Annual Report to the Community

Welcome

We are pleased to share the Rhode Island Foundation’s 2025 Annual Report to the Community, a reflection of a year defined by significant challenge and the extraordinary local action that rose to meet it.

Across Rhode Island, the organizations and individuals who serve our neighbors faced mounting pressure: federal funding freezes, growing food insecurity, deepening civic divisions, and an education system in need of fundamental reform. In each of these moments, this community responded with generosity, urgency, and purpose.

Last year’s results speak to the power of collective generosity. In 2025, the Foundation raised $82 million in new funds and awarded a record-breaking $93 million in grants to more than 2,600 nonprofit organizations across the state. Our total assets grew to $1.7 billion, and our investment portfolio returned 16.2% — resources that will continue to benefit the people of Rhode Island in perpetuity.

This report dives into some of the details behind those numbers. It is filled with stories of what it looks like when philanthropy and community align around shared values.

It looks like Child & Family Services, celebrating 160 years of serving Rhode Islanders, deepening their partnership with the Foundation through a new primary endowment fund that will sustain their mission for generations to come.

It looks like students at Raymond LaPerche Elementary in Smithfield leading their school toward a more sustainable future through the Rhode Island School Recycling Project, now reaching 63 schools and on track to serve every public school in the state by 2030.

It looks like stepping up when the impact of federal policy and funding changes began rippling through the state. With support from people like you, we were able to offer more than $5 million in emergency funding through our new Community Partner Resilience Fund – in the form of emergency grants to 76 food pantries and meal sites statewide, funding for the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island’s Nonprofit Legal Protection Project, which helped 16 local organizations recover $7.8 million in challenged federal funding, and more.

It looks like the Blue Ribbon Commission on school funding, an effort that brought together a diverse group of Rhode Island educators, community advocates, and policy experts to craft a bold proposal to modernize how Rhode Island funds public education.

And it looks like each and every Rhode Islanders that chose to invest in our collective future by opening new funds, committing planned gifts, and with every act of giving large and small — among them Jill and Bill Caskey, the late Herman Hillson Rose, and Sharon Kurose, who established the G. Alan Kurose, M.D. Healthcare Impact Fund in honor of her husband Al, a beloved physician, nationally recognized healthcare leader, and longtime Foundation board member and chair, who passed away in October 2025.

Lasting progress requires more than any one organization, donor, or community can achieve alone. It requires partnership, persistence, and the willingness to work toward a future that is bigger than any of us.

Thank you for being part of that work.

All the best,

David & Ann-Marie

David N. Cicilline, President & CEO, and Ann-Marie Harrington, Chair, Board of Directors