News

Many thanks to the 400+ attendees at our Annual Community Meeting on May 8, 2017 at Washtenaw Community College! It was a great evening, full of community connections, learning, and big announcements.

In the fall of 2016, AAACF piloted a new type of community investment, called Bold Ideas, to invest in innovative ideas and projects that generate a significant leap in how our community addresses a long-term or emerging need.

Savannah Ellington, a 2016 Community Scholar, and Shawntae Harris, College Success Coach, shared their experiences with the Community Scholarship Program at the 2016 Founders Society Luncheon.

At our Annual Community Meeting this past May, we asked the community to take part in a new activity that put them in the driver’s seat as grantmakers, while also giving them a chance to let us know how they thought our resources should be divided up between our priorities. This "Crowd-Granting" activity asked each participant to take an imaginary $100 and divide it up between AAACF’s four strategic priorities: Cultural Economic Development, our new Community Scholarship Program, Coordinated Funding, and Rewarding Success.

“Impact investing actually represents a much wider spectrum of possibilities than traditional grantmaking,” says Neel Hajra, president and CEO of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation. This three-minute video tells the story behind the renovations at a local fine arts organization and how it became a reality due to a low interest loan from AAACF.

Talk about a continued commitment to encouraging young people to go to college! Even after careers as educators, Marie Shaffer thought there was something more to be done by her and her late husband Earl W. Shaffer to incentivize college graduation. Thanks to the ongoing Level the Playing Field Fund dollar-per-dollar match—and the benefit of the IRA charitable rollover (see below)—the Earl & Marie Shaffer Scholarship Fund will do just that through the Community Scholarship Program.

Washtenaw Coordinated Funders, a consortium of public and private funders, awarded $4.586 million for Human Services Program/Operations to meet the needs of our community’s most vulnerable for the next two years. Funding was awarded in four priority areas: Aging, Housing & Homelessness, Safety-Net Health & Nutrition, and Cradle to Career–Early Childhood & School-Age Youth for both Program Operations and Capacity Building.

The Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation (AAACF) just announced a new $1 million-dollar endowed scholarship fund, the Level the Playing Field Fund, created by an anonymous donor new to AAACF. As its name implies, the Level the Playing Field Fund is intended to create a more equitable means for students to succeed. The Fund will be administered under AAACF’s Community Scholarship Program.

Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation Announces $250,000 Grant from the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation

The Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation (AAACF) has been awarded the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary’s Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships, accepted on behalf of the Washtenaw Coordinated Funders (AAACF, the United Way of Washtenaw County, Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, RNR Foundation, Washtenaw County, the City of Ann Arbor, and the Washtenaw Urban County).