As the Greater New Haven’s largest philanthropy, The Community Foundation is steward not only for the community’s charitable endowment, but also for its aspirations for a brighter future.

The Foundation fulfills these aspirations both by making grants that respond to the community’s top priorities, and by undertaking initiatives in collaboration with other philanthropic leaders in the community.

In early 2006, the foundation held a series of listening sessions with non-profits. They had much to say, and the foundation was eager to listen. The listening sessions with non-profit also resulted in a re-vamping of The Foundation’s grantmaking criteria. The new criteria is designed to support grants that demonstrate the leadership that creates real change, that demonstrate that the change itself can be sustained, and that can be effectively evaluated so that the impact on the community can be better understood.

With these new criteria in place, The Foundation no longer organizes its grantmaking through its traditional focus areas—education, health, youth and community and economic development. This change has created more flexibility in our grantmaking, enabling The Foundation, for example, to support the arts for its value as an enhancement of the community’s quality of life—rather than merely as a way to develop the local economy or to enhance local education, as was formerly the case.