The 42 grants, each between $2,500 to $50,000, support projects and initiatives that focus on addressing racial inequities, biases and marginalization in the community.

Funding for the grants came from the Heal Charlottesville Fund and the Concert for Charlottesville fund, which collected donations in response to the violence on Aug. 12 and are both housed at CACF. An anonymous donor also contributed.

“After the violence of last August and witnessing the hurt left in its aftermath, we knew more had to be done,” Brennan Gould, CACF’s president and CEO, said in a news release. “In addition to ensuring there is financial assistance for survivors as they recover, the Community Foundation is investing in solutions to address the longstanding racial inequities that have impacts on our whole community today.”

CACF began seeking grant proposals in March and received more than 100 applications.

In an interview, Gould said there was more diversity in the applicants than the foundation has ever had before.

“One of our key goals was to make this as accessible as possible. That was what we heard from the community … but [it] was important to us that we were opening up a new way for people who didn’t connect with the foundation previously or even know about us,” she said.

The Heal Charlottesville Fund grant guidelines asked applicants to focus their efforts in three areas — increasing diversity and inclusion in community processes and decision-making, advancing racial equity and increasing education, awareness and history-telling.

The applications were reviewed by a nine-member committee made up of community leaders, teachers, entrepreneurs and students with a wide range of experiences, living and working in the area.

One of the committee members, Kimberley Bassett, associate dean of the Office of African-American Affairs at the University of Virginia, said working with the CACF Heal Committee was the highlight of her spring.

“The process itself was restorative because it engendered hope,” she said. “People were invited to think about what would make Charlottesville feel more like home, and then to develop solutions and share their dreams. Some people wrote grants to continue work they were already doing, and others were inspired to commit their dreams to paper for the very first time.”

African American Teaching Fellows was one of six groups selected under the “increasing diversity and inclusion in community processes and decision -making” area. Tamara Wilkerson Dias, executive director of AATF, said the organization is thrilled to be a grant recipient.

“Our mission is integral in ensuring that students in this community have diverse learning experiences,” she said. “We feel supported and empowered to continue our work on recruiting and supporting the best and brightest educators for local schools.”

The Central Virginia Clinicians of Color Network was another group selected for grant funds. Shelly Wood, CVCCN group coordinator, said that, with this funding support, the CVCCN can begin to establish itself as a community partner.

“The grant moves our organization further in the direction of advancing racial equity; not only in the sense that we hope to empower and heal communities of color through culturally responsive care, but that we do so through clinical excellence by providing professional development to clinicians of color,” Wood said.

Another recipient is local journalist Jordy Yager, who is working on mapping racially restrictive housing deeds throughout the Charlottesville.

“This grant is a tremendous opportunity for us to investigate and analyze Charlottesville’s foundational housing and development policies through the lens of racially restrictive covenants and the role that this segregationist history has played in creating many of the racial and economic disparities we currently experience as a community,” he said.

The first phase of the project will eventually be housed at a permanent exhibit at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, Yager said, using a giant electronic display that will allow visitors to interact with and analyze the maps and data.

Gould said the CACF will be checking up on Heal Charlottesville Fund grant recipients.

“We do have a reporting process, and this is very similar to what we do with all of our grant partners, where we have an interim, mid-year check-in, which is a phone call, a site visit or some way of checking in on the progress, and then a final-year grant report, which is a written document,” she said.

In addition to the grants, about $200,000 in funds have been distributed to individuals who were injured by or witnessed the fatal car attack just south of the Downtown Mall; more than $155,000 was used to supported trauma counseling through six community organizations; and about $70,000 was distributed to other community efforts, according to CACF.

Additional funding is still available for individuals who were injured; those interested can call the help line at (434) 234-4490.