This year, Philadelphia Foundation showed up. We convened partners across sectors, mobilized resources for emerging needs, and stayed focused on the long-term commitments that create lasting change. As detailed in a companion piece about what’s been happening inside our organization, 2025 brought important investments in our capacity – the enabling conditions that make all our external work possible. It’s what we did with that capacity – alongside donors, nonprofit partners, civic leaders, and community members – that really tells the story of this year.

What follows isn’t an exhaustive account of everything Philadelphia Foundation pursued in 2025. Rather, these are moments that capture how we show up as a civic catalyst, trusted partner, and strategic problem-solver. They are examples of what becomes possible when we bring people together around shared challenges, move quickly in response to new opportunities, and help transform ambitious visions into measurable impact.

A Civic Catalyst: Driving Collaborative Action

We’ve always believed that the biggest challenges require the most robust coalitions. As a civic catalyst, we don’t just respond to our region’s challenges; we proactively identify opportunities, organize partners, and build the collaborative infrastructure needed to sustain progress over time. In 2025, this work took on new urgency and scale in ways that reminded us why cross-sector collaboration matters so much.

The essential work of the Civic Coalition to Save Lives continued throughout the year. Our second annual convening brought together the cross-sector partners who have made this collaborative model so effective. There’s something powerful about gathering in the same room the police commissioner and nonprofit leaders, business executives and community organizers, funders and academics – all united around evidence-based interventions that we know save lives. The results of collaboration speak for themselves: homicides are down over 50% from 2020, representing dozens of lives saved. These aren’t statistics. They are lives. They are neighbors who are still here, families that didn’t lose a loved one, communities that are safer because we stayed coordinated and focused on what works. We’re proud to help advance this life-saving work, and we’re committed to sustaining it across administrations and beyond the headlines.

When uncertainty creates challenges for our nonprofit sector, we have a responsibility to listen, learn, and help identify solutions. Responding to an invitation from nonprofit leaders to their most trusted funders, Philadelphia Foundation, in our capacity as a convener, co-hosted calls with a steering committee of the Nonprofit Leaders Group (NLG) – a coalition of local leaders representing nonprofit organizations focused on human services – and a small group of funders. Philadelphia Foundation immediately engaged two consultants to support the early-stage research and collaboration of the nonprofit leaders on these calls. At the summer convening of the NLG, which we sponsored, executive directors and organizational leaders came together to share real-time information, identify emerging needs, and align strategies during a period of significant national disruption. The nonprofit organizations serving our region are the backbone of our communities, and when they face challenges, we all need to show up.

Following our Board’s commitment to a decade-long focus on economic mobility, we’re developing strategic investments aimed at creating career pipelines for young adults, increasing financial well-being for vulnerable populations, and building social capital for individuals from low-wealth backgrounds. We’re in this for the long haul, because that’s what it takes to move the needle on challenges this complex.

April brought one of the year’s most significant convenings: the Economic Mobility Summit at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, which followed the October 2024 convening with Dr. Raj Chetty and Opportunity Insights that we co-hosted with Comcast and other funders. We co-sponsored the Fed’s national summit as well, which brought together civic, business, and nonprofit leaders; featured research on the importance of upward mobility for economic resilience and growth; and elevated best practices for cross-sector collaboration. The final panel session, introduced by our President and CEO Pedro A. Ramos, featured three mayors in conversation. During the discussion, Mayor Parker announced a landmark $20 million public-private partnership for workforce development.

Throughout the year, we joined business and civic leaders to champion the critical role of the corporate sector in economic growth and economic mobility, including at the Greater Philadelphia Summit on Business Impact & Volunteerism. Economic mobility isn’t just a moral imperative, it’s an economic necessity for a region that wants to compete globally. Growth and mobility for our region requires business, government, nonprofits, and philanthropy to lead by creating quality jobs, building career pathways, and investing in the talent that’s already here.

A Trusted Partner: Responding with Agility and Expertise

Trust isn’t built overnight. It develops over decades of showing up, following through, and moving quickly when opportunities arise or needs emerge. Our history in Greater Philadelphia has given us deep roots and the relationships and insights that come with them. This year, we leaned into that trust in ways that mattered.

Philly Gives returned for its second year, building on the momentum from 2024’s inaugural campaign. The initiative, conceived by Dr. Janet Haas and made possible by a grant from the William Penn Foundation, leverages trusted media partners to elevate essential nonprofit work across Greater Philadelphia. As nonprofits face challenging times, Philly Gives responds by telling their stories through partners including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Tribune, Impacto, Philadelphia Gay News, WURD Radio, 6abc, and New Mainstream Press, thereby connecting this year’s 10 nonprofit partners with new supporters who might never have known about their work otherwise. It’s a model that leverages existing relationships and platforms to drive resources exactly where they’re needed most.

One of the most exciting launches of the year was the Regional Food Fund, created in partnership with the William Penn Foundation (WPF) and United Way of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey. Regional food banks have reported they will face annual losses of nearly $16 million due to federal funding cuts beginning in fiscal year 2026, with additional cuts anticipated across multiple federal programs. When families in our region are facing a food security crisis of this magnitude, we cannot afford to wait or work in isolation. That’s why we are helping to drive this collaborative initiative to strengthen our region’s food system by leveraging a challenge grant from WPF, pooling resources from multiple funders, and coordinating investment in food banks across the region. It’s exactly the kind of aggregated, strategic approach that maximizes impact by bringing philanthropic partners together so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Our YOUTHadelphia initiative garnered energy and inspiration across generations. We believe that young people aren’t just our region’s future – they’re essential voices shaping our communities in the here and now. Through YOUTHadelphia, we’re investing in youth-led philanthropy. This year, 12 public high school students from Academy at Palumbo, Olney High School, Sayre High School, and West Philadelphia High School came together to review proposals, evaluate programs, and make real funding decisions, ultimately awarding $50,000 in grants to five youth-serving nonprofits addressing issues like leadership development, trauma healing, and violence prevention. This innovative initiative, supported by the Fund for Children, embodies our commitment to expanding who gets to shape philanthropic priorities in Greater Philadelphia. When young people have a say in where resources go, and the hands-on experience of making those decisions themselves, they bring perspectives we simply can’t afford to miss.

Finally, we hosted the Immigrant and Refuge Emergency Relief Fund, raising $1.8MM in emergency aid to support three leading agencies that lost federal support this year. This important fund addresses the urgent needs of immigrants and refugees in Greater Philadelphia by funding basic necessities, legal services, community coordination, and public education campaigns.

A Strategic Problem-Solver: Transforming Vision into Impact

Philadelphia Foundation has always been known for helping donors, partners, and communities turn ambitious ideas into impact. As problem-solvers, we take a vision, and collaborate to share the details that make it real, and then execute on it with the kind of persistence that creates sustainable results. In 2025, this approach took many forms.

We announced the 2025 recipients of our Brody Family Medical Trust Fund fellowships – two postdoctoral researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who embody the Brody family’s vision of addressing diseases with profound societal impact while expanding the frontiers of medical knowledge. The fellowships exemplify how we ensure that a funder’s vision is fulfilled. The Brody fund remains perpetually relevant by focusing on early-stage research into currently incurable diseases, ensuring that as medical science evolves and new challenges emerge, the fund continues to fulfill the donor’s intent while supporting the next generation of researchers tackling humanity’s most pressing health threats. It’s the kind of thoughtful philanthropic architecture that transforms a family’s generosity into lasting impact.

We released our comprehensive 2023-24 Impact Report, titled “How Change Happens Together,” a phrase that captures everything we believe about this work. The report detailed collaborative initiatives across our three pillars: civic catalyst, trusted partner, and strategic problem-solver. But it wasn’t just a retrospective. It was a statement about how we work and why it matters. Real change doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens when we align resources, expertise, and commitment across sectors and over time. It happens when we’re willing to stay with something long enough to see results, even when other priorities compete for attention.

Looking Ahead Together

As we look back on 2025, what is most striking isn’t any single accomplishment, it’s the cumulative effect of sustained partnership and strategic focus. It’s what happens when people and organizations align around shared challenges and commit to staying engaged over time. It’s the evidence, repeated again and again this year, that progress is possible when we stay coordinated, evidence-based, and focused on what works.

These highlights represent just some of the work accomplished this year alongside our donors, partners, and community. Each initiative, grant, and conversation gave us an opportunity to tackle difficult challenges together and build a stronger future for everyone who calls Greater Philadelphia home. While we’re proud of what we have accomplished, we’re even more grateful for the relationships that made it possible – the donors who trusted us with their resources and vision, the nonprofit partners doing the work every day, the civic and business leaders who showed up when we called, and the community members who reminded us why this work matters.

As we move into 2026, Philadelphia Foundation remains committed to the strategic investments, cross-sector partnerships, and sustained leadership necessary to create a more equitable, vibrant region. We’re energized by the work ahead and grateful for everyone who made 2025 meaningful.