June 20, 2022 – The Greater Green Bay Community Foundation will open its doors to the community at the historic train depot located at 400 S. Washington Street in downtown Green Bay.

A celebration will take place on Tuesday, June 21, from 5 – 8 p.m. with a dedication program at 6 p.m. The media is invited to a sneak peek tour of the Train Depot at 4 p.m. and is encouraged to cover the program at 6 p.m. Program speakers will include Foundation founding member Barbara Lawton, Board Chair Kurt Voss and President/CEO Dennis Buehler.

As a capstone to 30 years of service, the Foundation’s new home will establish an accessible and inclusive space where nonprofits, donors, residents, and leaders will intersect to seek solutions, resources, and services required to strengthen our community.

Most recently occupied by the local strategic transportation business Breakthrough, the Train Depot was also the home to the Greater Green Bay Chamber for nearly 50 years prior to 2011. Breakthrough’s growth and transition provided the Community Foundation an opportunity to build on the more than 100-year heritage of this historic building.

“The vision for this space is deeply rooted in our community’s history and service to one another and made possible by forward thinking members of our community with a vision of advancing our collective impact,” Buehler said. “It will connect resources, people and solutions to achieve even deeper impact on the community.”

Over the past 30 years, the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation has invested more than $150 million dollars in our community. Founded by a group of visionary leaders, the Community Foundation is a catalyst for connecting people to create impact.

Examples of how the Foundation’s collective work and dollars are strengthening our community, in addition to traditional grantmaking, include:

• The LIFE Study, an assessment of the quality of life in Brown County, provides tools to further align resources to advance community goals. The new and innovative Greater Green Bay Community Hub will broaden access to this and other critical studies and community data sources.
• Give BIG Green Bay, a 24-hour giving day, in partnership with the Green Bay Packers, is advocating for the important role nonprofits play in our lives and inviting everyone to participate in making our community a better place. In five years, this initiative has raised $8 million of unrestricted funds for local nonprofits.
• The Community Housing Initiative, a community collective impact effort, has created a blueprint to prevent and end homelessness by providing strategies to improve service coordination and increase access to affordable housing. This work builds on the Foundation’s history of investing in systems change efforts such as Achieve Brown County and Connections for Mental Wellness.
• The Nonprofit Impact Initiative provides capacity-building grants, group learning, educational tools, and technical assistance in partnership with regional grantmakers to deepen the impact and support the sustainability of local nonprofits.
• The Basic Needs Giving Partnership, a regional grantmaking collaboration addressing the root causes of poverty, has invested more than $10.5 million locally in innovative programs over the last 36 years. Among those programs are Community Resource Empowerment Program (Oconto Co.), Resiliency Development Strategies for Algoma’s Youth (Kewaunee Co.), Connections for Mental Wellness (Brown Co.), and Pathway to Self-Sufficiency (Brown Co.).