As needs and opportunities arise in Monroe County, the Community Foundation is poised to help our community respond to its most pressing needs and seize its most compelling opportunities through partnerships, convenings, and leadership activities.
While designated and competitive granting often serve as the vehicles for addressing areas of urgency or opportunity, the Community Foundation may also elect to convene partners and provide proactive funding in areas of particular significance to our community.
Currently, the Community Foundation is providing focused leadership and strategic investment in the following areas:
Leadership Initiatives
Monroe Smart Start
A leadership of the initiative of Community Foundation, Monroe Smart Start promotes local and regional early childhood education through high-quality early learning experiences, professional development for educators, family engagement, community partnerships, and advocacy.
Local News Collaboration Initiative
Our region has experienced a significant decline in local news, raising concerns about transparency, accountability, and civic engagement. The Community Foundation has begun exploring how we might play a role in addressing local news challenges as a community organizer, convener, funder, and partner.
Place-Based Impact Investing
This initiative has expanded the Community Foundation’s toolbox of impact strategies. Unlike traditional grantmaking, place-based impact investing generates both social and financial returns. These investments (such as loans and guarantees) are intended to be repaid and recycled back into the community for future community investments.
100+ Women Who Care
This local giving circle supports local nonprofits through collective giving. Members of 100+ Women Who Care commit to attending four one-hour meetings per year at which they pledge to financially support a mutually selected organization to multiply impact for the nonprofit.
Leadership Organizations
The following organizations began as Community Foundation leadership initiatives. While each is recognized as an individual nonprofit organization today, the Community Foundation continues to provide support in different ways, including advocacy, board leadership, shared staffing, and/or administrative and operational office support.
Regional Opportunity Initiatives
ROI is a regional intermediary organization leading efforts in the 11 counties of the Indiana Uplands (Brown, Crawford, Daviess, Dubois, Greene, Lawrence, Martin, Monroe, Orange, Owen, and Washington). ROI is growing potential and possibility through a focus on advanced industry sectors, regionalism, transformative school and workforce redesign, and placemaking strategies.
CDFI Friendly Bloomington
Working with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and other partners, CDFI Friendly Bloomington is focused on increasing flexible and affordable financing to businesses, housing developers, nonprofits, and others in and around Bloomington and the Indiana Uplands.
Heading Home of South Central Indiana
Heading Home is a community-wide collaborative
program focused on short-term and long-term systemic changes to strengthen housing security and decrease homelessness in Greene, Martin, Monroe, Morgan, Lawrence, and Owen Counties.
Uplands Science and Technology
Foundation
USTF supports the growth and physical development of the WestGate@Crane Technology Park. Spanning Daviess, Greene, and Martin Counties, WestGate is located outside of Naval Support Activity Crane, the third-largest naval installation in the world. A 750-acre technology destination, WestGate@Crane is home to 50+ tenants and Indiana’s top research institutions in the national security and defense sector.