The Community Impact Fund: A Turning Point
Community Impact
Explore how donors are fueling coordinated action through the Community Impact Fund, expanding economic opportunity, strengthening disaster readiness, and helping Greater Houston address complex challenges through data-informed philanthropy.
“A long time ago, one of our board chairs said to me, ‘You have this business imperative to do this right and be data-driven, but you have a moral imperative too,’ because there aren’t enough dollars and we have an opportunity, in partnership with our donors, to improve lives.”
–Steve Maislin, President & CEO, Greater Houston Community Foundation
Greater Houston’s greatest opportunities and challenges rarely fit within the boundaries of a single organization, grant, or charitable gift. Strengthening economic mobility, disaster resilience, and access to trusted community data requires sustained collaboration, long-term investment, and a shared vision for the future.
The Community Impact Fund spent its early years building relationships, infrastructure, and strategy. Now it has matured and is focused on accelerating coordinated action across Greater Houston. In May, the Governing Board reaffirmed its commitment to the Community Impact Fund, which has anchored this work as one of the Community Foundation’s central lines of business alongside the Center for Family Philanthropy, Foundation Services, Philanthropic Advising for individuals, families, and corporations, Corporate Giving, and Scholarships. The Board also approved a five-year Community Leadership strategy through 2030, with additional strategy discussions underway to support long-term sustainability.
The Community Foundation is committed to evolving with and for Houston, deepening its understanding of innovative ways of supporting our donors and community through effective, creative, and collaborative philanthropic strategies. This forward-thinking mindset of the Community Foundation matters because the aspiration of its Community Impact work is bold: for Houston to lead the nation in upward mobility and disaster resilience. Here is how the Community Impact Fund has advanced its vision in 2026 through four connected priorities.
Table of Contents
- Advancing Economic Mobility
- Accelerating Disaster Recovery and Resilience
- Driving Informed Action
- Engaging in Strategic Community Opportunities and Collaborations
Together, these efforts demonstrate how philanthropy can move beyond individual grants to create lasting, community-wide impact. Thanks to the generosity of early Community Impact Fund supporters, the Community Foundation has brought together people, data, relationships, and flexible philanthropic capital around some of our region’s most urgent challenges and opportunities.
Continue reading to learn about the momentum that has been built in 2026 with the Community Impact Fund.
Advancing Economic Mobility
Expanding pathways for individuals and families to achieve long-term financial stability and upward mobility.
Economic mobility remains one of Houston’s most critical challenges. Nearly one in four children in Harris County lives in poverty, and only 20% of Houston-area graduates earn a living wage six years after high school graduation. Addressing these realities requires more than supporting individual programs. It requires strengthening the systems that connect education, workforce development, and opportunity.
High-Impact Grantmaking
Through the Community Impact Fund’s High-Impact Grantmaking initiative, Community Foundation donors are advancing solutions that make economic mobility pathways more visible, accessible, and durable for many Houstonians.
“Donors know they cannot solve economic mobility on their own. High-Impact Grantmaking allows them to pool their resources and have a bigger impact. It is about teaming up with people in Houston who care about making a difference.”
— Community Foundation Donor, 2025 Strategy Discovery Interviews
Second Funding Cycle
In 2026, the Community Foundation’s Governing Board approved a $400,000 investment in San Jacinto College’s Promise Scholarship and $100,000 in BridgeYear’s Career Cohorts program in partnership with Good Reason Houston. These investments align with larger regional efforts to strengthen post-secondary and workforce pathways for young people.
Beyond the grant investment, the High-Impact Grantmaking initiative supports its recipients by connecting them with donors, funders, and nonprofit leaders. These connections help unlock new resources and opportunities to strengthen their work.
Inaugural High-Impact Grantmaking Funding Cycle
The Community Impact Fund’s inaugural High-Impact Grantmaking recipients completed their grants with significant results:
Connective: Unlocked more than $11 million annually in public benefits for Houston families, with an average annual income of approximately $4,300 per household.
Grameen America: Deployed more than $35 million in microloans to more than 5,000 local women entrepreneurs. Members in Houston started 440 new businesses, maintained or created 8,800 jobs, and earned an average income of $18,400 from their businesses.
Prison Entrepreneurship Program: Supported 1,300 returning citizens and family members on pathways to employment and economic security by investing nearly $600,000 in loans and grants to entrepreneurs and delivering 215 hours of small-business coaching.
Third Funding Cycle: High-Impact Grantmaking
The Community Foundation will continue to invest in organizations and/or collaboratives that work to advance economic mobility in Harris County through its third funding cycle. This funding cycle will pursue an investment strategy that intersects with the ambitions and goals of the emerging Houston Economic Mobility Coalition, with new grant partners expected in 2027.
Questions about the High-Impact Grantmaking initiative? Please email us.
Houston Economic Mobility Coalition
The Community Foundation helped catalyze the Houston Economic Mobility Coalition and now works alongside partners across the philanthropic, civic, education, workforce, employer, research, and nonprofit sectors to build a regional shared vision for economic mobility.
Building on the inaugural Houston Economic Mobility Summit in October 2025, the Coalition convened more than 250 leaders across sectors in May 2026 for the Second Houston Economic Mobility Summit. What began in 2025 as a convening to help understand the state of economic mobility in Houston and the drivers of upward mobility, shifted to putting that learning into action in 2026.
Together, Coalition partners are building the relationships, shared understanding, and coordinated action needed to address barriers, strengthen pathways to opportunity, and help more Houstonians achieve lasting economic mobility. The Coalition has established a vision, mission, framework, and an emerging measurement approach for long-term progress.
Houston Economic Mobility Coalition Vision Statement: A Houston where all people thrive, no matter where they start.
As the Coalition moves to implementation, participants are working together to develop shared goals, common measures of progress, and the governance needed to sustain collaboration over time. They have adapted a framework from the Urban Institute to organize their work across five pillars—basic needs, housing, education, jobs, and health—with two enablers focused on policy and connected people and systems.
The feedback from the May summit reinforced a shared measurement approach that includes both a clear, easy-to-communicate north star metric and a broader set of indicators, or “guiding stars,” that reflect the multiple factors influencing economic mobility for people and communities. This work gives Houston a stronger foundation for coordinated action, helping leaders move beyond isolated efforts toward strategies that can improve upward mobility at a systems level.
By focusing on partnerships, alignment, and systems-level change, the Community Impact Fund helps build the conditions necessary for long-term economic opportunity.
Accelerating Disaster Recovery and Resilience
Strengthening communities before, during, and after disasters helps ensure recovery leads to greater long-term resilience.
In the greater Houston region, disaster resilience is not optional. It is essential. Amanda McMillian, President and CEO at United Way of Greater Houston, emphasized, “Disaster recovery is not just about the immediate response, it’s about building systems that continuously improve. By strengthening coordination, measuring outcomes, and investing in long-term resilience, we are helping ensure our region is better prepared for whatever comes next.”
Greater Houston Disaster Alliance
The Community Impact Fund continues to support the Greater Houston Disaster Alliance, a collaborative effort with United Way of Greater Houston, launched in 2023 to strengthen disaster preparedness, response, and recovery across the region. The Disaster Alliance builds relationships, systems, and coordination mechanisms that improve how Houston responds before, during, and after disasters.
Recent momentum demonstrates growing confidence in this model. In 2026, the Disaster Alliance secured a new $1.7 million investment from Enbridge and Phillips 66, the Disaster Alliance’s founding lead sponsors, joined by new investments from JPMorganChase and Texas Mutual Insurance Company. This support helps expand the Disaster Alliance’s capacity as a philanthropic leader in disaster recovery and resilience.
Disaster Alliance: Phase One Impact
The work is already showing results, including reducing the time between disaster declarations and recovery dollars being deployed by 12 days, convening over 280 nonprofit leaders across the region, and securing investment from the National Academies’ Gulf Research Program.
For families facing the aftermath of disaster, faster support can mean earlier access to housing, stabilization, and recovery resources when they are needed the most. Since its launch, the Disaster Alliance has helped our region:
- Strengthen collaboration across the disaster response ecosystem
- Improve regional coordination before disasters occur
- Support rapid mobilization following federally declared disasters
- Advance preparedness efforts that help communities recover more quickly
- Attract additional local and national funding resources to strengthen resilience across the region.
Disaster Alliance: Phase Two Goals
By the end of Phase Two (2026 – 2029), the Disaster Alliance aims to focus on four key initiatives:
- Verizon Preparedness & Resilience Workshops: Expand inclusive, community-centered preparedness efforts through multilingual, culturally relevant education and outreach that reaches historically underserved populations.
- Community Foundation Resilience Network: Advance regional and national resilience initiatives by leveraging strategic funding and cross-sector partnerships to pilot scalable solutions and inform long-term systems change.
- Transforming Disaster Data & Communications: With an Adaptive Capacities for Transformation (ACT) Initiative through funding from the Gulf Research Program, the Disaster Alliance will build capacity and design systems through cross-sector collaboration and community voice that improve coordination, transparency, and decision-making.
- Hurricane Harvey 10-Year Retrospective: Lead the development of a landmark Hurricane Harvey retrospective assessing a decade of recovery and resilience to inform future investment and policy priorities.
Community Foundation Resilience Network
A key initiative in Phase 2 of the Disaster Alliance is Greater Houston Community Foundation’s participation in the Community Foundation Resilience Network supported by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The Network, a first-of-its-kind collaboration, connects us with three Gulf Coast community foundations to share expertise, coordinate resources, and advance science-informed disaster adaptation strategies that can strengthen vulnerable communities throughout the region.
Through this support, the Disaster Alliance will lead Hurricane Harvey at 10: Building a More Resilient Future, a regional initiative culminating in a landmark report and event in August 2027. Drawing on a decade of research, recovery experience, and community voice, the effort will reflect on the region’s recovery journey while identifying priorities and investment opportunities to strengthen resilience in Greater Houston.
Driving Informed Action
Using trusted, community-wide data to guide decisions, align investments, and measure what is working.
Effective community change begins with good information. For the Community Impact Fund, informed action helps communities, funders, and leaders make smarter decisions and align resources where they can achieve the greatest impact.
Understanding Houston
Through strategic initiatives like Understanding Houston, the Community Foundation continues to measure what matters so we can do what matters. Since 2019, Understanding Houston, the Community Foundation’s data indicators project, has provided independent, accessible information for nonprofit leaders, public officials, researchers, philanthropists, and residents.
Since its launch, Understanding Houston has engaged over 4,400 community leaders, attracted more than 262,000 website visitors, and given more than 100 data and insight presentations. Ninety-five percent of surveyed Understanding Houston users report using the information to inform action.
“Understanding Houston provided accessible, region-specific indicators that allowed us to confidently set priorities, communicate needs clearly to partners and stakeholders, and align our programs with the realities facing our community.”
— Nonprofit Leader
As the way people access information continues to evolve, including through AI tools, Understanding Houston is evolving to ensure local data remains visible, accessible, and actionable. The platform continues to provide critical insights on issues, such as economic mobility and disaster preparedness.
New Data & Insights
Understanding Houston is continuously updated with the latest data across core topics, including education and housing, with additional updates planned through the end of the year. New articles help translate complex data into accessible, actionable insights, amplifies high-impact nonprofit work, and provide timely context on emerging issues facing Houston residents.
Economic Mobility Learning Series
The Economic Mobility Learning Series is a collection of virtual presentations and discussions on models that advance economic mobility, featuring proven and emerging approaches from across the nation. These shared learning experiences are for donors, nonprofit leaders, and community leaders interested in exploring real-world cross-sector efforts and research that help individuals and families move up the economic ladder.
This learning series aims to strengthen community knowledge, inspire more collaboration, and develop a shared understanding of what it may take to improve economic mobility in the Houston region. Webinars are virtual and open to anyone interested in learning about and exploring ideas that could inform efforts to improve economic mobility in Houston.
Click here to view past webinars.
Engaging in Strategic Community Opportunities & Partnerships
Building relationships and partnerships that help promising ideas move forward.
Some of the most important opportunities in a community begin long before a formal grant request exists. They require early coordination, trusted relationships, and flexible philanthropic capital that can help promising ideas move from concept to action. The Community Impact Fund provides the Community Foundation with the flexibility to convene partners, explore new ideas, and support collaborative efforts that may eventually grow into larger community investments.
In 2026, the Community Foundation continued to participate in a funder collaborative that aims to expand access to high-quality early childhood environments and engaged in the Houston Economic Growth Collaborative, a cross-sector effort focused on expanding economic opportunity in Northeast Houston communities.
This collective action reflects an important role community foundations can play: identifying opportunities early, bringing the right partners together, and helping promising ideas gain traction before larger funding and investment become available.
A Shared Belief in Houston’s Strengths
Three years after its launch, the Community Impact Fund has secured $6.4 million toward its $10 million goal. More importantly, it has helped establish a framework for addressing some of Houston’s most pressing challenges through collaboration, data-informed decision-making, and strategic investment.
The strategy is in place. Partnerships are growing. Community leaders are aligned around shared priorities. And the work of building a better future for Houston is well underway. This progress is all made possible by the individuals who have supported these efforts since 2023.
The Community Foundation would like to acknowledge and thank the individuals who have invested so much time and energy in building momentum for these efforts, including:
- Kate Fowler, Governing Board Member & Executive Director of Jerry C. Dearing Family Foundation
- Cullen Geiselman Muse, Ph.D., Governing Board Member & Chair of the Board at Cullen Trust for Healthcare
- Tym Tombar, Governing Board Member & Managing Director at Arcadius Capital
- Randa Weiner, Former Governing Board Member & Community Leader
Let’s Drive Progress
If you are interested in opening pathways to opportunity, strengthening regional readiness, informing decisions with trusted data, or supporting early-stage ideas that can lead to future investment, please reach out to Tyler Murphy, Senior Advisor, Charitable Solutions, or Diana Zarzuelo, Chief Impact Officer.
More Helpful Articles by Greater Houston Community Foundation:
- Impact in Action: Fall 2026
- Why Placed-Based Philanthropy Matters: Investing in Neighborhoods to Drive Lasting Change
- How Giving Locally Can Impact Your Community
- How We Can Help
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