Welcome to the Delaware Community Foundation

For more than 20 years, the Delaware Community Foundation has been connecting people who care with the causes they care about by helping them establish charitable funds and provide grants to the nonprofit organizations they wish to support.

We invite you to explore our website and learn you can help others make Delaware a better place to live and work.

What's New at the DCF

Who received this year's Fund For Women grants? How close is the Milton Historical Society to meeting their $300,000 endowment challenge grant goal? Find out in the Delaware Community Foundation's summer newsletter Connecting People, Building Communities. For an online copy, click here.

Do you know a Fund For Women Founder who has a record of exceptional generosity that demonstrates civic or charitable responsibility? Someone whose leadership has encouraged others in philanthropic roles? Join us in honoring our original Founders and preserving the history of the Fund For Women by nominating that special someone for the FFW's First Founders' Award. We'll announce this year's recipient at our Celebration of the Spirit of Women's Philanthropy in Delaware breakfast on October 14 at the University & Whist Club in Wilmington beginning at 8 a.m. For information and a nomination form, click here. Nominations are due by August 1, 2009.

Are you interested in joining The Next Generation? Want to find out what we are all about? Please join us for our next monthly meeting on July 15 at Buckley's Tavern in Centreville beginning at 5:30 p.m. For more info about the event email hannah.messner@gmail.com.

delcf.org is under construction! So, please bear with us while we prepare to launch a new, more interactive version of our website.

The Delaware Community Foundation's Youth Philanthropy Boards, one in each of Delaware's three counties, are composed of students from public, independent and diocesan high schools throughout the state. Each year these young board members study youth issues in their neighborhoods and schools and learn about community service and grantmaking. This year's YPBs awarded $35,000 in grants to 15 nonprofit organizations throughout the state. Since the program began in 1999, 240 students have served as YPB members statewide and have awarded 120 grants totaling $175,000. To learn more, click here.

Since Helen Eliason established the Fund for Children’s Literacy four years ago, more than $800,000 has been awarded in grants to help children learn to how to read. The program targets youngsters, from kindergarten through grade three, who are struggling in school because of limited reading materials or lack of parental support. This year’s grants totaling $217,048 supported 59 projects in 29 New Castle County public schools; helping nearly 10,000 young students.

Nearly 80 Founders and guests joined First Lady of Delaware & Fund For Women Founder Carla Markell and 2009 Driving Force Award Winner Laura Day as the Fund For Women awarded over $145,000 in grants for 15 programs that enhance the worth and potential of women and girls in Delaware. To learn more about this year's grant recipients, click here.

$150,000 in Delaware Hispanic Community Needs Grants have been awarded by the Arsht-Cannon Fund for programs that help Hispanic immigrants and their young children learn the English language. To learn more about the five programs that received the grants, click here. To learn about the work of the Governor's Consortium on Hispanic Affairs and to view their published reports and issue briefs, click here.

Learn how the Delaware Community Foundation is Connecting People Who Care with the causes they care about in our 2008 Annual Report. To view the full report online, click here.

Since the launch of the new African American Empowerment Fund of Delaware in June 2008, 54 people have contributed over $20,000 gifts to help establish a legacy of leadership in promoting philanthropy to fund causes important to the education, social and economic empowerment of African American Delawareans. Contact Jane C. W. Vincent by calling 302.504.5237 to find out how you can become one of the 100 Founders.