For Greater Atlanta is a storytelling series celebrating the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta’s 75th anniversary. Each story revisits a defining moment or movement in Atlanta’s history, exploring how the Foundation partnered with donors, nonprofits and community leaders to help the region meet the moment and build the greater Atlanta we know today.

Atlanta has long been known as a city of opportunity. But economic opportunities have never been equally accessible to all who call it home. 

As the region has grown, there have continued to be persistent gaps- research has found that: 

• Atlanta is consistently ranked #1 in the country for income inequality 

• White households in Atlanta have 46x the wealth that Black households in Atlanta have

• Atlanta ranks #50 out of the top 50 metro areas in economic mobility 

Over time, the Community Foundation has worked to better understand and address the causes of these gaps. That meant asking a bigger question: How can we help more Atlantans access economic mobility? 

Affordable Postsecondary Education 

The Community Foundation has long supported community members in their quest to achieve higher incomes, and the organizations that are supporting them in that quest.  

Key Moment: Achieve Atlanta (2014) 

In 2014, the Community Foundation partnered with the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation and Atlanta Public Schools to create Achieve Atlanta, bringing philanthropic, civic, and public resources together to help more students reach and complete college.

Each year, we partner with Achieve Atlanta and other nonprofit organizations, schools, and donors to administer millions of dollars to scholarship funds to students across our region.

For too many in our region, the economic opportunities and benefits of college have been stifled by student loan debt.  

Key Moment: Student Loan Repayment Program (2023) 

In 2023, the Community Foundation launched the Student Loan Repayment Program, providing student loan relief to metro Atlanta residents and giving recipients greater flexibility to decide how to use the money that would otherwise go toward loan payments. 

The results of this program illustrate how reducing one financial burden can create opportunities elsewhere. Recipients have reported using those dollars to pay down other debt, cover everyday expenses, build emergency savings, pay for housing, support family members, and start or strengthen small businesses. Some have described being able to buy homes, care for family members, or experience less financial stress.

The Student Loan Repayment Program demonstrates an important part of the wealth-building equation: sometimes creating greater opportunity begins by removing a barrier that makes it difficult to move forward. 

Entrepreneurship 

The Community Foundation understands that wealth is more than dollars on a spreadsheet for families across our region. Wealth represents many things to many people, including: 

•  resilience, the ability to withstand a financial emergency or save for future goals like home ownership 

• opportunity, the ability to start a business or make an investment 

• and sustainability- the ability to pass assets down to family members or retire on your own terms 

Key Moment: Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative (2014) 

In 2014, the Community Foundation partnered with the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Kendeda Fund to launch the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, focused on closing racial wealth gaps and building wealth in communities with limited economic opportunity through entrepreneurship and business opportunity. That initiative has evolved into Kindred Futures, a nonprofit organization that invests in Black wealth-building throughout the South.

Key Moment: Sweetness of Giving (2023) 

More recently, Sweetness of Giving has brought Black donors together to learn, pool resources, and invest collectively in Atlanta communities. 

Its early focus on Black business and entrepreneurship connects two important ideas: the power of philanthropy and the power of ownership. 

It also builds on a much longer tradition of Black generosity in Atlanta. CFGA’s role is not to create that tradition, but to provide another platform for donors to come together and invest in the communities and opportunities they care about. 

Helping Atlanta Meet The Moment

Atlanta’s economy has changed dramatically in recent decades, but ensuring access to opportunity remains one of the region’s defining challenges. 

Building greater economic opportunity requires multiple pathways, from education and training to entrepreneurship and homeownership. And no organization can do this work alone. 

Philanthropy can help expand those pathways. Donors can support individuals working toward greater opportunity while also investing in the organizations and systems working to make that opportunity more widely accessible. 

Meeting the moment means investing not only in what people need today, but in what can help them build for tomorrow. 

Because Atlanta’s future is stronger when more Atlantans have the opportunity to build wealth, shape their own futures, and thrive. 

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Keep the Giving Going.

Be a part of Atlanta’s philanthropic legacy. Whether you’re beginning your giving journey or looking to deepen your impact, the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta can help you turn your generosity into lasting change.