corridor (Blue Line)*
Suitland, Branch Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue
Northern Virginia
Bailey's Crossroads
Route 1 Corridor
Moving Forward, Together
We spent a lot of time listening to the voices of donors, partners, and community members who are eager to see meaningful change in our community. Ultimately, we believe this energized commitment to advancing economic justice can ignite a powerful ripple effect to make our entire region stronger and more prosperous.
We invite you to join us on this journey toward creating a just, equitable, and thriving community — one in which everyone has the opportunity to prosper from economic stability and opportunity; thrive through greater access to quality education, health care, and housing; and flourish by fully exercising their talents, creativity in ways that benefit themselves, their families and neighborhoods, and our entire community.
