Impact 2024: NNJCF Highlights

Advancing public art in the region. Installing a rain garden in Hackensack. Building an alliance to protect the Hackensack River watershed. Providing college scholarships. These represent some highlights of our work and impact in 2024.

Providing Support and Making an Impact

In 2024, the Northern New Jersey Community Foundation (NNJCF) provided a great deal of support for North Jersey communities and residents. NNJCF works to make North Jersey a better place for all its residents to live, work, and be. We do this by:

• Connecting people and nonprofit organizations with valuable resources – share knowledge, make connections, provide grants and also donations.
• Building productive alliances to help people achieve their goals faster and more effectively.
• Advocating for equitable policies to enhance community quality of life for all in North Jersey, but especially people in disadvantaged communities.
• Producing catalytic projects that advance ideas and also inspire stakeholders.
• Helping donors, who want to support communities, achieve greater impact.

Here are highlights of our accomplishments and impact in 2024.

Green and Healthy Places

NNJCF helps make communities greener, more beautiful and healthier to live in. Furthermore, the Foundation advances environmental justice and addresses climate change.

Volunteers helped install a rain garden at Hackensack High School and expanded the impact to create green and healthy places.

In 2024, the Northern New Jersey Community Foundation:

• Partnered with Hackensack Public Schools and led the development and also the installation of a community rain garden at Hackensack High School. This gathering, co-produced by NNJCF and Greater Bergen Community Action, drew 50 volunteers to help install the rain garden and maintain it.
• Launched Hackensack River Nation, a cross-sector alliance of public officials, nonprofit leaders, environmental experts, and also representatives of environmentally-friendly businesses. The alliance strengthens members’ efforts to protect the Hackensack River watershed, as well as connect more people to the river. The watershed covers half of Bergen County, almost all of Hudson County, as well as part of Rockland County.
• Began developing the Hackensack River Nation Summit to attract around 100 environmental leaders, activists, experts and students to learn and build collaborations.
• Grew the Hackensack Environmental Justice Alliance to over 200 members and the capacity of Hackensack residents to lead and manage the group.
• Produced a Community Environmental Forum in Hackensack to share information about how to reduce flooding and to hear residents’ ideas.
• Produced the two-part No Mow Lawn Workshop at Johnson Public Library that discussed how to replace a front lawn with native plants to help reduce flooding and pollution supporting the natural ecosystem.
• Sponsored the Hackensack Environmental Justice Alliance’s Sweater Weather Walk Along the Hackensack River to connect people to the waterway.
• Participated actively in regional and statewide environmental efforts, including Jersey Water Works Green Infrastructure Committee and the Sustainable Jersey Summit. We also were a sponsor of the Waterfront Alliance’s annual conference.

Art and Green, Healthy Places

• Provided an Environmental Art Workshop for families and the Hackensack community.
• Held the Environmental Art Brainstorming Session with the Hackensack Arts Club to develop ideas for environmental art to be installed near the community rain garden at Hackensack High School.

Achievement Award Received

In recognition of our work and impact on the Green Infrastructure for Environmental Justice program, NNJCF also received an Association of New Jersey Environmental Commissions’ Achievement Award.

Creative Communities

NNJCF builds stronger communities through the arts and supports artists working in the public realm. We do this largely through creative placemaking – leveraging the power of arts and culture to address critical issues facing communities.

The Beyond the Wall website, illuminating the Black Women’s Mural, launched in October 2024.

In 2024, the Northern New Jersey Community Foundation:

• Celebrated the 10^th Anniversary of ArtsBergen with a special Connect the Dots networking and workshop event featuring the artist collective, Works on Water. The event brought together local artists and arts supporters to explore ways to bring more awareness to our local waterways through the arts.
• Provided work opportunities for 8 artists.
• Developed the educational, inspirational website “Beyond the Wall” expounding on the meaning, significance and process of the creation of “The Black Women’s Mural: Celebrating Black Suffragists and Black Women in Englewood” found on the Women’s Rights Information Center’s building.
• Announced a call for local and regional, as well as national public artists for inclusion in ArtsBergen’s Public Art Roster that attracted over 100 submissions.
• Trained historic preservationists in creative placemaking at the New Jersey History and Historic Preservation Conference.
• Partnered with the Hackensack Arts Club to develop ideas for an environmental art project at the Hackensack community rain garden at Hackensack High School. The art display will be produced and also installed at the high school in spring 2025.
• Commissioned a mural, as part of the 2024 Boost the Block Goes Green event in Hackensack. The four-part mural, Care for Your Little Patch of Earth by Amrisa Niranjan, will be displayed at the Johnson Public Library in Hackensack. Amrisa, a Hackensack-based artist, also serves as the Co-Chair of the Hackensack Environmental Justice Alliance.
• Grew the ArtsBergen Creates and Connects Facebook group to 911 members.

Belonging and Opportunity

Our communities will be stronger, more sustainable, and more livable if everyone there felt welcomed and valued, and feel they have fair opportunities to enhance their standards of living doing what they enjoy.

In 2024, the Northern New Jersey Community Foundation:

Imagining better places through the Designing Places to Reduce Depression workshop

• Produced Designing Places to Reduce Depression, a workshop on designing parks, as well as other public places to make them more welcoming for people suffering from loneliness or depression. The session was led by Kelsey Zlevor, a Chicago-based urban planner.
• Launched the North Jersey National Heritage Area Project to promote cultural heritage tourism throughout North Jersey and also to get more federal funding for local nonprofits and governments. A National Heritage Area is a region designated by the US Congress as having made a special contribution to the American story. Furthermore, the designation can have a lot of great benefits for an area: greater prestige, hundreds of thousands of dollars in new federal spending, and millions of dollars in economic activity through tourism. NNJCF plans for the North Jersey National Heritage Area to help local businesses, arts organizations, cultural sites, and also public spaces throughout six counties: Bergen, Hudson, Essex, Union, Morris and Passaic.

Community Philanthropy

NNJCF also supports communities and individuals in North Jersey by connecting generous individuals with causes they care about. We manage several Donor Advised Funds. Together in 2024, they awarded $28,000 in scholarships to schools and also grants to nonprofit organizations.

Among the grant recipients are:

A donor advised fund was also established in memory of Joanna Shyong.

• Armenian General Benevolent Union to help promote the prosperity and well-being of all Armenians from The Andrea Tilbian Halejian Memorial Fund
• CancerCare® of Paramus to benefit Healing Hearts Family Bereavement Camp from The DeAnna Stark Pasciuto Memorial Fund
• Healing the Children Northeast to provide quality donated medical care to children in need from The Andrea Tilbian Halejian Memorial Fund
• Leonia High School for a scholarship from The Class of 1964 Ralph Gregg Memorial Scholarship Fund
• Leonia High School for a scholarship from The Paul Coopersmith in Memory of Frank DeLorenzo Memorial Fund
• New Milford High School for a scholarship to pursue a technical career from The Darren Drake Memorial Scholarship Fund
• Stockton University Foundation for the fifth scholarship to a student pursuing a doctoral degree in physical therapy, as well as to support the women’s soccer team from The DeAnna Stark Pasciuto Memorial Fund
• Teaneck High School for a scholarship for a senior impacted by a family member’s battle with cancer from The Jannie Smith Legacy Fund

In 2024, NNJCF also established The Joanna Shyong Scholarship Fund to support education.

In addition, to help nonprofit organizations in Bergen County, NNJCF gave Hackensack’s Johnson Public Library a donation to purchase a public membership for Grant Station. The donation also makes it easier for nonprofit organizations to find funding to support their causes.

Looking Ahead…

In 2025, the Northern New Jersey Community Foundation will do even more to support the people and organizations that help communities and expand our impact:

• Launch the first North Jersey Changemaker Awards to honor people and also organizations that are making a meaningful impact in our communities. In addition, the awardees will be models for others to emulate in making their communities better. The awards ceremony will be held in June 2025.
• Produce the Hackensack River Nation Summit on Earth Day, April 22 at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck.
• Produce in partnership with Hudson County Community College the New Jersey Creative Communities Conference in the fall in Jersey City. This event will bring together up to 250 artists, public officials, and also community professionals to explore ways to make places better and also healthier through the arts.

In Appreciation

The Northern New Jersey Community Foundation thanks the many generous individuals, foundations, corporations, government agencies, and other donors, whose financial support and partnership make our work and impact possible.