Greater Washington Community Foundation

The organization distributes nearly $100 million in grants annually, with about 60 percent of grants funding organizations in the D.C. area while also funding national and international organizations.

Since 2021, Greater Washington Community Foundation has changed its strategic goals to focus on left-of-center concepts concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion, stating that the new commitment of the foundation was to “lead with racial equity and inclusion.” ^{1 2 3} According to its website, it restricts grantmaking to organizations deemed hate groups by the controversial left-of-center Southern Poverty Law Center. ¹

Background and History

Greater Washington Community Foundation was founded in 1973 to facilitate philanthropy to the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area. The organization was founded with initial funding from the Hattie M. Strong Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, and the Cummins Engine Foundation. The foundation funded many regional efforts around homelessness, substance abuse, and AIDS in its early years and was also the sponsor of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries, which were both “component funds” of the foundation. ⁴

Other component funds and sponsored organizations have included an initiative founded by the late former Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke during the construction of FedEx Field called The LEARN Foundation (Landover Educational Athletic Recreational Nonprofit); the Washington Area Partnership for Immigrants; Prince George’s Community Foundation; and the Alexandria Community Trust, now operating as a standalone foundation called ACT for Alexandria. ⁴

Strategic Plan

In 2021, shortly after the Greater Washington Community Foundation hired Tonia Wellons as its president and CEO, the organization announced a new ten-year strategic plan that announced a “new north star” for the foundation centered around promoting racial equity. The organization stated that it was “uniquely positioned at the intersection of racialized wealth and racialized poverty” and that, while the Washington area is home to nine of the 20 wealthiest countries in the nation, “families in our community are not equally sharing in this wealth…our community’s Black, Brown, and other communities of color are significantly lagging behind their White neighbors.” ¹

The strategic plan also called for the foundation to double its assets over ten years, and to “pursue economic justice by investing in strategies to increase economic mobility and close the racial wealth gap.” The foundation also announced that it would update its grant proposal process to include an evaluation of grant applications on racial equity grounds. ¹

One frequently-asked-questions document published by the foundation for donors stated that donors who open a fund with the foundation are not necessarily required to focus on equity and that the foundation does not “dictate the focus of grants made from our donors through their funds, with the exception of restricting grants to Specially Designated Nationals (according to the PATRIOT Act) and hate groups as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center.” ¹

Organizations Funded

Greater Washington Community Foundation provides grants to hundreds of organizations annually and has distributed over $1.5 billion to organizations since 1973. Much of the organization’s giving is directed by donors who manage donor-advised funds within the organization. Some of the groups funded by the foundation include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the ACLU Foundation of the National Capital Area, the Brennan Center for Justice, the League of Women Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, NEO Philanthropy, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). ^{2 3}