Lori Bartczak

Senior Director of Knowledge and Content, Community Wealth Partners

As senior director of knowledge and content, Lori oversees the firm’s content and communications activities. She works with clients and the team to identify top-of-mind questions and issues, design original research and learning experiences to address them, and create and disseminate content that helps nonprofits and foundations in their work.

While at Community Wealth Partners, Lori’s work has focused primarily on practical guidance for funders investing in nonprofit capacity, with a particular emphasis on supporting nonprofits’ DEI capacity. She also led a research project that aimed to inspire major individual donors to improve the way they support nonprofits’ organizational health and sustainability.

Lori is passionate about strengthening the nonprofit sector and has nearly two decades of experience working with nonprofits and foundations nationally. Previously she worked at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), where she helped grow the organization and its brand from start-up to a community of more than 600 grantmaking institutions, a staff of more than 25, and a budget of $5 million. Her last position at GEO was as vice president of programs, where she oversaw strategy and execution for all of GEO’s content and services, including conferences, publishing, and peer learning programs. Lori also worked at BoardSource where she wrote, edited, and disseminated publications and other resources on effective nonprofit governance.

Lori received a master’s degree from the Lilly School of Philanthropy at Indiana University and bachelor’s degrees in journalism and English from the University of Missouri. She serves as vice chair of the community grants advisory board of Culpeper Wellness Foundation.

Contributions

Advancing Racial Equity Inside Community Foundations

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Brian Hamilton, Cathy Wright, Christopher Nanni, Lori Bartczak

Growing numbers of community foundations are making commitments to advancing racial equity in their communities. While forming a point of view on racial equity is an important first step, putting that commitment into action is complex work. What are the steps community foundations are taking to advance racial equity inside their foundations? How are they engaging important stakeholders—such as board… Read More

Moving Toward Equitable Funding Practices Findings from Research on Community Foundation Practices

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Lori Bartczak

Community foundations can play a powerful role in connecting high-net-worth donors with local organizations working to advance community needs—especially organizations led by people of color. Connecting donors to organizations that are providing leadership and meeting critical needs in the community is one way community foundations can help donors ensure their giving is having local impact and can help strengthen the… Read More
Voices from the Field

Leveraging Social Sector Leadership: Opportunities for Family Philanthropy

Posted on September 24, 2015 by Lori Bartczak, Nora Silver

While the connection between strong leadership and effective organizations may seem obvious, navigating the variety of ways grantmakers can support leadership can seem overwhelming. In GEO’s recent publication, Leveraging Social Sector Leadership, the authors present research that lifts up what social sector leaders say they need to be successful and how grantmakers can support those needs. … Read More