What We Do

Working to achieve our vision with hope and compassion as our guides.

Advancing Efforts to Eliminate the Root Causes and Effects of Poverty and Discrimination

We believe that while our community has achieved great economic success and many have benefited greatly from that success — including our family — there are many others who have been left out or left behind. The inequities in our economic structures and fraying holes in our social fabric are real, and we choose not to ignore them.

We are a hopeful family. Our vision is a Greenville that is just, compassionate, and vibrant. Our mission, then, is to advance efforts to eliminate the root causes and effects of poverty and discrimination.

How We Do It

A Collective Effort

These Longstanding and Systemic Societal Problems Can’t Be Tackled Alone

We are committed to using all our forms of capital — social, moral, intellectual, reputational, and financial — to partner with organizations and people who share our vision of a just, compassionate, and vibrant community.

Together we work to achieve that vision. Sometimes this means helping to start a specific project or initiative; often it means supporting the work of a broad coalition of diverse people and organizations. Always it means listening and learning and being open to the ideas of others, especially those who are closest to the problems our community is trying to solve.

Our Strategies
Addressing and investing in systems-level change.

1. Seeking systemic and sustainable solutions to historically intractable problems

For a child to thrive, for a family to succeed, the environment in which they live every day must be healthy and supportive. To make that happen, the social and governmental systems which create that environment must function effectively, efficiently, and justly.

Increasingly we support work that recognizes the interdependence of issues such as education, health, and financial stability, develops strategies to tackle them holistically, and includes advocacy for policy change as a key component.

2. Investing in nonprofit organizations committed to building their capacity to serve community needs

The work of social change requires highly effective organizations made up of highly skilled and effective leaders, both staff and board, with a commitment to continuous learning. Those are the organizations and leaders with whom we want to work, and whose continuous learning we want to encourage.

Today’s challenges require ever-increasing skills and knowledge, and we support nonprofit professionals and board leaders in their learning journeys.

3. Pursuing opportunities for collaborative philanthropic effort

When possible and advantageous, we partner with other foundations and philanthropic entities, pooling resources and other forms of capital to support ambitious efforts targeting poverty and discrimination.

We leverage the power of collective philanthropy to encourage others to help find solutions.

4. Building strategic local and regional impact initiatives into our investment portfolio

Beginning in 2019, we will invest a percentage of our assets locally in trusted organizations whose work and mission closely aligns with ours. Our first investments will be in CommunityWorks Carolina and the Greenville Housing Fund.

5. Supporting grassroots community organizing: funding where it exists, encouraging where it’s needed

We want to amplify the voices of our community, so that lifted together they can gain the attention of policy makers and raise awareness, inform, educate, persuade, and convince them to address the inequities that have been allowed to exist for too long.

What We Fund
Our grantmaking focuses on four funding areas: 

1. General Operating

We know the value of unrestricted dollars to every nonprofit. We are willing to provide general operating funds to organizations with which we have a strong relationship.

2. Capacity Building

Wise nonprofits are always seeking to strengthen their ability to achieve their missions. Building capacity takes different forms; we want to support strong nonprofits on their learning journey.

3. Initiatives

We are interested in seeding or sustaining innovative approaches to solving a specific issue. However, we want to see how a specific initiative is driving toward a larger strategic goal.

4. Capital

We will consider capital requests from organizations we consider to be “anchor institutions” for our community.

Impact Investing

We want to use our resources in strategic and socially responsible ways. We have adjusted our investment portfolio to exclude categories of investments that are not in alignment with our values. But we must do more: make investments that closely reflect our values and what we want to see happen in our community.

Beginning in 2019, we will invest a portion of our assets strategically in Greenville County, in organizations or businesses in which we have high confidence and with which our mission is tightly aligned.

Our first place-based investments are in CommunityWorks Carolina and the Greenville Housing Fund.