Friends and Supporters of GWCF, 

For me, New Year’s weekend is like the continental divide – from there you can see all the way back to the beginning of 2022 as well as an aspirational look forward through 2023. From that vantage point, the Greater Worcester Community Foundation is in the midst of some truly exciting, multi-year initiatives.

We are both grateful and humbled by the trust the citizens of Worcester County place in us, as they gifted record levels of donations to our endowment and operations. The $15 + Million received added to existing or created new funds and will go a long way to helping everyone in our communities thrive. The $200,000 + donations to our Civic Leadership annual fund help us build resilience and make strategic investments that will leverage our work in years to come. Many thanks to all of you who participated!

We take the stewardship of those funds very seriously and continue our pursuit of excellence in the way we operate internally and demonstrate the effectiveness of our work. In 2022, we were again recognized by the Council of Foundations for exceeding their National Standards – a rigorous tri-annual evaluation of our operational effectiveness. We also asked the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to survey our grantees to assess our grantmaking processes and our effectiveness as a community partner. We scored in the top ten percent of all Foundations in CEP’s dataset for our impact on our local community and had the top score amongst similar community foundations nationwide. In 2023, we will continue this pursuit by conducting a donor perception survey, an employee climate survey, and a Board self-assessment.

On the grantmaking side, we continued our broad-based support of the community by disbursing $8.5 million. We are particularly proud of three key areas of grantmaking that demonstrate the Foundation’s ability to bring funds into the Community and focus on key areas of need:

• Basic needs support. In addition to our ongoing grant making, the Foundation is disbursing $2.3 million of federal Community Development Block Grant funds in Worcester County to support capacity building in the food security sector. This is on top of our existing partnership with the Worcester County Food Bank.

• Youth and Family support. There is much research that shows that people who attain college degrees and are engaged in their communities are much more likely to earn a living wage and live happy, productive lives. A large part of our discretionary and donor advised fund grant making is in this area. The Foundation set a record by granting over $740,000 in scholarships to Worcester County youth in 2022 and hope to exceed $760,000 this coming year. We also facilitated another cohort of our innovative Youth Community Improvement program that includes a 12-week youth led program for area high school students and their granting of $25,000 to nonprofits focused on youth mental health, career pathways, basic needs and efforts that foster community building.

• Arts and Culture. Arts institutions, programs and organizations are key components in creating a participative, thriving community and the Foundation invests heavily in this area. Additionally, we continued our relationship with the Barr Foundation and their Creative Commonwealth Initiative to bring money to Worcester to provide training and coaching of individual artists to help them learn the skills needed to build sustainable businesses. The 2023 expanded Business of Art cohort is being selected this month.

The Foundation’s unique vantage point in the center of the Greater Worcester community creates countless opportunity - and great responsibility to invest wisely to maximize the benefit to all citizens and provide those with significant challenges the chance to thrive. I am proud of the work we are doing and look forward to wonderful things to come! If you would like to learn more about supporting our community by creating a legacy fund or supporting our ongoing capacity building work, please let us know.

Be well,