The Hampton Roads Community Foundation 75th Anniversary Celebration

Since our nation’s founding, philanthropy has been inextricably linked to the American ideal of a more perfect union.

“Now more than ever, America's non-profit sector is an absolutely critical component in the democratic and economic framework that defines our nation,” said Foundation President and CEO Dr. Deborah M. DiCroce. Her remarks came at the beginning of the Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Celebration luncheon, featuring speaker Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist from The Washington Post.

The February event at the Chesapeake Conference Center welcomed approximately 600 Foundation stakeholders including fundholders and grantees and explored the topic “The Role of Philanthropy in a Changing Democracy.”

The Foundation began in 1950 with a donation of $2,350 from seven local business leaders who joined to form the first community foundation in the state. Over its first 75 years the Foundation has supported programs and projects throughout the region, including:

• 1950s: The Foundation’s first major grant helped to build a library in downtown Norfolk.
• 1960s: funding for Eastern Virginia Medical School and Virginia Wesleyan College.
• 1970s: funding to expand the Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters.
• 1980s: funding for museums including MOCA and the Chrysler Museum.
• 1990s: funding to build art facilities and to start the Virginia Arts Festival.
• 2000s: funding for regional early education efforts.
• 2010s: The Norfolk and Virginia Beach Foundations merge to become the Hampton Roads Community Foundation. Funding includes support for the Brock Environmental Center, the Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center of the Salvation Army. The Foundation incubates the economic development effort called Reinvent Hampton Roads as well as the early childcare and education initiative called Minus 9 to 5.
• 2020s: emergency funding to many organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read more about the Foundation’s history and milestones here.

The Foundation also created two giving circles, Community Leadership Partners and Visionaries for Change, to allow community members to take an active role in charitable giving by helping to review grant applications and determine support. It created the Legacy Society to allow residents to plan for a charitable gift through their wills or estate plans.

Further, the Foundation has long served as a convener, an organization with the ability to bring together disparate groups to tackle pressing issues for the good of the community.

The Hampton Roads Community Foundation’s civic leadership efforts have included investments in journalism such as the nonprofit newsroom at WHRO, support for affordable housing, and the exploration of the challenges to literacy for our youngest residents. The Foundation remains committed to the cause of racial equity and equitable opportunity for all in our region.

The Hampton Roads Community Foundation is now the largest provider of grants and scholarships in the region, with more than $394 million in grants over the last 75 years. Scholarships support more than 400 students every year. With more than $500 million in assets, the Foundation is poised to continue its work of making life better for all in Hampton Roads through civic leadership, philanthropy and grantmaking for another 75 years and beyond.

“Citizen philanthropists” from all walks of life embrace generosity as a widely shared American value, DiCroce said at the lunch event. They consider it an investment rather than charity. 

“Philanthropy often serves as a bridge between the private and public sectors, addressing gaps that the government simply can't or won't fill,” DiCroce said. “It also helps address economic disparities and racial injustices and inequities, often with targeted interventions.”

Robinson talked about his long history with and support of nonprofit organizations. His late wife, Avis, founded the nonprofit Washington Metropolitan Scholars to connect 50 leading American universities with low-income, high-achieving minority students. The WMS provided college access and financial aid to more than 1,000 young men and women.

“At this point, one of the few things that I can safely say is that the work being done by the Hampton Roads Community Foundation and by other such organizations is really more important and more necessary than it has ever been,” Robinson told the crowd. “I care. Because you're here, I know that all of you care, too."