Here is a list of some of the community groups to which we give regular financial support, with some information about each one and a link if you would like to read more. The organizations are listed alphabetically — click on any of the letters in the table below for full information.
Anchor Mental Health
Based in Northeast Washington D.C, Anchor Mental Health is a Catholic Charity providing support for both adults and children suffering from mental illness or behavioral disorders.
Appleseed
A non-profit network of 17 public interest justice centers in the United States and Mexico, Appleseed is dedicated to building a society in which opportunities are genuine, access to the law is universal and equal, and government advances the public interest. Appleseed uncovers and corrects injustices and barriers to opportunity through legal, legislative and market-based structural reform. Working with a huge pro bono network, Appleseed identifies and examines social injustices, makes specific recommendations, and advocates for effective solutions to deep-seated structural problems.
Cardinal’s Appeal Archdiocese of DC
Once a year the Archdiocese of Washington conducts an appeal to support the mission and ministry of the Archdiocese. People in all of the parishes and missions are asked to make a significant financial contribution to this cause. These financial gifts help to provide education, ministry and services throughout the community.
Ashoka
Ashoka provides support for social entrepreneurs through its global network of Fellows, business entrepreneurs, policy makers, investors, academics and journalists. Ashoka is continually growing, with a record numbers of Fellows elected in 2006 and plans to expand its programs in Western Europe, East Asia and the Middle East.
Autism Speaks
As the nation’s largest autism science and advocacy organization, Autism Speaks is dedicated to funding research into the causes, prevention, treatments and a cure for autism; increasing awareness of autism spectrum disorders; and advocating for the needs of individuals with autism and their families.
Bethesda Cares
Bethesda Cares offers responses to problems related to homelessness and poverty. Located in Bethesda, the services are available to those living on the street from the DC Metro area. The Charity’s volunteers help to provide eviction protection and basic needs programs help to support those living on the street.
Bethlehem House
Bethlehem House began in 1987 as a response to the needs of parents and guardians of persons with intellectual and physical limitations. It has two homes in the Washington, D.C. area.
Brain Injury Association of Virginia
BIAV is the only statewide non-profit organization in Virginia exclusively devoted to serving individuals with brain injury, their families, and those that care for and about them.
Bread for the City
The mission of Bread for the City is to provide vulnerable residents of Washington DC with comprehensive services, including food, clothing, medical care, and legal and social services, in an atmosphere of dignity and respect.
Catholic Charities USA
The goal of Catholic Charities USA is to reduce poverty by 50% by 2020. Catholic Charities relies on a network of 420,000 volunteers each year to help support nearly 10 million people of all faiths and diverse needs.
Catholic Charities Foundation (D.C.)
Catholic Charities is the social ministry outreach of the Archdiocese of Washington. Guided by Catholic social and moral teaching, Catholic Charities strengthens the lives of all in need by giving help that empowers and hope that lasts. Catholic Charities assists individuals and families in need, especially those who are most vulnerable.
Catholic Coalition for Special Education
The mission of the Catholic Coalition for Special Education is to ensure that children with special needs are able to attend, and receive an appropriate education in their local Catholic elementary schools and high schools.
Catholic Extension Society
The aim of the Catholic Church extension society is to strengthen the Church’s presence and mission in under-resourced and isolated communities across the United States.
Catholic Relief Services
Catholic Relief Services carries out the commitment of the Bishops of the United States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. The goals of Catholic Relief Services are to promote human development by responding to major emergencies, fighting disease and poverty; and to nurture peaceful and just societies. Catholic Relief Services work with local, national, and international Catholic institutions and structures, as well as other organizations, to assist people on the basis of need.
Center for Justice & Democracy
The Center for Justice and Democracy is the only national consumer organization in the country exclusively dedicated to promoting the civil justice system. CJ & D works full-time to make sure average Americans are represented fairly in court, even against the country’s most powerful special interests. The center also works to expose unscrupulous attacks by special interests on judges, juries, injured consumers and the attorneys who represent them.
ChildHelp USA
Childhelp is a leading national non-profit organization dedicated to helping victims of child abuse and neglect. Childhelp’s approach focuses on prevention, intervention and treatment. Childhelp provides a 24 hour/7 days per week hotline and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Guam. Their other services include residential treatment services; children’s advocacy centers; therapeutic foster care; group homes; child abuse prevention, education and training; and the National Day of Hope every April.
Children’s Law Center
Based in DC, the Children’s Law Center has as its central goal a future in which every child has a safe home, a meaningful education and a healthy mind and body. In order to achieve this the Center provides legal services to at-risk children and their families using knowledge gained from representing their individual clients to advocate for changes in the law and its implementation.
Community of the ARK
L’Arche D.C. is a faith community; a licensed provider of professional services; an advocate with and for people who have intellectual disabilities; and a member of a worldwide federation of autonomous communities.
Creating Hope International
Creating Hope International was founded on a vision of improving the daily lives of the under served, often silent victims of world strife, devastating natural disasters, crumbling economies, and political systems which suppress natural human rights. CHI establishes projects with grassroots organizations to help them respond with local solutions when they face problems.
CSAAC
CSAAC is a private, non-profit agency which provides direct services to children and adults with autism across the lifespan. CSAAC’s mission is to “enable individuals with autism to reach their highest potential and contribute as confident individuals to their community”.
D.C. Bar pro bono programs
The D.C. Bar pro bono Program recruits, trains and mobilizes volunteer attorneys to take pro bono cases serving individuals living in poverty who are at risk of losing their homes, their livelihoods, and their families.
D.C. Center for Independent Living
DCCIL is a consumer controlled, cross disability, community based, private non-profit organization that promotes independent lifestyles for persons with significant disabilities in D.C.
D.C. Central Kitchen
DC Central Kitchen turns leftover food into millons of meals for thousands of at-risk individuals while offering nationally recognized culinary job training to once homeless and hungry adults.
D.C. Trial Lawyers Foundation
TLA-DC is a voluntary, nonprofit bar association of, by and for D.C. area trial lawyers. Members strive to hold wrongdoers accountable for the harms they inflict on consumers, workers and families. The Foundation carries out charitable work including scholarships, bike helmets and other help that advances the mission of trial lawyers to make our part of the world better and safer.
Developments in Literacy
Developments in Literacy (DIL) educates and empowers underprivileged students, especially girls, by operating student-centered model schools; and provides high-quality professional development to teachers and principals across Pakistan.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
Doctors Without Borders is an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971. Today MSF provides independent impartial assistance in more than 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters. In 1999 MSF received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Environment Maryland
Environment Maryland is a citizen-based environmental advocacy organization that works to protect Maryland’s clean air, clean water, and open space. Environmental Maryland’s staff combines independent research, practical ideas, and tough-minded advocacy to preserve our state’s wild places and natural beauty, protect Marylanders from toxic pollution, reduce our material consumption, build sustainable transportation and communities, and shift to 100% clean energy.
Equal Justice America
Equal Justice America is an independent non-profit corporation. EJA has become a national leader in providing opportunities for law students to work with organizations that deliver civil legal services to those most in need. Students at more than 70 law schools now have the opportunity to take part in the Equal Justice America Fellowship Program.
FOCUS
Answering the Church’s call for a new evangelization, FOCUS, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, is a national outreach that meets college students where they are and invites them into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith.
Franciscan Missions
The Franciscans have 5,400 missionaries and 800 missions throughout the world. They serve the poor in every continent, following in the steps of St. Francis, with a special ministry to people with leprosy, many of whom are children.
Guitars Not Guns
The goal of Guitars Not Guns is to help prevent violence in schools and on the streets by providing foster kids and at-risk youth with focus and self-actualization.
Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit ecumenical Christian ministry founded on the conviction that every person should have a decent, safe and affordable place to live.
Hope House DC
Hope House provides programs to strengthen families and in particular the relational bonds between children and their fathers imprisoned far from home. In addition, Hope House aims to reduce isolation, stigma, shame and risk these families experience when fathers and husbands are imprisoned, and to raise public awareness about this most at-risk population.
Ignatian Volunteer Corps
The Ignatian Volunteer Corps (IVC) provides men and women, aged 50 and greater, opportunities to serve others – to address social injustice – and to transform lives. IVC works in partnership with hundreds of community partner organizations. These nonprofit organizations provide Ignatian Volunteers with substantive work to serve individuals who have slipped through this country’s safety net.
Jesuit Volunteer Corps
The Jesuit Volunteer Corps offers women and men an opportunity to work full-time for justice and peace. Living simply in intentional communities of fellow JVs, they work in education, advocacy, direct service, and community service in 39 US cities and in six other countries. They reside in the same environs as those they serve: people who are low-wage earners, homeless, unemployed, refugees, diagnosed with AIDS, elderly, street youth, former gang members, abused, mentally ill, developmentally disabled, and others who strive to find justice in their lives. Almost 300 schools, nonprofit agencies, and grassroots organizations across the world count on JVs to provide essential services.
Jewish Community Center
The goals of the Washington DCJCC are to preserve and strengthen Jewish identity, heritage, tradition and values through a wide variety of social, cultural, recreational, and educational programs and services.
Jubilee Association of Maryland
Jubilee Association of Maryland exists to provide support for adults with developmental disabilities to live in and enrich their community while fulfilling their personal, family and spiritual needs. Jubilee was started by and continues to be affiliated with Hyattsville Mennonite Church.
L’Arche USA
L’Arche USA’s mission is to make known the gifts of people with developmental disabilities, revealed through mutually transforming relationships; foster an environment in community that responds to the changing needs of our members, while being faithful to the core values of our founding story; and engage in our diverse cultures, working together toward a more human society.
Legal Aid Society of D.C.
The Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia was formed in 1932 to provide civil legal aid to individuals, families and communities in the District who could not otherwise afford to hire a lawyer. Over the last 75 years, Legal Aid has helped tens of thousands of District residents obtain meaningful access to justice. Legal Aid staff and volunteers provide a continuum of services from client education to full representation before a court or an administrative tribunal.
Little Sisters of the Poor
The Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Poor began in 1839 with the mission to help and support the elderly poor.
Loyola Retreat House
It is the goal of Loyola Retreat House to ensure that every person who visits leaves with a greater peace and an enlivened desire to live vibrantly in God’s presence. Visitors benefit from 235 acres of woodland on a buff overlooking the Potomac River, providing the ideal spiritual retreat.
Maryknoll Fathers
Maryknoll Fathers is a missionary Society within the Catholic Church of the United States that has been reaching out for nearly 100 years to those most in need throughout the world.
Maryland Food Bank
The Maryland Food Bank, an affiliate of Feeding America, was founded in 1979 to coordinate the procurement and distribution of food donations from manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and government agencies to organizations providing free food to the state’s hungry.
National Catholic Partnership on Disability
The National Catholic Partnership on Disability (NCPD) was established in 1982 to implement in parishes and dioceses throughout the United States the 1978 Pastoral Statement of U.S. Catholic Bishops on Persons with Disabilities.
The National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care
The Consumer Voice is the leading national voice representing consumers in issues related to long-term care, helping to ensure that consumers are empowered to advocate for themselves. The Consumer Voice is the primary source of information and tools for consumers, families, caregivers, advocates and ombudsmen to help ensure quality care for the individual.
National Consumers League
The National Consumers League is America’s oldest consumer organization, representing consumers and workers on marketplace and workplace issues since our founding in 1899. NCL provides government, businesses, and other organizations with the consumer’s perspective on concerns including child labor, privacy, food safety, and medication information.
Peace Action Education Fund
Peace Action Education Fund is the nation’s largest grassroots peace network, with chapters and affiliates in states across the country. Peace Action organizes a grassroots network to place pressure on Congress and the Administration through write-in campaigns, internet actions, citizen lobbying and direct action. Through a close relationship with progressive members of Congress, Peace Action play a key role in devising strategies to move forward peace legislation, and, as a leading member of United for Peace and Justice and the Win Without War coalitions, Peace Action lends its expertise and large network to achieving common goals.
Prison Outreach Ministry
Prison Outreach Ministry seeks to reduce recidivism, develop support systems for individuals returning to their communities following incarceration, and educate the community by building relationships and matching individuals with volunteer mentors from faith communities and civic organizations.
Public Citizen Foundation
Public Citizen serves as the people’s voice in the nation’s capital. For nearly four decades, Public Citizen has proudly championed citizen interests before Congress, the executive branch agencies and the courts. Public Citizen has successfully challenged the abusive practices of the pharmaceutical, nuclear and automobile industries, and many others.
Public Justice Foundation
The Public Justice Foundation is a not-for-profit, charitable membership organization that supports cutting-edge litigation and educates the public about the critical issues it addresses. Membership includes leading trial lawyers, appellate lawyers, consumer advocates, environmental attorneys, employment lawyers, civil rights attorneys, class action specialists, law professors, law students, public interest advocates, and other people who care about justice.
Rosaria Communities Inc.
Rosaria Communities is committed to providing a home and supporting adults with developmental disabilities.
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army, an international movement, is an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church. It is known for its extensive philanthropy and charity work in many different areas.
Save the Children
Save the Children is the leading independent organization creating lasting change in the lives of children in need in the United States and around the world. When disaster strikes around the world, Save the Children is there to save lives with food, medical care and education and remains to help communities rebuild through long-term recovery programs.
SEEC
SEEC is an innovative nonprofit agency providing individualized, community-based supports to people with developmental disabilities.
SOIL
Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL) is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting soil resources, empowering communities and transforming wastes into resources in Haiti.
SOME (So Others Might Eat)
So Others Might Eat is the only interfaith, community-based organization in the District of Columbia that offers a comprehensive, holistic approach to caring for the homeless and extremely poor citizens of the city.
Special Olympics Maryland
The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for persons eight years of age and older with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes, and the community.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral New York
St. Patrick’s Cathedral is the Mother Church of the Archdiocese of New York and the seat of its Archbishop. Built by contributions large and small, it remains emblematic of the ascendance of religious freedom in the New World. As such, this international landmark is a beacon of hope for those who share the Catholic faith and a source of inspiration to the more than five million visitors of every religious denomination welcomed here each year.
St. Martin’s Church D.C.
St Martin’s is a welcoming, diverse and open parish family which offers a number of outreach programs that aim to help members of the community.
Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights
From its inception in 1968, the mission of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs has been to mobilize the resources of the private bar to address issues of civil rights violations and poverty in the community. The Committee’s active litigation docket of over 100 matters includes individual cases and class actions, as well as other larger law reform cases. It also includes a significant focus on public policy advocacy.
WAMU
WAMU 88.5 is the leading public radio station for NPR news and information in the greater Washington D.C. area.
WETA
WETA is the flagship public broadcasting station in the nation’s capital. WETA’s mission is to produce and broadcast programs of intellectual integrity and cultural merit that recognize viewers’ and listeners’ intelligence, curiosity and and interest in the world around them.
Whitman Walker Clinic
Whitman- Walker’s mission is to be the highest quality, culturally competent community health center serving greater Washington’s diverse urban community, including individuals who face barriers to accessing care, and with a special expertise in LGBT and HIV care.
Woodley House Inc.
Woodley House provides safe, community-based housing and clinical services for the mentally ill – that next step or ‘step-down’ toward independence from hospitals, institutions or shelters. Housing options in neighborhoods throughout Washington, DC, include temporary crisis care, transitional and long-term supported independent living. The treatment program provides psychiatric monitoring and comprehensive support services to help over 300 mentally ill clients a year (both private and publically-funded) work toward recovery and a return to the community.
Yale Law School
Yale Law School is one of the world’s premier law schools. It offers an unmatched environment of excellence and educational intimacy in the form of world renowned faculty, small classes, limitless opportunities for clinical training, and strong encouragement of public service. The Law School is small by design; its impact on the world is measured by its accomplished graduates and its ongoing scholarship and outreach through numerous centers and projects.
