Our Impact

35th AThe Community Foundation for Southern Arizona helps caring people make our community a better place through philanthropy.

For more than 35 years, hundreds of individuals, families, and businesses have established funds at the Community Foundation, creating a family of funds that have granted more than $160 million. Together, our work touches every aspect of daily life, including animal welfare, arts and culture, community development, education, environment, health and human services and so much more.

We create impact by:

Providing Direct Support

Providing more than $7 million each year in direct support to charitable organizations that improve the quality of life in Southern Arizona through Competitive Grant Rounds, Donor Advised Funds, Field of Interest Funds, or funds designated to a specific organization in perpetuity.

Our Role as Civic Leaders

We convene community leaders to address critical issues and develop solutions. For example, in 2011 the United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona joined the Community Foundation in convening community leaders to examine the need for high quality, community driven, objective data about Southern Arizona in order to inform grantmaking, organizational and community planning, and policy development.  The result is the Southern Arizona Indicators project. With the help of many partners, the project provides data in areas that have been identified as key “indicators” of demographic trends and needs in our community through an accessible user-friendly website.

From 2006-2011 we provided $1 million from the Shaaron Kent Endowment Fund to support increasing literacy, resulting in the community-wide recognition of the critical and fundamental nature of this issue and a restructuring of the literacy service providers to create Literacy Connects, a comprehensive literacy organization “committed to improving our community through literacy.”

Building Capacity of the Nonprofit Sector

We are helping to build the capacity of hundreds of charitable organizations in Southern Arizona that provide services to those in need, protect the precious environment that has brought so many to this community, and enrich our lives through our diverse arts and cultural heritage. Through our partners, we promote training, education, technical assistance, and teaching communities to ensure that the charitable organizations that our fundholders support represent excellence in their field.

Collective Impact Initiatives

Supporting collaborative work to address critical community issues.  Our six-year Collective Impact Initiative is supporting the ELDER Initiative to meet the coming demographic crisis by activating senior power and transforming senior services; and the Ajo Regional Food Partnership to develop the local economy and health of the population by creating a thriving food system out of a food desert.

Through Our Partners and Affiliates

Every community has its unique set of needs, issues and opportunities. We are strengthened by our  Services, Collaborative Funds, Geographic Affiliates and Supporting Organizations. By working together, we do greater good in Southern Arizona. Learn more here.