Bold action for critical times: Catherine Donnelly Foundation reports on granting, impact investments and partnerships during 2022/2023 and 2023/2024

Bold action for critical times: Catherine Donnelly Foundation reports on granting, partnerships and impact investments during 2022/2023 and 2023/2024

June 2025

Embrace hope. Current news is often a catalogue of misfortune, catastrophe and reversal, but our everyday work at the Catherine Donnelly Foundation tells us society is equipped with all the energy, ideas, and goodwill we need to thrive. Our collaborators are working with others to build out new models of affordable housing, to shape climate justice and to re-animate civic participation.

“Our partners’ work affirms a better world is available to us and we are at our best when we serve others and collaborate,” says Claire Barcik, Executive Director of the Foundation.

During 2023 and 2024, the Catherine Donnelly Foundation supported bold solutions, connected partners, peers and allies, provided over $5 million to nearly 115 organizations, moved the needle through shareholder engagement and impact investments, and surpassed $30 million in total giving since offering our first grant in 2005.

The demand among those organizations driving change in our core funding areas of civic engagement for social change, environment and housing is unprecedented and we’ve responded by strengthening CDF’s trust-based approach through a series of operational decisions to become more accessible, transparent and equitable in our granting.

The Foundation is supporting grantees to achieve deeper impact through an increased number of intentional multi-year grants, additional support for capacity-strengthening and by effectively connecting partners to like-minded organizations and funders.

The report also highlights the Foundation’s efforts with a diversity, equity and belonging lens aimed at expanding and deepening relationships with Indigenous, Black and People of Colour (BIPOC) -led and -serving organizations as well as addressing historic shortfalls in granting to those groups. Between 2023 and 2024, CDF granted a total of $2.6 million to nearly 80 BIPOC-led and -serving organizations.

“We know the upcoming years will bring significant local and global challenges, but we are confident that our partners, peers and emerging networks will offer bold, innovative and practical solutions that build community, resiliency, and hope as a foundation for a more just, inclusive and sustainable society,” adds Richard Morgan, CDF Board Chair.

The report also describes CDF’s commitment to using our endowment to drive social and environmental progress through shareholder activism and impact investments. Since 2014, the Foundation has invested $3.6 million in 20 impact investments.

To learn more, access our Annual Report for 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 here.

For more information on any content in the report, please contact Steve Brearton at sbrearton@catherinedonnellyfoundation.org