Celebrating with Pride!

At the Hampton Roads Community Foundation, we join our friends in celebrating LGBTQ Pride Month and the power of love.

We are thankful for our fundholders, nonprofits and friends working to make Hampton Roads a more inclusive region.

There are many ways to leverage your philanthropy and celebrate with Pride. For example, in 2011, attorney Michael Hamar created the permanent endowment fund at the community foundation called the George D. and Marion Phelps Hamar HRBOR Scholarship.

He set the selection criteria to be for self-identifying lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender students from Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk or Virginia Beach. Scholarship recipients have demonstrated involvement in the LGBT community and need financial aid for undergraduate education at a four-year college or university.

Hamar started the scholarship shortly after his mom, a retired cytology technician at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, passed away. His dad, a retired stockbroker from Virginia Beach, died in 2006. To honor both his parents and also HRBOR, Michael donated to start the endowed scholarship fund at the community foundation.

Hamar also started the fund to pay tribute to Hampton Roads Business OutReach (HRBOR), which he co-founded in 2007 as our region's LGBTQ business chamber.

The Hamar HRBOR Scholarship is among nearly 90 scholarship funds administered by the community foundation. Learn more at hamptonroadscf.org/scholarships.