Pictured above: Participants connect and collaborate during our Community Insights Forum.
Our inaugural Community Insights Forum (formerly called State of the Community: Community Voices Forum) on November 5, 2025 gathered residents, community-based organizations, grassroots and nonprofit organizations to share their insight and reflections on our community’s most pressing needs while identifying areas we should be investing in. Attendees were residents who we met through our community engagement, participatory budgeting and participatory grantmaking projects, nonprofit and community based organizations, and board members and advisory councils. An estimated 50 attendees participated in person and 50 attendees listened in virtually.
The purpose of the forum was to share an overview of the resources that we offer and listen to the community’s thoughts on their greatest needs and hopes. We intend to use what we heard to guide our Community Grantmaking process, discern focus areas for our participatory budgeting process and seek greater charitable donations in areas of greatest need.
During the session, our Community Investment team reported on community engagement data and facilitated an immersive session that engaged attendees around our Community Grants priorities. Attendees were assigned a table and tasked with identifying one gap in each of this spring’s grant round priority areas: arts and culture, civic engagement, education, environment and animals. A “wild card” need was also submitted to consider for future grants and participatory budgeting projects.
Each table discussed and deliberated the priority areas and developed ideas for the rest of the attendees to consider and vote on in a mini-dotmocracy activity. Facilitators posted each table’s top need on poster paper and each attendee was given three stickers for each priority area to vote on the needs that resonated with them the most. Attendees identified the gaps below in each priority area.
Additionally, attendees identified the top three wild card needs as safe affordable housing, food security and unrestricted funding for community needs.
This feedback will inform our due diligence during the spring Community Grant round as well as our future impact investments, initiatives, participatory budgeting projects and development efforts.
Top Gaps Per Priority
Education
Increase literacy rates & wrap around services for student success
Arts & Culture
Increase FREE arts & culture programs for all
Environment & Animals
Safe drinking water & protection of natural resources (remove the lead pipes in Syracuse)
Civic Engagement
Increase youth civic engagement and education
