Convening for impact

Pictured: Members of Women on the Rise, a funder-partner of the Justice Fund of Georgia, take part in a protest outside Atlanta City Hall; Photo credit: Women on the Rise.

Nonprofit collaboratives and funders’ collectives

Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta donors Enid and Jerry Draluck think a lot about food. The couple previously owned a restaurant and ran a full-service catering business, were among the first 100 donors to the Atlanta Community Food Bank, and are big supporters of the Georgia State University (GSU) food pantry. A tour of GSU’s new food pantry got the couple thinking. “We kept saying, how do people know about when there’s food available, or what other food-serving organizations need?” Enid recalls. “There’s got to be something, so we started talking about, ‘how do we go about making this happen?’”

The couple contacted Liz Liston, their Community Foundation philanthropic advisor, and came up with an idea: the Metro Atlanta Food Consortium. The Foundation’s Community Impact team pitched in, compiling a list of local nonprofits that focus in some way on food-related issues. Their first meeting was in the summer of 2024. “They were from various organizations and very different from each other, and they were all like, ‘there is nothing like this,” Enid said. “By the next meeting at the Community Foundation, we had almost 50 people in the room.”

Of all the roles the Community Foundation serves in the region—funder, philanthropic advisor, resource steward, grant distributor, nonprofit promoter—it is foremost a convener. Sometimes, the Foundation brings together nonprofits to share thought partnership and resources, as in the case of the Metro Atlanta Food Consortium. Other times, it galvanizes donors around a common issue or cause to fund work in that space. The Foundation currently hosts nine of these funders’ collectives, in areas as varied as education, mental health and justice and affinity groups for Asian American, Black American, Latin American and Muslim funders.

The Justice Fund of Georgia is one such funders’ collective. While the collective didn’t originate at the Community Foundation, the Foundation has been involved since the beginning, and is a member of the Justice Fund of Georgia’s inaugural steering committee. Their goal is to impact the adult and youth justice systems in Georgia.

“The Justice Fund of Georgia is aiming to build a sustainable local and national network of funders and community partner organizations in support of justice reform and transformation in Georgia,” says Sara Totonchi, founding partner of Lunoor Consulting and coordinator for the Fund. “There really is just so much intersection when you look at things like poverty, when you look at things like the education system, the health care system,” she adds, “and there’s so many funders that are present in those spaces that would benefit from understanding these intersections better.”

Katrina Mitchell, chief impact officer for United Way of Greater Atlanta, the regional anchor organization for the Justice Fund of Georgia, emphasizes this point. “While United Way of Greater Atlanta is not solely focused on criminal justice reform, we recognize that addressing adult and youth justice issues is essential to improving the well-being of children and families in our communities.”

The Justice Fund for Georgia currently has about 40 funder-partners. To learn more about this Fund or the Foundation’s nonprofit and funders’ collectives, contact Ayana Gabriel, vice president, Community Impact at agabriel@cfgreateratlanta.org or 404.688.5525.