Community Endowment Fund- Solidarity Program- Reimagine Grants

The Community Endowment Fund's Solidarity Program offers Reimagine Grants to support racial equity initiatives in Charlottesville and surrounding counties. These grants, up to $50,000, encourage creative experimentation and movement building among nonprofits and community organizations. The program focuses on long-term systemic change led by Black and ALAANA communities, emphasizing solidarity over charity. Eligible applicants include 501(c)(3) organizations and fiscally sponsored groups that directly benefit local residents.

The Community Endowment Fund (CEF) reflects the Foundation’s ever-growing commitment to regenerative philanthropy. A diverse and regionally representative, openly recruited Community Advisory Committee leads all CEF program development and funding decision-making.
The Community Endowment Fund, through our Solidarity program, currently offers three (3) application-based grant opportunities – Renewal, Reimagine, and Reshaping Futures grants – that support movement groups advancing justice and racial equity in Charlottesville and/or the surrounding counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Nelson, and Orange.
About the Solidarity Program
Our Solidarity program supports racial equity movement building in our region.
To achieve lasting, community-level change, “movement building” groups go beyond providing direct services and individual relief, and instead seek to alter or completely reimagine broken systems.
The most effective drivers of this sort of change are the social movements led by those most affected by racial inequities.
Solidarity Grants
The Solidarity program offers three (3) Community Endowment Fund grant opportunities — Renewal, Reimagine, and Reshaping Futures — designed to help build, strengthen, and sustain our local movement infrastructure. Each Solidarity grant is informed by learnings from our 2023-2024 pilot year, our grant-making history, and the collective wisdom and expressed needs of movement groups and thinkers from across our region and beyond.
Depending on the grant, support might include but isn’t limited to:
General operations, research and development, program experimentation and piloting;Strategic planning and restructuring, training, coalition building, and increased frontline/grassroots support;Advocacy, legal, and direct action campaigns and mobilization;Sabbatical support, conflict resolution/mediation, and other collective healing, joyful resistance, and reparative work;Narrative change storytelling and creative expression; andPopular education and community organizing.
What is the Reimagine Grant?
Comprised largely of service providers, our centuries-old nonprofit sector was never designed to correct or reimagine unjust institutions and systems. U.S. nonprofit laws and funding models largely perpetuate this status quo.
Reimagine Grants of up to $50,000 seek to encourage nonconformity, creativity, and experimentation by supporting idea research and development, planning, visioning, pausing, resetting, restructuring or, when necessary, closing. Applicants can also apply for funding to support short-term/one-time professional services support, such as nonprofit legal or accounting assistance, and support for staff/volunteer training that enhances their movement building capacity.

Eligibility

Tax-Exempt Local Charitable Status Applicants must be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, school, governmental or religious entity, or a group fiscally sponsored by a mission-aligned 501(c)(3) organization, whose work directly benefits residents of Charlottesville or the counties of Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, Louisa, Nelson, and Orange. Nonconcurrent Grantee or Applicant Status Unless serving as a fiscal sponsor, applicants may only submit one funding request to the Solidarity program per calendar year. Past Solidarity program and other Community Endowment Fund grantees must have also fulfilled all close-out requirements of their previous grant to be eligible to apply for a Reimagine Grant.Power Building & Sharing The Solidarity program supports Black- and ALAANA-led initiatives that advance racial equity through movement building. We consider Black- and ALAANA-led as any of the following:Executive Director(s) or equivalentStaff majorityVolunteer majority (if a volunteer-led group or initiative)Board majorityProject team majorityMovement Building The Solidarity program recognizes that approaches to movement building vary and occur along a continuum. When reviewing proposals, preference is given to applicants whose strategies are primarily Proactive or Transformative. (See What is Movement Building? for further explanation.)

Ineligibility

The Community Foundation is unable to accept Reimagine Grant applications from fiscally sponsored businesses or for-profit entities at this time.