Please consider a gift to the Arlington Community Foundation. These funds help the Foundation support long-term solutions; respond quickly to emergencies; and meet changing social, arts and cultural, educational, health and human services, or environmental needs in our community.

Our long-standing Prompt Response Fund has helped us to respond quickly to our nonprofit partners when an emergency, disaster or crisis hits.

To meet the new and evolving challenges of the coronavirus spread in our community, we are focusing exclusively on providing support to organizations at the front lines with those most impacted by this health crisis. This includes emergency food needs, health needs for the uninsured or underinsured, and supports for hourly workers displaced from their wage-earning positions.

We are committed to rapidly deploying grants to nonprofits working tirelessly to support our most vulnerable residents who are experiencing an urgent, unexpected need. We anticipate that our use of funds will evolve as this crisis evolves. Please consider a gift to support your community's most vulnerable during this fast-moving crisis.

The Community Scholarship Fund offers one-year scholarships and provides the Foundation with opportunities to help our Arlington students. This Fund provides scholarships to high school seniors of merit and financial need whom may not be eligible for one of the named scholarships established by individual donors and businesses.

Arlington's Guarantee is a new guaranteed income pilot that aims to provide cash relief of $500 to 200 low income working families in Arlington every month for 18 months. Launched in partnership with Arlington County Department of Human Services, this new initiative equips families with funds that can be used for whatever is needed most in real time– paying off debt, pursuing education or employment goals, college savings for kids, or allowing parents more time with their children and less time away from home in a second job. (Click here to view the full details and see results from other guaranteed income pilots around the country.)

Just as important as income and assets are power and autonomy—people’s sense of control over the trajectory of their lives—and being valued in community—their sense of belonging and social capital. Guaranteed income touches each of these areas by bringing in extra income, allowing people choice over how to use it, and freeing up personal bandwidth to connect with others in the community.

Arlington's Guarantee is an opportunity for donors to support a pilot that holistically and unconditionally promotes power, dignity, and belonging for families in Arlington, and in doing so, positions our community for a more equitable future for all. All administrative costs have been covered by a grant from the Kresge Foundation, so 100% of what is contributed to this fund will go directly into the hands of people in our community who need it.

• A $500 gift provides one month of Arlington's Guarantee support to a participating family


• A $3,000 gift provides 6 months of support to a participating family


• A $6,000 gift provides one year of support to a participating family


• A $9,000 gift covers the costs of a participating family for the entire 18 month pilot

We encourage you to contact Christy Cole, Director of Philanthropy, at 703-963-5737 or ccole@arlcf.org with any questions, or to discuss giving through stock, your IRA account, or other assets. Stock and wire transfer instruction are available upon request.

The Fund for Arlington Arts is designed to encourage and welcome philanthropy to the Arlington Community Foundation in support of the vibrant and excellent Arlington Arts assets of today and for generations into the future. Grants will be awarded annually once the available spendable balance of the Fund has reached a level of at least $25,000 based on the spending policy for endowed funds approved by the Board from time to time.

The Fund is to be a permanent field-of-interest fund to support the broad and changing needs within the non-profit arts community of Arlington. Gifts to the Fund will be managed collectively and invested for long-term growth. Each year the Board, on the advice of the staff of the Foundation, will determine the spendable balance of the Fund available for grants from time to time based upon a prudent spending policy rate, established by the Board from time to time, consistent with the protection of the permanent endowment of the Fund.

The Fund will accept contributions from individuals, businesses, companies, corporations, and foundations to support and enhance the community’s commitment to the arts. Memorial and Legacy gifts will also be accepted. The Fund is designed to complement existing support from other sources available to the nonprofit arts community in Arlington.

Grants may be made to qualified non-profit 501(c)(3) arts groups primarily benefitting Arlington for new works and new programming in the fields of theater, dance, music composition and performance; creative writing including short stories, plays and musicals; sculpture; painting; photography and film. A preference will be given to Arlington-based nonprofits. Organizations applying for grants may include non-profit galleries, theater companies, choruses, festivals, musical ensembles, or artist collaboratives (such as a quartet of musicians providing a qualified free performance). A cultural organization may apply for support where the support is to be used to present a new arts offering in Arlington that is to be free of charge to the public.

The Fund is not designed to support administrative or management expenses of an organization, public or private schools’ programs, art for religious purposes, capital campaigns or debt reduction of an organization, expenses that have already been incurred by an organization, or consultant fees proposed to be incurred by an organization. However, in times of crisis or disaster the Fund may be used to support one-time costs associated with a hardship suffered by a nonprofit arts organization.

Shared Prosperity Fund aims to stabilize the most financially challenged segment of Arlington’s population—the 28,000 individuals who are trying to make ends meet on 30% or less of our area median income ($37,800 or less for a family of four). Childcare workers, hospital aides, office cleaners, construction and food service employees are a vital part of our economic success and diverse community fabric. Yet, these residents are being priced out of Arlington.

Over the next five years the Shared Prosperity Fund will address critical housing shortages and make childcare affordable to the County’s lowest-income residents. The funds are held by the Foundation and quickly deployed through solid, vetted nonprofit partners for more deeply affordable housing as well as private rental and childcare subsidies that help individuals work on self-sufficiency and ensure they are not priced out of our community.