A video collection featuring: Visions for the future of Kent County from diverse voices with diverse experiences to help inform Grand Rapids Community Foundation’s next century of service and impact.
This is a collection of videos from various partners.
Click through to see each one or let the collection auto-play.
What we’re asking: We invite you to share your voice and your vision for the future of our community. What does it take to ensure a thriving community for the future? What do you hope your grandchildren will experience here?
Throughout our centennial year, the Community Foundation asked our community to help shape our vision for the future. The response was incredible. People from all over Kent County shared a vision of hope for our community to be known for its welcoming culture of belonging. A future where people feel safe, respected and have equitable access to education, jobs and healthcare. A future where children and grandchildren are accepted as their authentic selves and can succeed, contribute and belong. This vision echoes our North Star. Together, we can activate that dream.
An endowment is a plan for the future—one we know is essential for building the necessary resources to make systemic change a reality. Generous donor partners are fueling our community’s vision for the future with planned gifts and unrestricted donations. Community Foundation staff and volunteers carefully steward investments to ensure that forthcoming generations have resources to tackle the challenges they will face.
Together, all our partners are ensuring that we meet challenges in equitable sustainable ways. And, together, these efforts put us one step closer to realizing the visions that our community shared for the future of Kent County.
The Community Foundation was a founding investor in a woman-owned index fund, opening the door for other institutional investors to participate. The Percentage of the investment portfolio managed by Minority/Women-Owned Business Enterprise Certified Managers.
Updated vendor priorities were introduced to staff, which included prioritizing purchases first from local people of color, second priority given to local LGBTQ+ and woman-owned businesses, finally in the absence of options for either of those, purchases should be made from local vendors rather than non-local businesses.
In 2022, The Grand Rapids Community Foundation celebrated its centennial year of community giving and philanthropic contributions to Kent County, MI. In order to shape the next 100 years of community engagement and investment, the Community Foundation embarked on a journey to obtain feedback from key stakeholders (staff, board, community members, etc.) and hired a consultant to analyze the statements for key messages, themes and more.
