Thriving Philanthropy, Thriving Communities

The Princeton Area Community Foundation is the philanthropic nexus of central New Jersey. We’re committed to helping our region and its residents – and especially its children – thrive.

As a robust foundation with more than $260 million in assets, we help individuals, families, businesses, and organizations create permanent charitable funds to meet the challenges of changing times. As a community leader we invest and administer these funds, award grants and scholarships, and promote philanthropy and encourage meaningful collaboration, all under the direction of a knowledgeable team.

As your community foundation, we provide services, guidance, and partnership. It’s our job to help you exercise generosity here, and to bring philanthropists together for maximum impact. We strive toward a vibrant, engaged, equitable community, from which all will benefit.

Are you interested in making a gift to strengthen our community?

Discover the advantages of giving through your Community Foundation.

Are you a nonprofit or student seeking a grant or scholarship?

Learn more about the funding we provide to organizations and individuals, and find application guidelines.

Learn more about our COVID-19 Relief & Recovery Fund

Do you have any questions for us? Please contact us.

Mission

Promoting philanthropy...

We promote giving as a shared community value. This is the fundamental value that connects us and helps us grow. We believe in sharing resources—money, ideas, talents, time—and we encourage generosity in ourselves and others.

to advance the well-being of our communities…

We help people invest in outstanding local organizations—successful nonprofits that are making lives better across central New Jersey and beyond. We put our experience to good use throughout the community by leading convenings that creative the partnerships and clarity necessary for collective impact.

forever.

Your investments in the Community Foundation are doing good things now. Giving through your Community Foundation is powerful and enduring—together, we’ll help take care of generations to come.

Our Values

Generous
We believe in the sharing of resources and encourage this altruistic spirit in ourselves and others.
Fair
We perform the work of our organization justly, openly, honestly, and striving for social justice.
Creative
We will harness our collective intelligence, compassion, and empathy to ensure that our work is productive, constructive, and imaginative.
Courageous
We aspire to do the right thing for our organization and for our community, even when a decision may not be popular or universally understood.
Lasting
Our organization will remain enduringly relevant to our communities.

We Believe

• our community flourishes as philanthropy thrives;

• all of our children deserve opportunities; and

• working together with people who care, businesses, and nonprofits, we can address our region’s most difficult challenges.

Our History

Founded in 1991 by a group of local residents.
Caring deeply about the welfare of others, the Community Foundation began by awarding grants to nonprofits doing important work in the area.

Families established donor advised funds with us.
Early on, families realized we could help make their giving more effective. They worked with our grant-making experts to invest in our communities to achieve the most impact.

Nonprofits joined our grants program.
Relying on our accrued knowledge of our community resources, nonprofits began to partner with us— entrusting us with their endowments—to take advantage of our access to high quality investment managers. In Central New Jersey, we became the voice of philanthropy.

We started investing in strengthening nonprofits.
Informed by commissioned research and anecdotal feedback, we took on the responsibility of helping nonprofits solving their most difficult challenges—growing the next generation of leaders, building fundraising and marketing infrastructure, and incorporating technology to make their work more efficient.

We’ll partner to solve our greatest challenges, forever.
As we continue the work to establish endowments that will address our community’s challenges in perpetuity, we’ve identified a special need to support our youth living in poverty. Their potential is limitless, and we will work in partnership with the region’s stakeholders to be champions to our young people.