The Growing Resilience & Care Project, funded by an anonymous donor, supports most recent $1.3 million tranche from foundation’s Essex County Community Response Fund

Beverly, MA – Nonprofits across Essex County continue to persevere and show up for our communities, despite the sustained fallout from federal funding cuts making their work increasingly more challenging.

While individuals and families struggle to put food on their tables, find or maintain affordable housing, stay safe and obtain the medical care they need, organizations across the region are working harder than ever to ensure their communities’ needs are met.

To ensure this critical work continues, in the last seven months, ECCF has granted $2 million to nearly 120 nonprofits across the region from the foundation’s Essex County Community Response Fund, launched last summer.

“When federal funding cuts began hitting us here at home, we knew we had to put a structure in place to quickly get flexible resources out to our nonprofits whose leaders were waking up every day to uncertainty,” said ECCF President and CEO Stratton Lloyd. “We all need these organizations to thrive, and our commitment to supporting their needs is unwavering.”

Following the announcement of the launch of the new fund, the community – inspired to support their friends, neighbors and communities – responded.

“We had everything from $25 dollar gifts from individuals to donations in the hundreds of thousands from foundations,” said Amy Moran Lowe, ECCF’s vice president of programs. “And every one of those gifts matters. The Essex County Community Response Fund is a great example of people coming together to support our neighbors across Essex County.”

Because of this collaborative giving, ECCF has made three rounds of grants since August.

THE FUNDING

September 2025: Essential Needs

In September 2025, ECCF announced $500,000 in funding to 30 organizations focused on essential needs: food, clothing and shelter, and support for nonprofits looking to expand or streamline their impact through structured partnerships or mergers.

November 2025: Food Insecurity

Later that fall, in the wake of SNAP funding delays and reductions, the foundation released $200,000 of additional funding to frontline food service providers – largely those serving Essex County’s Gateway Cities, where nearly 80 percent of SNAP participants live.

“Food security has long been an issue in our region,” said Lowe, “And it’s not one that’s going away anytime soon. In fact, it’s skyrocketing.”

According to the 2025 Massachusetts Food Access report, recently highlighted by The Salem Pantry, roughly 1.1million families did not have reliable access to food in the last year. In Essex County, it’s even more alarming. There was a nine percent increase in food-insecure households from 2024 to 2025, one of the largest increases in the state.

February 2026: The Growing Care & Resilience Project supports a $1.3 M Grant Round

As ECCF was readying for another round of grants from the fund in the winter of 2026, the foundation received welcome news. ECCF was to be the recipient of $1 million from the Growing Care & Resilience Project, an initiative launched by an anonymous donor who believed that community foundations could most rapidly and effectively reinvest the funding into the community where it’s needed the most.

“Every day, we’re out there connecting with nonprofits whose leaders continue to face tough decisions about how they will move forward,” said Lloyd. “‘Grateful’ does not even begin to describe how we felt when we received the news of this very generous anonymous gift, which helped us to greatly expand our impact.”

This third tranche of support – totaling $1.3 million – was distributed to 102 organizations across the entire region, with a concentration in the Gateway Cities of Haverhill, Lawrence, Lynn, Methuen, Peabody and Salem, where nearly half of region’s 800,000+ residents live – and where the need is highest.

The majority of grants ranged from $5,000 to $25,000, and are distributed amongst the following categories:

• Immigrant Support, which includes community organizing, emergency assistance for families and legal defense ($265,000).
• Health, which includes youth mental health, safety of targeted communities, harm reduction and recovery, and disability access and elder care ($275,000).
• Food, including regional food hubs, meal delivery and food access for targeted communities ($293,000).
• Other Basic Needs and Wraparound Services, including emergency rental and utility assistance, shelter and eviction protection and clothing and hygiene supplies ($287,000).
• Structural Change, for structural changes – like formalized partnerships, mergers and business model redesign – to streamline services or expand their ($180,000).

“Because of you, families facing homelessness have access to safe shelter, children have a place to rest each night and neighbors experiencing food insecurity can count on nutritious meals and essential groceries,” said Melissa Gonzalez, executive director of Citizens Inn, a Peabody-based nonprofit focused on breaking the patterns of instability that lead to homelessness and hunger. “Together we are breaking cycles of hardship and building a stronger, more resilient community.”

YOU CAN HELP SUPPORT OUR COMMUNITIES

“Our role as a community foundation is to invite and inspire people to face our region’s challenges together,” said Stacey Landy, ECCF’s senior vice president of advancement and philanthropic services. “The Essex County Community Response Fund epitomizes this type of collaboration, this idea that neighbors are coming together to help neighbors when they need it most.”

And every gift counts. To learn more and to donate to the Essex County Community Response Fund please visit www.eccf.org/essex-county-community-response-fund/.

“We’re so proud to live in a region where people have stepped up to support each other. Two million dollars is a lot of money, but there’s still more work to do,” said Lowe. “Philanthropy may not be able to fill the huge gap left by the shift in federal funding, but through the Essex County Community Response Fund, we are saying to the local nonprofit sector, ‘We see you. We are here for you. And we’ll keep standing with you.’”