In early 2016, The Fund for Greater Hartford embarked upon a strategic planning process. By initiating the strategic planning process, The Board of Trustees sought to determine how The Fund can best utilize its strengths, resources and relationships to increase its impact for the community it serves. The Fund wanted to support the community in a more proactive, meaningful way.
After deep conversation over the course of the strategic planning process, The Fund has revised its mission: “The Fund for Greater Hartford works to improve the lives of children and families of Greater Hartford by investing in their academic and social success.”
The Fund for Greater Hartford believes that every child deserves a strong foundation in which to grow and develop. Moving forward we will focus our financial and staff investments in three areas:
- Ensuring children reach age-appropriate developmental milestones and enter kindergarten with the skills needed to learn and grow socially and academically
- Ensuring children reading on grade level through grade 3
- Ensuring students in fourth grade through graduation have access to different kinds of support that allow them to develop their own sense of independence and self-esteem
We will do this by:
- Providing funding to quality programs, coalitions and partnerships that align with The Fund’s goals;
- Requiring that grantees track outcomes and indicators that measure their progress towards those goals;
- Offering opportunities for individuals that work with children and students to have access to trauma-informed practice training so that they can adequately work with students who have and/or are experiencing trauma;
- Focusing the majority of our investments in Hartford, New Britain and Middletown as priority geographic areas;
- Working in partnership in statewide, regional and local partnerships to address the systemic issues that create barriers to achieving The Fund’s goals.
The Fund will be in a period of transition as it pursues its new goals, objectives and strategies that necessarily require a change in the way that it conducts its grant making.