Partnerships

Both formally and informally, The Fund seeks to partner with other funders in hopes of increasing impact and effectiveness of our grants.

We were one of the founding members of the Hartford Neighborhood Development Support Collaborative, a program of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. Started in 1995, HNDSC has moved from providing operating support to community development corporations, to promoting homeownership in Hartford, to most recently, working in a targeted fashion to rebuild Hartford — a neighborhood at a time. HNDSC is made up of a wide variety of funders and community members who bring expertise to the table; this results in the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

We recently joined the Investors Committee of the Hartford Community Schools. School reform is an area that will take the resources and skills of all parts of our community. We are happy to have the opportunity to be able to support the Community Schools as a piece of the school reform efforts.

We have also participated as a funder in

• Opportunity Knocks for Middletown's Preschool Children, a collaborative led by Middlesex Hospital and working to address the critical needs of young children in Middletown
• The Middletown Pathways to Your Future Collaborative, a college/career exposure project that started with the leadership of The Liberty Bank Foundation and is a collaborative between Middlesex Community College, Wesleyan University, Middletown Public Schools, and Liberty Bank

As a small funder, we recognize that rarely can we be the sole support of any reasonably-sized project, but we also recognize the value The Fund brings by leveraging partnerships with our colleagues and try to encourage cooperation and openness among funders.