WRCF - Waterloo Region Community Foundation

Waterloo Region Community Foundation (WRCF) collaborates with partners to ensure our communities are equitable, connected, and sustainable; and people are thriving. As a leading community-building organization, we connect regionally and locally, working with three cities and four townships, to include the people and places across our region. Together, using a trust-based philanthropic approach, we develop forward-thinking innovative solutions and seize opportunities to meet current and future needs of our community.

In 2024, WRCF is focused on improving social infrastructure in Waterloo Region. We define social infrastructure as the system of organizations, spaces, and experiences that enable people to connect with each other, the bridges necessary to build trust and civic participation, to create a sense of belonging and wellbeing. It’s the system that enables sustainable widespread community development.

At the heart of our work, WRCF has three great tools in our toolkit to make measurable and sustainable impact in our community – Granting, Investing and Mobilizing. And, we are focused on making philanthropy easy for individuals and companies to support organizations and issues they care about.

1. In partnership with our Fundholders and donors, we Grant.
   When you make a donation to WRCF, we invest that gift into a permanent endowment fund which generates income that is then distributed to support a broad range of charitable causes within our community.
2. We also Invest.
   A portion of our assets are used to make investments in organizations that are specifically focused on making social or environmental impact. Our remaining assets are invested in the market and we are in the process of transitioning to an overall 100% mission-aligned portfolio.
3. And, we Mobilize community to spark shared action on key regional issues; we build partnerships across organizations and sectors to support future-focused ideas; and we contribute research, stories, and expertise to inform community solutions.

WRCF holds $137 million in total investments under management. In 2023, we approved grants of $8.2 million to hundreds of local charities and non-profits, bringing our collective granting impact since inception to $81 million. Since 2017, we have also made 21 impact investments totalling over $13.3 million, including almost $2 million in 2023.