Serving People & Communities

Opus Foundation

Serving People & Communities

Opus Foundation

The Opus Foundation helps build Opus communities and supports efforts that make them better places to live, work and raise families.

We work to improve the conditions that disproportionately affect historically underinvested people and communities by deploying capital across these focus areas:

Early Childhood Education to provide high-quality experiences for preschool-aged children that result in enhanced social/emotional skills and school readiness
Youth Development to promote healthy social and academic development of youth with an emphasis on fostering their aspirations to stay in school and pursue higher education or a career track
Workforce Development to strengthen the workforce in our communities to position and prepare under/unemployed individuals for career readiness/advancement and greater self-sufficiency
Community Revitalization to increase the vitality of economically disinvested neighborhoods, such as the development of small businesses, affordable housing and/or other important community assets like community centers

Guided by Core Principles

At the Opus Foundation we are guided by eight core principles. They serve as the philosophy, values and lens from which we work.

We believe grants supporting opportunities for people to become well-educated or self-sufficient lead to healthier communities and greater individual success.
We seek to partner with organizations that are entrepreneurial in their approach and creative, proactive, innovative and results-oriented.
We actively embrace and support diversity, equity and inclusion throughout our culture and our work to amplify our connection to and impact in the communities we serve.
We value listening to and learning from our communities and partners and seek to use their input to improve our practices and organizational polices to ensure we are responding equitably.
We value organizations that leverage funding and volunteer talent to achieve their objectives and maximize our collective impact.
The majority of our grants are awarded in communities in which Opus does business. On occasion, national grants may be made that benefit individuals and communities across the country.
Our grants support the involvement of Opus associates in their communities because we believe these local investments provide important time and talent of our associates to meet their community needs, while also, building leadership and empowering them to live organizational and individual values.
We encourage collaboration, teamwork and team-building among Opus associates and between associates and our community partners.

Priorities of Our Work

A colorful graphic that shows connections between Racial Equity, Engaged Associates, Opus Value and Building Community; in the middle is states the commitment and the focus areas.

We're committed to improving the conditions that disproportionately affect historically underinvested individuals and communities.

Racial Equity

The Foundation has long supported organizations addressing social, education and economic issues. After recent significant events, we took a closer look at what more we could do to further our mission and meet the needs of our communities.

Informed by identified instances of past discrimination with a continued impact across our focus areas, Racial Equity was elevated to one of our four priorities that guide all our efforts. Consistent with this priority, we updated our guiding principles (listed above), streamlined processes, revised internal structures, expanded funding criteria and welcomed more diverse members to the Foundation's Board of Directors.

The Foundation will continue to develop solutions to alleviate specific, identified instances of past discrimination through the following actions:

listen and learn from partners, community leaders and other stakeholders
deepen intentional efforts within focus areas (increasing access, decreasing barriers and addressing disparities)
make more multi-year grants to address systems change
engage in collective impact opportunities
support Opus' DEI efforts as part of the External Community Building focus area

Read more about some of our recent efforts here.

Engaged Associates

Opus associates are key to the work of the Opus Foundation. We're cultivating ambassadors to represent the work of the Foundation in Opus communities. We support nonprofits where associates volunteer and help advance the DEI culture work within Opus. It's our goal to promote volunteerism and inspire community connections with associates.

Opus Value

We connect to Opus' business and legacy, supporting nonprofits in the markets in which they do business and engage stakeholders in identifying impactful nonprofits. Additionally, we aim to grow diversity, equity and inclusion in our industries.

Building Community

Ultimately, we are building community by resourcing critical needs in our communities through grantmaking, impact investments and associate volunteer work. In this work we center learning to further understand shifting needs and opportunities and optimal ways to successfully partner to meet those needs.

“The Opus Foundation has a long history of supporting nonprofits that serve marginalized members of our communities. For 20 years, they have been doing this – something that only recently became important for many others. Opus isn't new to this – they are true to this."

Charlene Leach

President and CEO, Better Futures Minnesota

“None of this would be possible without the Opus Foundation. Non-government grants like this are essential, especially for getting new programs like this off the ground."

Amalia Woolf

Vice President of Development, Boys & Girls Clubs of Dundee Township

“Funding and support from partners like Opus are critical. For quite some time now, Opus has been leaning into the issue of construction workforce shortages providing both financial and hands-on support."

Bryan Cook

Executive Director, Construction Education Foundation

“Opus' partnership and grant to Christopher House is game changing. This investment will create access to jobs that lead to living wage employment while also answering the needs of families in our communities by nurturing teaching talent. It will further our work as innovators in the education and social service sector, impacting local and national early childhood teacher pipelines with a model for developing high-quality, early career teaching staff."

Libby Shortenhaus

CEO, Christopher House

“I don't know a lot of companies that are as generous as Opus. Their support has been critical to the launch and initial success of our program. They first supported our efforts to remodel our building, so we had a space to do the training. Now they are funding the actual training program. We are so appreciative of their support."

Mark Nelson

Executive Director, Freedom for Youth Ministries

“We are grateful for Opus' deep commitment to Denver Kids and to our students. In addition to financial support, they are putting their feet on the ground and want to have a direct impact on students' lives. By sharing their expertise and volunteering their time, they are investing in the Denver community for the long term."

Michelle Maldonado

Vice President of Development, Denver Kids

“As a small nonprofit with an operating budget of about half a million dollars, a $25,000 grant is substantial. In addition, we are coming off of a very rough 2020 when many funders shifted their dollars to urgent needs, like food and shelter. The Opus Foundation grant is truly a game-changer for us. We've never had funding for this kind of training, and it couldn't have come at a better time."

Julie Petr

Executive Director, Dress for Success Indianapolis

“The generosity of the Opus Foundation has been critical in our journey to be NAEYC-accredited. Not only were we able to purchase all supplies, materials, toys and equipment needed for each classroom, which is mandatory for accreditation, but we are also now able to create two playgrounds with state-of-the-art equipment. We could not become accredited without this support from Opus."

Tonia Gilbert

CEO, Upper Room

Impact Investing

Since its inception, the Foundation has made thousands of grants to impactful nonprofit organizations. In 2020, we expanded our efforts with a long-term initiative to support qualifying organizations through impact investments.

Impact investments are made from our endowment with the intention of generating positive and measurable social impact and a financial return. These investments take many forms and are made to nonprofit and for-profit entities. To date, we've made the following program related investments:

Alt Cap (2023) received a five-year $500,000 investment to fund a multi-faceted workforce and community development program supporting MBE/WBE owned construction industry businesses in the Kansas City region. (Read more in this blog post.)
Mercy Housing (2020), one of the nation's largest affordable housing organizations, received a $500,000 investment to help meet the financial gap in an affordable housing development in Denver.
IFF (2020), an organization based in Chicago that creates opportunities for low-income communities and people with disabilities, received a $1 million investment to help build a $13 million Indianapolis-based electronics recycling center that provides job training and transitional employment to citizens returning from incarceration.
CommonBond Communities (2020) received $500,000 to support the acquisition of two existing affordable housing buildings in Minneapolis and St. Paul. (Read more in this blog post.)

The Opus Foundation is the philanthropic foundation for Opus. The Opus Foundation is a separate entity from Opus and is led by its own Board of Directors. The Opus Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant proposals.

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