The Civic Leadership Fund

The Civic Leadership Fund supports the Foundation’s role as a civic hub where information, knowledge, resources and influence come together for the greater good of our region.  This crucial fund helps us tackle some of our region’s most serious challenges through a wide range of activities.  It allows the Foundation to: produce and disseminate in-depth reports from area colleges and think tanks; highlight trends and issues that are having a profound impact on all aspects of our community; and promote informed public discourse through a series of forums that attract thousands every year.  The Fund also helps us to take action on these issues by convening task forces of community leaders from the private and public sector to identify new and effective solutions and, ultimately, influence public policy. 

The Civic Leadership Fund also gives the Boston Foundation the capacity to have a positive influence on the underlying forces that influence poverty and inequity in our community.  Education reform—from cradle to career—will always be one of the areas of focus for the Foundation’s civic leadership activities as well as programs that promote health and wellness and strengthen our arts and cultural programming in Boston’s diverse neighborhoods.

Recently, this fund helped to make great inroads in reforming the Massachusetts community college system.  On July 8, 2012 the Boston Foundation and more than 60 other members of the diverse Coalition FOR Community Colleges applauded Governor Deval Patrick’s signing the FY2013 Massachusetts budget.  The budget includes increased financial support for community colleges and a series of reforms that together comprise a sea change in how community colleges are funded and how they can work with employers, policymakers, students and the higher education system to prepare students for success.  Many of the reforms included in the budget were recommended in a Boston Foundation report that was released in November of 2011, titled The Case for Community Colleges: Aligning Higher Education and Workforce Needs in Massachusetts. 

The Coalition FOR Community Colleges is a statewide diverse group of civic, community and business leaders who want to see community colleges live up to their potential for all students, embraced the report’s recommendations.  The Coalition was formed because the need for strong community colleges has never been more urgent: Massachusetts faces a “skills gap” that has left more than 100,000 positions unfilled at a time when hundreds of thousands of residents are unemployed, but unqualified for the open jobs. 

Call 617-338-1700 for more on the Civic Leadership Fund.

Contribute to the Civic Leadership Fund.