Hello Everyone,
2025 has been a pivotal year for Opportunity Fund, for Pittsburgh, and for the nation at large. This year challenged us to grow as a philanthropic organization and as individuals.
We celebrated our ten-year anniversary, honoring ten years of working alongside brilliant grant partners and fellow foundations supporting the arts and social and economic justice – ten years of getting to know so many of you so well. Truly, it is the best part of our jobs. To date, Opportunity Fund has distributed a total of $20,382,786, 93% of which specifically benefits the Greater Pittsburgh region.
In February we gathered with many of you in recognition of this milestone to party and dream together. That night we understood that the challenges ahead would be formidable. However, few of us anticipated how aggressive the attacks would be and how rapidly our lives would change as a result. This was a year of political upheaval and immediate assaults on our institutions, our values, and our most historically oppressed communities. So encompassing were the broadsides that perhaps some of us realized for the first time how vulnerable we all are. Yes, we experience these harms differently. Yes, there are groups among us facing greater and more pressing threats than others. Yes, we are in this together. And if we are all in this together, what is possible?
An answer to this question glimmered into presence as we focused on our collective dreams and grounded them into our purpose. Via an official Resolution, our Board directed the staff to disburse the foundation’s resources to advance our mission and guiding values, “which will include without curb or restraint the support of social justice, racial justice, arts and artists, and the other progressive causes set forth in” our founding legal document.
With the confidence of this directive in mind, Opportunity Fund awarded 147 grants in 2025, totaling $2,624,489. Over 80% of these grants flexibly support our partners’ general operations. 37% supported the arts, and 55% supported grant partners with BIPOC leadership.
Rooted in our core mission, we met this year’s crises by evolving. We leaned on our modus operandi: try something. After a year of board-engaged learning, Opportunity Fund began investing our assets in a new way, making two Program Related Investments (PRIs) totaling $1.75 million to support values-aligned, predominantly BIPOC entrepreneurs. Any effort to grow the endowment must work to advance our mission, not push against it.
The board set aside $330k from the annual budget to respond to urgent needs as they arose. These funds went to support The Collaborative for Immigrant Impact, critical food access during the government shutdown, and a pooled emergency response fund that will launch next year.
As we advanced the Respite for Black Womxn Initiative, we stepped into the roles of grantwriters and fundraisers, experiencing the other side of the funding dynamic with our partners. Members of our team took on vital care work while navigating the very structures whose impacts we are working to address. They faced the gaps in our country’s healthcare, criminal justice, and mental health crisis response systems, as so many Pittsburgh families do every day.
No doubt about it, 2025 was rough. Looking forward, we feel, somewhat unexpectedly, energized and hopeful. In 2026 we will officially launch the Respite for Black Womxn initiative. We will renew our focus on the arts, with an exciting announcement to come early in the year. We will delve deeper into our Program Related Investments (PRIs). As ever, we will continue our shift towards trust-based philanthropy.
Friends, we are grateful to be in relationship with you. You continually show us what our work is meant to be, and how we can use the foundation’s resources more powerfully. We have a lot to do in 2026 and we are eager to get started.
But first, let’s rest.
Jake Goodman
Executive Director
