We are committed to keeping pace with the most pressing challenges and opportunities facing Forsyth County today, and we’re focusing our community investments in two key areas—Building an Inclusive Economy and Advancing Equity in Education. These efforts are crucial to ensuring that Winston-Salem becomes a place where race no longer predicts life outcomes.
We developed the following priorities for investment in 2018 after conducting community listening sessions and reviewing data that revealed significant educational, economic, and residential disparities among communities of color.
We’re adapting and growing how we invest in the community. While grantmaking remains an important tool for our community investment, given these complex challenges we must look for additional ways to make a difference and advance our mission.
We’ll utilize both proactive and responsive grantmaking, and we’re also becoming more engaged with our community partners, as these partnerships will be vital for propelling our community forward toward positive change.
As we broaden our relationships and continue to learn, we will become a more strategic and intentional partner. With accountability to our donors and partners, we will show up in new ways and leverage our position, tools, and resources to inspire and cultivate community action.
A few of the ways we’re investing:
We are committed to advancing racial equity across all our work in Forsyth County because we believe it is unacceptable that today race and zip code can serve as reliable predictors of an individual’s positive or negative educational, health, and economic outcomes. Systems, including institutions, policies, and resource allocation in our community, have played a major role in this outcome, and it’s crucial to focus on these systems to affect real change.
We invite you to join us in this important work by supporting the Next Century Fund to help us succeed in our efforts to create a generous and trusting community where everyone is thriving.
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