Building communities of care, capability, and collective thriving.
Through mutual aid, community gatherings, and nonprofit capacity-building
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We help neighbors meet urgent needs, create space for meaningful civic conversation, and provide sustainable support for small organizations with big missions.
The 3 ways we work
A story-driven neighbor-to-neighbor platform that connects individuals and families experiencing financial hardship with community members ready to help.
A public gathering space that brings together nonprofit leaders, neighbors, educators, advocates, and citizens around the work of civic life.
A shared support hub that uplifts the small non-profit employee and client experience, by creating a more efficient, effective, and engaged organization.
Why Us. Why Now.
Non-profits solve problems too complex for corporates, too urgent for government, and too profitless for investors — and too unjust and too existential to ignore. Yet many non-profits operate with limited infrastructure, rising workforce strain, and growing financial and operational complexity.
At the same time, fragmented communities themselves are disconnected from the realities nonprofits navigate: the urgent needs of neighbors, the pressures on altruistic staff, the eagerness of volunteers, the goodwill and big gaps from funders, and the human stories beneath it all.
The Giving Foundation stands in that gap.
Through The Giving Wall, we help communities and caseworkers respond directly and quickly to urgent financial needs that grants miss and the safety net cannot support. We’re a “Yes”when every other road presents a “No.”
Through Many Hands Live, we create spaces where everyone — nonprofit leaders, neighbors, educators, advocates, electeds, and citizens — can better understand the issues of our time, and live the work of community care.
And through The Giving Workplace, we help small nonprofits clarify strategic direction, strengthen internal systems, adopt and upskill technologies, teach shared leadership practices, and create engaged employee experiences that sustain their missions over time.
Together, these three programs build communities of care, capability, and collective thriving.
Impact.
Healthy non-profits create healthy communities.
The Giving Workplace
The work of small nonprofits is hard.
These organizations exist to make the human experience fairer and safer, yet they often struggle to create a culture within the organization that mirrors they one they want beyond.
If nonprofits are not designed for engagement, efficiency and efficacy, their missions are threatened, and so are those who empower it.
Creating better employee experiences across the full journey of nonprofit work — from hiring and onboarding, to growing and guiding, to contributing to mission while living a well-supported life.
That’s why our work begins with an exploration into the organization’s strengths and opportunities with their employees, across the 5 pillars of the Employee Experience:
Protect
Welcome
Develop
Guide
Pride
Within each we hold two consistent questions: Where are their unproductive tensions that risks efficiency, efficacy, and engagement? Where are their successes that need to be known, documented, and replicated?
What we discover leads us to support:
Structure: Processes, technological tools, operational workflows, organizational design
Behavior: Trust, communication, leadership, recognition, and culture
Strategy: Vision, mission, values, goal-setting frameworks and tools
Experience
Excellence
Development
Enablement
We work toward future in which small nonprofits have greater access to the expertise, systems, and support structures typically available to those with bigger budgets and more people.
Our Partners
Our Team
(We’re a small non-profit too.)
Becky Lakin
Becky Lakin is an employee experience strategist, adult educator, and nonprofit leader whose work sits at the intersection of community wellbeing, organizational culture, and ecosystem thriving. Her leadership experience includes roles in people and culture, corporate citizenship, and creative communications, alongside teaching graduate and professional programs within Arizona State University’s College of Global Futures and Conservation. She is the Chair of the inaugural Sustainability and Resilience Action Committee for Henrico County, Elected Director of the Henricopolis Soil and Water Conservation District, and Founder of The Tomorrow Company.
Jason Ashlock
Jason Allen Ashlock is a consultant, speaker, and facilitator specializing in organizational development, leadership, strategy, and story-based thinking. Drawing on 20+ years of experience with Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, and civic organizations, Jason helps executives, teams and companies navigate complexity, overcome stagnation, and design resilient future. His work across 50+ countries, 150+ organizations and 200+ keynote audiences advances an ecological and narrative understanding of organizational change, translating the wisdom of story and nature into strategies that sustain both people and purpose. Alongside Becky, he is the co-founder of The Tomorrow Company.
Diamond Walton
Peace Corps alumna Diamond Walton’s work sits at the intersection of philanthropy, public health, and economic justice. After a decade addressing racial health disparities in the public health sector, she transitioned into philanthropy and social innovation, helping direct millions of dollars in grant funding through community, private, and family foundations to nonprofits around the world. She is the Founder and Chief Gift Giver of Jubilant Money, which evolved from the Black Student Debt Freedom Fund, where she helped eliminate thousands of dollars in Black student loan debt. For this work, she received the 2022 PayPal Maggie Lena Walker Emerging Leader Award. She holds a Master of Public Health from Emory University and serves on the boards of Virginia Community Voice and the Richmond Henrico Public Health Foundation.
Our Board
Reggie Gordon
Secretary + President and CEO, Richmond Memorial Health Foundation
Kim McLeod
Board Chair + Partner, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP
Chris Dowhan
TechnologistDavid Johnson
Treasurer + SVP, Digital Banking, Axiom Bank