Community Foundation for Southern Arizona convenes 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.”