Durham Community Foundation
Established in 1994, as a bridge between contributors, charities and community, Durham Community Foundation (DCF) is more than a grant maker. DCF is the charity’s charity – their voice in the Region of Durham and beyond. DCF has invested $4 Million in 200+ charities, contributing to Durham’s significant growth. DCF is part of a network of 191 community foundations in Canada with assets of $5.8 billion, allowing it to scale and leverage innovation.
DCF develops powerful relationships with donors, including individuals, families, businesses, organizations, education, and government. We enable them to activate philanthropy to solve Durham’s greatest challenges and build community. DCF serves as a nexus in the philanthropic world of Durham, connecting donors and volunteers, keeping apace of community developments and needs, as well as identifying the most effective ways of addressing them through the benefit of the research and resources of the greater community foundation movement, which allows DCF to share with the community.
DCF connects philanthropic, charitable, and community leaders to collaborate and catalyze innovation, partnership, and solutions. DCF facilitates learning and networking for charities’ performance and impact. Our network in the Region is large, diverse, and collaborative. Connecting with the Region’s charitable sector through regular correspondence, collaborative fundraising, and skill building and training, DCF is at the heart of the charitable world in Durham. DCF is on the leading edge of trends, developments, concerns, and opportunities in philanthropy and among charities, their volunteers, and donors. In this role, DCF can affect change for good to help sustain a vibrant and thriving charitable sector in Durham.
DCF builds philanthropy platforms, facilitating donors to invest, strengthen the community, and bring it closer together, including shelter, mental and physical health, recreation, arts, culture, and environment. Since inception DCF has enriched the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals in the Region of Durham.
As a funder for 27 years in the Region of Durham, we recognize our sector (registered charities and nonprofits) is a vital contributor to the well-being of our community and local economy. Our mandate is to strengthen the work of these organizations beyond the grantmaking through our advocacy work, expertise, and initiatives.
We are the voice of our sector at the local, provincial, and national levels, sharing their strengths and challenges and leveraging our relationships with community and local leaders to ensure the important work of our sector can continue.
We lend our expertise to help charities and nonprofits in crisis. Our Executive Director’s experience as well as the knowledge of Community Foundations of Canada’s leadership ensures we can support organizations in addressing their most urgent needs whether it’s an unanticipated loss in revenue or staffing, board, or volunteer issue.
The Durham Region Funders Table includes representatives from the Region of Durham, municipalities, Durham Community Foundation, the local Red Cross and United Way. This table ensures a strategic approach, based on real-time data, to funding local agencies to ensure we are addressing the most pressing needs of our community throughout the region.
We facilitate a monthly chat to help Executive Directors share what’s keeping them up at night and find tangible solutions to their concerns through a peer-to-peer driven support group.
We partner with CanadaHelps to champion #DurhamGivesBack on GivingTuesday, a giving movement driven by individuals, charities, and businesses across Canada to support the causes they believe in and the communities in which they live through volunteerism or financial contributions. We share our grants to help profile local organizations and the work they do to strengthen our region. We also work with local leaders to foster a culture of philanthropy in our region.
We offer a series of mental health workshops led by psychotherapists with experience in our sector to help leaders navigate their entire organization especially through the COVID-19 crisis.
We provide a full day, leadership development and networking conference to support leaders in our sector. This year our virtual forum included 150 registrants from small grass roots nonprofits to larger local charities.
We organize a platform for charities, nonprofits, businesses, and individuals to raise funds for their respective organizations and the causes they care about. This year more than 125 participants from 15 local charities walked together to raise funds for their respective organizations.
Please contact our Executive Director, Vivian Curl, by telephone at 905-430-6507, or email at Vivian@DurhamCommunityFoundation.ca to find out how you can join our giving movement.