Our Strategic Vision — Greater Washington Community Foundation

Together, We Prosper

A 10-Year Framework to Pursue Economic Justice in the Greater Washington Region

Some say the racial wealth gap is too big to solve; we believe it’s too urgent to be ignored. And we’re taking action.

Greater Washington is home to nine of the 20 wealthiest counties in the United States — but families in our community are not equally sharing in this wealth.

Greater Washington isn’t unique in facing this challenge. Yet, what sets us apart is the stark inequities that have led to some of the nation’s wealthiest zip codes being just a short drive from some of its poorest. 

As home to the nation’s capital — and all the prestige, influence, wealth, and power it provides — we can and must do better. And that is what we intend to do.

We believe that by pursuing economic justice, we will ultimately improve the quality of life for everyone who lives, works, and raises a family in this region.  

We are galvanizing a united coalition of donors and doers to advance a bold vision – grounded in equity and economic justice – that will grow opportunity and secure prosperity for all who call this region home.

Together, we can achieve this Vision. Together, our entire region will prosper.

Our Commitment

We will provide strong leadership to do the difficult but essential work of identifying the most promising ways to make progress, and then mobilizing the resources and support to make it happen.

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 close 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.

  • Strengthen Neighborhoods and Community Institutions by using data to direct resources toward neighborhoods with the greatest needs and the community-based organizations that serve them. 

  • Connect Philanthropy to Impact by leveraging our unique value and expertise to mobilize resources for this community.

Our Levers for Change

  • Research: Commission and disseminate cutting-edge research that grows our understanding of the most critical issues and proven solutions.

  • Community Engagement: Center the lived experiences, leadership, and voices of our community.

  • Policy Advocacy: Advocate for and advance economic interventions that will produce better outcomes for our neighbors and communities.

  • Neighborhood Investment: Organize and deploy place-based strategies at the level of neighborhoods that allow us to go deeper to identify proven solutions that can be applied at scale.

Our Focus on Neighborhoods

To achieve our vision of a region where every person prospers and thrives, 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, and other areas. This includes directing resources toward historically underinvested communities and partnering with the community-based organizations with deep roots serving these communities. 

By prioritizing these Priority Areas, 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. 

Moving Forward, Together

We spent a lot of time listening — and we’ve heard loud and clear the voices of our donors, partners, and community members who have grown impatient for meaningful change.

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 heal by fully exercising their talents, creativity in ways that benefit themselves, their families and neighborhoods, and our entire community.

Together, we can make it happen. Together, we prosper.


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