Letter to Our Readers From The Columbus Foundation, Sophisticated Giving 2022

Extraordinary times, meet extraordinary generosity.

We greet you with a resolve to work towards an earned togetherness that strengthens and improves our community. We recognize that our joint undertakings are bigger than ourselves and that we are interconnected. We want you to know we are undeterred in our commitment to help others in the most effective, just, and equitable ways.

The challenges of our day are varied and formidable. It will take new ways and understandings to meet them. But, generosity comes in many forms, as well; it can help nonprofits respond safely and quickly to evolving needs. It can help make our neighborhoods more equitable places where everyone belongs. It can be an act of kindness that lifts someone up from despair.

We greet you with the perseverance that, in the face of ongoing adversity, strives still for a greater good. And we celebrate those who provide resources and support for those efforts through their time, talent, and treasure. That passion and purpose benefits our community today, and our community will continue to benefit from that dedication to good for generations to come.

We know there is much work, reckoning, and repair to participate in to make sure everyone in our community has an opportunity to flourish. And we know there are no easy fixes. The pandemic has resulted in untold trauma, suffering, sacrifices, and losses that will be remembered 100 years from now, but the United States continues to face the consequences of an even longer legacy of racism in our country. We join others in our community in the pursuit of greater understanding and real, sustained progress in combating racism.

This can be particularly difficult work as ways, whys, and wherefores are assessed anew, but it can also be extraordinarily rewarding, moving the “separations of human division toward hope in our common humanity,” to quote author Isabel Wilkerson. We are determined to make meaningful progress in substantive and growing ways, ways that last.

We endeavor to strengthen and improve the well-being of our community through the most effective philanthropy possible. These may be years of tragedy and challenge, of injustice and hardship – but we can make them times of progress and triumph, as well. And, we all can benefit from that progress; this need not be a zero-sum game.

So, extraordinary times, meet extraordinary generosity - we are ready.

Doug Kridler

President and CEO

The Columbus Foundation