A record total of more than $500,000 was raised during Community Foundation for Northern Virginia’s 2021 Raise the Region, its annual fund-raiser.
The event was held online on Oct. 8 with the theme “Building a Community That Works for Everyone.”
The foundation awarded more than $2 million of emergency-response support last year to address the immediate impact of COVID. This year, it continued to address the fallout from the pandemic with the launch of our Build Back/Dream Forward Initiative, which has awarded $530,300 in grants to more than 20 local organizations.
“We launched Build Back/Dream Forward last fall to help those who had been disproportionately impacted by the virus and its fallouts,” said Eileen Ellsworth, president and CEO of the community foundation.
(The celebration has been archived and can be viewed at www.cfnova.org/RaiseTheRegion.)
The event featured the presentation of the 2021 Community Leadership Award to Karen Schaufeld, a philanthropist, author, entrepreneur and lawyer.
“Karen is a strategic and highly effective advocate for the needs of Northern Virginia. Her passion is clearly contagious on behalf of the entire region,” Ellsworth said.
“It means so much for me to win this award because I have observed other leaders, people I admire, receiving the award,” Schaufeld said. “It’s never just me. There’s just a whole bunch of people doing a whole lot of great work.”