Since its founding in 1950, The Norfolk Foundation has worked to improve the quality of life for residents of southeastern Virginia. Thanks to its generous donors, the Foundation has made grants and awarded scholarships approaching $100 million. Through grantmaking and community leadership, The Norfolk Foundation touches countless lives of in the region. Here are a few examples of the Foundation’s work over the decades.

1950s

• Creates the first of more than 50 scholarship funds and begins a tradition of helping hundreds of area students each year achieve their educational goals.

• Awards a $100,000 grant to help build Kirn Memorial Library in Norfolk.
  1960s

• Helps start Eastern Virginia Medical School and Virginia Wesleyan College.

• Assists in preserving the historic Willoughby-Baylor House.

• Buys a building for the Southside Boys & Girls Club in Berkley.
  1970s

• Helps Old Dominion University expand its oceanography program.

• Supports an expansion of Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters.

1980s

• Helps build the Contemporary Art Center, expand the Chrysler Museum of Art, renovate the Wells Theater and establish the Business Consortium for Arts Support.

• Provides funding to expand WHRO’s television and radio studios.

• Equips the first laboratories at the Leonard R. Strelitz Diabetes Institutes at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

• Helps create Tidewater Community College’s Norfolk campus.

1990s

• Helps build the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center and NAUTICUS, renovate the Harrison Opera House, expand the Children’s Museum of Virginia and Norfolk Botanical Garden, repair Virginia Ballet Theatre’s studios and support the new Virginia Arts Festival.

• Assists in starting the Homeless Prevention Program through The Planning Council.

• Provides the United Way of South Hampton Roads a $1.2 million grant to improve the buildings housing 15 area nonprofits.

• Provides funds to expand the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia, to improve the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Hampton Roads and to build a headquarters for The Girl Scout Council of the Colonial Coast.

• Awards grants to homeless shelters run by The Dwelling Place and F.O.R.kids.

• Helps expand EVMS, Norfolk State University, ODU and Virginia Wesleyan.

• Starts awarding funds from the E.K. Sloane Fund, which by 2006 had provided more than $1.5 million in pianos for area arts, cultural and educational organizations.

2000s

• Incubates Smart Beginnings South Hampton Roads initiative to give all area children a good start in life.

• Creates the Academy for Nonprofit Excellence with Tidewater Community College.

• Builds or expands early education centers in Franklin, Norfolk, Suffolk, Virginia Beach, and the Eastern Shore.

• Helps restore the Crispus Attucks Cultural Center, build St. Mary’s Home for Disabled Children, renovate The Endependence Center and expand the Beach Health Clinic and Sugar Plum Bakery.

• Creates ArtsMatch to help arts groups overcome critical state budget cuts.

• Expands child and family programs at the YMCA of South Hampton Roads and helps build the Reba and Sam Sandler Family Campus of the Tidewater Jewish Federation Community.

• Provides new exhibits for the Virginia Aquarium, Virginia Zoo and Children’s Museum of Virginia, equips an education room at the Chrysler Museum of Art, helps build the Sandler Center for Performing Arts, and provides exhibits and replica ships for the Jamestown 2007 celebration

• Creates multi-media classrooms at Tidewater Community College campuses in Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk and Virginia Beach.

• Helps build Gosnold Apartments for formerly homeless people and the Village Pointe Senior Housing community in Norfolk’s Lambert’s Point neighborhood and equips the Citizen’s Committee to Protect the Elderly office in Virginia Beach.

• After Hurricane Isabel awards disaster grants to the Foodbank of Southeastern Virginia and area chapters of the American Red Cross and Salvation Army.