Foundation Directed Grants Header

Leadership Grantmaking

Foundation-Directed Grantmaking

Foundation-Directed Leadership Grantmaking

The Lehigh Valley Community Foundation has formally adapted incorporating Community Leadership into our Foundation-directed grantmaking platform. The Community Foundation industry defines Community Leadership as the following: The community foundation is a community partner that creates a better future for all by pursuing the community’s greatest opportunities and addressing the most critical challenges, inclusively uniting people, institutions, and resources from throughout the community, and producing significant, widely shared and lasting results. 

Especially in relation to the Leadership Foundation-directed grantmaking focus areas, LVCF is taking an active role in several different initiatives and collaboratives that further the impact of LVCF’s mission. Please view community leadership initiatives under each Leadership Foundation-directed grantmaking focus area below to learn more. Community Investment Funds generate the unrestricted dollars that support Foundation-Directed grantmaking.

Capacity Building

Grantmaking | Capacity Building

The CORE Fellowship Program is a two-year capacity building process designed to bring diverse Lehigh Valley nonprofit leaders together to center equity in themselves, their relationships, their organizations, and the Lehigh Valley non-profit sector. 

The program consists of peer-to-peer learning, individual coaching, consultant pairing for an organizational equity discovery process, and funding to support organizational capacity-building. The fellowship is designed for both nonprofit leaders and their organizations to support equitable change in delivering on their personal and professional mission.  

Goal: Utilizing an equity-centered capacity building approach, LVCF will support individuals and organizations to be equitable in how they operate and how they act.  

Background:

During March 2022, LVCF launched the CORE Fellowship Program that was based off LVCF’s experience in both the Nonprofit Effectiveness Program and Project Equity Initiative, that was jointly launched with UWGLV and FACES International. After formally evaluating the first two years of the Nonprofit Effectiveness Program, the Community Foundation began planning the next iteration of this grantmaking program—which led to the development of the CORE Fellowship Program. The Community Foundation gathered feedback from past and current program grantees and valued partners. To learn more about the history of the Nonprofit Effectiveness Program.

Community Leadership | Capacity Building

The Community Foundation staff have provided leadership in a number of initiatives that support capacity building among nonprofit organizations. Initiatives include Project Equity Initiative and the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank Reinventing Our Communities Program. In addition, staff provide leadership and participate in collaboratives such as the regional Strategic Response Team, Technical Assistance Working Group of the Strategic Response Team, and the Lehigh Valley Funders Group. Learn more…

Early Childhood

Grantmaking | Capacity Building

The Community Foundation manages the funds for several different area-of-interest funds that are focused on supporting early childhood programs and services in the Lehigh Valley.

In the 2022-2023 grant cycle, the Community Foundation grouped these funds together for a competitive grant award process to organizations that are providing early childhood services. The 2023-24 grant cycle, LVCF distributed more than $190,000 in general operating grants to area nonprofits serving youth and families with an emphasis on early childcare as part of its foundation-directed community investments grantmaking. 

The Community Foundation manages several different area-of-interest funds that are focused on supporting Lehigh Valley youth and families, including the Edward & Inez Donley Fund; Walter & Alma Bastian Fund; Frances L. Barnard Fund for Children; Support from Roger & Kathy Yott; Lucille F. Driver Fund; William C. Rybak Fund for Persons with Disabilities; Robert D. & Gwendolyn-Jane Romeril Campership Fund; and Janice & Paul Gross Fund. 

Learn more…

Community Leadership | Capacity Building

Foundation staff serve on the Steering Committee for Allentown’s Neighborhood Partnership Program (NPP), administered by Community Action Lehigh Valley. The Program is focused on serving Youth in Center City Allentown.

Arts, Culture & Creative Economy

Grantmaking | Arts, Culture & Creative Economy

The staff of the Community Foundation participates in several collaboratives that are important to promoting and providing arts & culture in the region. The Lehigh Valley Community Foundation is the regional partner agency of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Through the Partners in the Arts program, LVCF works with the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to distribute grant awards for projects or programs involving artists throughout Region 5, which includes: Carbon, Monroe, Lehigh, and Northampton counties. This program enables the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to reach a wider audience by increasing access to funds for organizations and artists across the state, thereby increasing statewide audience exposure to arts activities. Learn more…

The Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts grants are divided into two grant programs: 

Community Leadership | Arts, Culture & Creative Economy

 The staff of the Community Foundation participates in several collaboratives that are important to promoting and providing arts & culture in the region including Touchstone Theatre’s Festival Unbound Council and Any Given Child Bethlehem.


ASK MEGAN | Learn more about the community investments/grants opportunities at LVCF

Megan Briggs, LVCF Vice President of Community Investments

Megan Briggs
Vice President of Community Investments
Lehigh Valley Community Foundation
840. W. Hamilton Street, Suite 310
Allentown, PA 18101
610 351-5353, ext. 21 | megan@lvcfoundation.org