Community Impact
The Community Foundation of Tompkins County awards grants to those groups that we believe will make the differences we desire to see in our community.
The Community Foundation grants support the arts, build civic engagement, enrich education, protect the environment, advance health, and serve individuals in need. Through the Community Foundation, our community’s resources can be preserved, nurtured, and deployed in grants approved by the Community Foundation’s Board of Directors.
The Community Foundation uses a variety of resources to achieve three ultimate goals: advancing problem solving, working with a shared vision, and building community. Moreover, the Community Foundation seeks to better understand opportunities and interventions to guide grant making and to share information with individual donors and the community at large.
The Community Foundation seeks to solve problems and improve our community by using three types of resources:
- financial resources such as grants, gifts to the Foundation, investment stewardship, and financial report analyses;
- knowledge resources such as Listening & Learning sessions, reported current needs, gaps in available services, best practices known here or imported from elsewhere, models of outstanding local providers, grant evaluations, and new theories and proposals about emerging issues; and
- relationship resources such as convening community leaders, engaging donors, facilitating collaborations between providers, and coordinating with funding partners.
We are the center of democratic philanthropy–the place for all people of any means and resources to make personally meaningful, permanent contributions to support the Community Foundation’s philanthropic work.
