This last year impacted us foundationally – our society, our community, our organization, and both of us. COVID-19 disrupted all facets of our society and it exposed some of our region’s deepest challenges. Our community is not equitable. So many of our neighbors, especially those who are Black, Latinx or living close to the edge of poverty, were disproportionately impacted. We are committed to not forgetting what we’ve learned, and we’re committed to working on the root causes and on solutions.

Your Community Foundation quickly pivoted to respond to what our community needed – swiftly providing relief from the pandemic’s economic, health and social fallout via a collaborative effort with the United Way – in the form of direct assistance to nonprofit and grassroots organizations who needed us the most. THANK YOU to our most generous donors...

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented challenge for our community and the generosity of our donors increased dramatically in response. In partnership with our donors, the Community Foundation distributed $172 million in grants and support in 2020, compared to $134 million in 2019 – an increase of over 28%. In 2020, 72% of our total grant dollars were given from donor-advised funds. The increased generosity of our donors follows a national trend - community foundations across the country gave a collective estimated $6.7 billion for COVID-19 relief.

Helen Keller said “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” That sentiment is true of so many things, but especially giving. Through the Community Foundation, our donors work together to make a collective impact in Atlanta and beyond. Did you know that 72% of grants from the Community Foundation are donor-directed? Our donors are passionate about a diverse array of causes and it’s no surprise that the biggest program areas in 2020 were those most heavily hit by the pandemic, including education and healthcare.

The COVID-19 pandemic touched and disrupted every facet of our society. It ushered in a “perfect storm” of public health and economic crises not seen in our lifetime, and exacerbated systemic inequities that many Georgians have suffered under for generations.

In 2020, our organization, individual donors and so many others grappled with how to make a difference for those impacted. COVID-19 was like a knot, tangling around education, public health, transportation and more. It was important to tackle the most urgent issues first, like food insecurity and emergency assistance for families to pay their bills, but the core of the knot was – and is – the most tangled. Why were so many of us poised to be disproportionately impacted by the pandemic? Historical and systemic racism and policies have created ongoing and severe disparities. How can we advocate and use strategic giving to change that paradigm? We partner and invest in an equitable future.

“The strength of our COVID-19 response was in our relationships – our partnerships and the co-investment of our donors. That is how we will move the needle on equity in Atlanta going forward.”

– Frank Fernandez

In March of 2020, it became apparent that COVID-19 would have a huge impact on the Atlanta region. Children were out of school, businesses were temporarily closing, performances were shuttered and workers were being laid off. Over the course of a weekend, the Community Foundation and United Way of Greater Atlanta connected, planned and pulled together, creating the Greater Atlanta COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund.

Arts organizations faced an especially perilous situation in 2020 due to revenue losses from shuttered performances and closures. The Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund supported small– to mid-sized arts organizations including those that responded with safe, innovative programming to uplift arts in the region. $1.76 million was distributed. 66% went to organizations founded or led by Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC); 18 had never before received an Arts Fund grant. In late December, an anonymous donor gave $150,000 to an additional 10 organizations.

Since 2016, the Community Foundation has worked to close the opportunity gap in the Thomasville Heights neighborhood in southeast Atlanta. Begun by our Spark Opportunity Giving Circle and their collective grantmaking, this place-focused approach has been a catalyst for additional investments. Our impact strategy includes grantmaking, strategic nonprofit partnerships, policy advocacy and THRIVE Thomasville, a resident-led council that directs funding to community-designed projects. THRIVE builds on neighborhood strengths and enables community-led strate­gies to develop and address neighborhood needs by the residents who call it home.

In 2020, the place-based giving focus in Thomasville Heights shifted to address the short-term and immediate needs of the Thomasville Heights community, such as housing, food insecurity and emergency funds.

The GoATL Fund accelerates lasting outcomes in our community through impact investing, the practice of strategically investing capital to achieve both a social and a financial return. Using cost-effective loan capital, GoATL invests in outcomes ranging from healthy, safe housing to more equitable access to living-wage careers. In 2020, we invested an additional $1.5M in the community and repurposed $2M in existing investments so that our partners could utilize the funds for COVID-19 recovery.

The Community Foundation has a legacy of commitment to democracy and civic and community engagement in the Atlanta region. That commitment has grown to include more intentional outreach across the south. In 2020, Vote Your Voice, an initiative of the Community Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center, launched to encourage non-partisan voter engagement in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The Community Foundation is our region’s steward of the long-term philanthropic assets that are entrusted to us for the future of greater Atlanta. At the end of 2020, our total assets were $1.2 billion.

We distributed over $172 million in grants and support in 2020. That represents 11,000 grants awarded to over 3,300 nonprofits locally, nationally and internationally. Of these grants, over 66% stayed within our metro Atlanta region. Grants were made to 31 issue areas, the top three being Education, Arts/Culture/Humanities and Human Services. Our organization distributed 14% of our total assets through grantmaking in 2020.

Our generous donors make our work possible. We received more than $139 million in gifts in 2020 and established 31 new funds. Our most popular giving vehicle is the donor-advised fund. In 2020, 72% of our total grant dollars were given through donor-advised funds.

The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a strong challenge to companies, but it has also provided an opportunity for companies to demonstrate their robustness and ability to manage and take advantage of such a dynamic environment. With this backdrop, the Investment Pool was able to overcome negative returns posted early in the year to earn a positive return of 8.4% for 2020. The Foundation’s Investment Pool continues to post strong, positive three-, five- and 10-year returns: 6.9%, 9.1% and 7.9%, respectively. With capable oversight from our Board’s experienced investment committee and Mary Cernilli, director of investments, we will continue to work on achieving the investment goals that are so critical for preserving long-term philanthropic capital for the region/community.