The Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region

The Community Foundation empowers nonprofits organizations, philanthropists, business leaders, and public officials to build a region that benefits everyone. We do this by partnering and sharing advice with donors, mentoring nonprofits, convening leaders, and in our own grantmaking. As the region continues to grow, our goal is to expand our impact and partners to benefit the quality of life in our entire region.

The Foundation is the center of overlapping partnerships and networks of generous and dedicated people, working together to make life better in our region. We provide high-impact, flexible giving opportunities for donors, major funding for nonprofits and scholarships for students, and leadership around key community issues.

The Community Foundation is governed by a Board of Directors and staffed by a small team of local experts, representing diverse backgrounds, interests, and professional expertise. Foundation staff members are community and philanthropic experts that work closely with donors, grantees, community leaders, government agencies, and businesses to ensure the Community Foundation effectively meets community needs.

The Community Foundation’s assets currently total more than $110 million. These charitable assets are professionally managed to safeguard principal and yield a competitive rate of return. Oversight of endowed assets is provided by a volunteer Investment Committee which includes top financial and investment experts.

Since 1968, the Foundation has awarded over $100M in grants and scholarships and maintains over $110M in assets under our care. In addition, the Community Foundation continues to lead, support and participate in several regional level initiatives that are changing the game for the Greater Capital Region. These include the Upstate Alliance for the Creative Economy, Capacity Building Training and Grants for Nonprofits, Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, partner with local private foundations, regional community healthcare initiatives with the Hortense and Louis Rubin Community Health Fund, the local Community Indicators, and the Capital Region Coalition to End Homelessness.

In 2019, the Community Foundation launched a partnership with the Institute for Nonprofit Leadership and Community Development at the University at Albany to conduct an assessment of nonprofit board diversity and inclusion throughout the Greater Capital Region. The goal of the assessment was to understand current demographics, identify organizations with policies and procedures related to diversity, and evaluate attitudes around diversity. The report identified challenges nonprofits face when recruiting a diverse pool of candidates and recognized the obstacles community members of diverse communities encounter when serving on boards.

Focused on the assessment’s key findings, the Community Foundation convened community stakeholders to share the findings and identify actionable next steps. In August 2020, the Foundation created and convened the Capital Region Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Action (IDEA) Collaborative – a steering committee comprised of diverse community experts looking to tackle the issue of diversity on nonprofit boards. The IDEA Collaborative led the Foundation through three key equity initiatives in 2020/2021:
1. The Catalysts for Change Leadership Program, an 8-week board development series that will focus on increasing inclusiveness and diversity on nonprofit boards.
2. The Nonprofit Board Inclusion Series, a 3-part training series on creating inclusive and welcoming cultures representative of diverse, traditionally underrepresented communities. The series was tailored to current nonprofit leaders looking to foster inclusive leadership within their organizations.
3. The Foundation conducted a survey; inviting nonprofit organizations to share their information to be included on a list of IDEA-committed organizations seeking to increase diversity on their boards. The listing is a user-friendly and up-to-date Google spreadsheet that can be downloaded and sorted to suit the user’s needs.