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.

Opus Foundation

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.

  1. We believe grants supporting opportunities for people to become well-educated or self-sufficient lead to healthier communities and greater individual success.
  2. We seek to partner with organizations that are entrepreneurial in their approach and creative, proactive, innovative and results-oriented.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. We value organizations that leverage funding and volunteer talent to achieve their objectives and maximize our collective impact.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.

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:

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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