Author Archives: Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta

By Ayana Gabriel, vice president, community impact, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta recently announced more than $1.2 million in grants and investments awarded to fund efforts in community development, education and nonprofit technical assistance, following last week’s announcement for $1.06 million in grants for the arts. These $2.26 million […]

By Frank Fernandez, President and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.  At the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta we’re celebrating our 70th Anniversary of serving you, the metro Atlanta region. To do that, we’re inviting you to be our guests on our tab at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in […]

By Erin Drury Boorn, senior philanthropic officer, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta On August 26, 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium, which banned evictions in counties experiencing high levels of community transmission of COVID-19. Landlords in metro Atlanta can now proceed with evictions unimpeded by pandemic […]

By Clarke Henderson, program associate, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta This summer, we have seen observable effects of global climate change on our environment. Extreme weather events and record-breaking heat waves, like the one that gripped the Pacific Northwest, are coming in far greater frequency. While cities like Vancouver and Portland experienced the brunt of […]

Ayana Gabriel joined the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta recently as Vice President, Community Impact. To celebrate her first 30 days with the Community Foundation, Erin Dreiling, marketing and communications manager at the Foundation, sat down to interview Ayana on her perspective on community work and grantmaking. Here is that Q&A to help others get […]

Guest post on behalf of the Greater Atlanta Summer Learning Council With schools now back in session, it’s not too early to think about quality programs for children when summer rolls around again. Nearly half a million children in greater Atlanta live in communities with low or very low child well-being and lack the basic opportunities and […]

By Felix Rodriguez, program associate, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Formally recognized in June 2008 (and still currently recognized today), Bebe Moore Campbell National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month – otherwise known as BIPOC Mental Health Awareness month – was established to bring awareness to the unique struggles that people of color and other underrepresented groups face […]

By Lauren Thomas Priest, MNM, program associate, prosperous people, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta As a part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) have been expanded to give more families access to higher tax credits. Economists estimate that these tax changes will reduce […]

Guest post by Erika Curtis, Communications Manager, Georgia Justice Project “You do the crime, you do the time” right? Sound reasonable? Let’s consider for a moment an individual who has been convicted and sentenced to incarceration for forgery – we’ll call her Jane. Jane is sentenced to 20 years, serve five. She spends the next five years incarcerated, […]

Guest post by Semira Ajani, program director at HABESHA, Inc. It was about 10 years ago when HABESHA, Inc. took on the role of providing workforce development programming. At this time, the organization experienced a growing demand from the community as well as partners to develop a green jobs training model and, as a result, HABESHA’s […]

Guest post by Sonjui Kumar, Board Chair of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta and one of the Founding partners of Kumar, Prabhu, Patel and Banerjee, LLC and Aparna Bhattacharyya, Executive Director of Raksha, Inc.  At 8 a.m. on the morning after the Atlanta Spa shootings on March 16, the Asian American community of metro Atlanta […]

By Barrett Krise, senior philanthropic officer, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta You don’t have to look very far right now to see the division that exists between us. There is a literal division: meetings and gatherings via Zoom and FaceTime rather than in person or in community. There is ideological division between political parties and cultural […]

By Katrina DeBerry, program officer, thriving communities, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta As Americans, we believe in the ideals of fairness and equality for our families and ourselves. Unfortunately, the struggle has always been about whether we feel those same ideals apply to our neighbors. We wrestle between, ‘I should have the right to live […]

Guest post by Gilda (Gigi) Pedraza, executive director, Latino Community Fund (LCF Georgia)  Ana took a deep breath, summoned her courage and asked, “My daughter had kidney surgery a few years ago – where can she get the COVID-19 vaccine?” While the ask was simple, what she really was asking, was for a place that […]

By Felix Rodriguez, program associate, strong families, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta 2020 was an incredibly hard year for a number of very obvious and very difficult reasons, and there were times when it seemed hard to find a glimmer of hope. Through these difficult times though, people have stepped up to support one another, […]

By Erin Dreiling, marketing and communications manager, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Marilynn Winn thinks big. When she created a nonprofit organization in 2012, she knew the name had to have scale and Women on the Rise was born. Winn has devoted herself to ensuring that formerly incarcerated women of color have a voice. In […]

By Elyse Hammett, vice president marketing and communications, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Hundreds of metro Atlanta nonprofits have been bolstered during the COVID-19 crisis through more than $18 million deployed by the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and United Way of Greater Atlanta’s Greater Atlanta COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund. Thousands of individuals, families, […]

Guest post By Natalia Garzón, director of development, We Love BuHi In March of 2020, people were not interested in listening to oral histories—people were interested in surviving. This was a truth that We Love BuHi, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, faced when COVID-19 found its way to the center of the immigrant communities of Atlanta. The […]

By Debbie Schumacher-Jones, executive administrative assistant to the CEO and board liaison, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta is at a pivotal time in 2021 and as we look ahead to our strategic plan for the next five years, we are excited by the opportunity that lies ahead. The Foundation […]

By Nikonie Brown, marketing administrative assistant, Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta Sometimes an introduction from a colleague can lead to a phenomenal opportunity to change lives, change futures and change families. This is the case for Dr. Kevin James, president of Morris Brown College, and Dr. Alieizoria Redd, executive director of Covenant House Georgia, who are constructing […]