CFON’s Aligned Action Network – NEON – is a cohort of community foundations from across the U.S. who work together to dismantle structural and systemic racism and achieve equity in social and economic mobility in their communities.
**NEON will be expanding in early 2026**
Stay tuned for more information about how to apply.
NEON, Nexus for Equity + Opportunity Nationwide, is a cohort of CFON member foundations working together to strengthen their efforts to dismantle social and structural racism and achieve social and economic mobility. NEON is co-designed by the participating foundations and embraces distributed leadership, collaborative work, and reporting of results gained through collective action. The cohort has followed a four-phase approach: Design, Build, Test, and Scale.
The inaugural cohort launched in January 2021 after a “design sprint” in the summer of 2020, moving into the “build” phase to define and create the scope, expectations, and infrastructure needed to test the concept of an aligned action network. The cohort’s focus builds on the research and findings of the US Partnership for Mobility from Poverty.
The “test” phase continued throughout 2022-24 as strategies were implemented and metrics were defined through a partnership with Urban Institute. Cohort members are continuing their work and NEON is moving into the “scale” phase to involve additional community foundations with a commitment to the common outcomes and metrics that focus on the systems and strategies for advancing Income & Wealth and Power & Leadership.
Read more about this concept in the following articles:
How to Scale Impact Faster – Replication or Aligned Action Network?
Can Community Foundations Rally Wealthy Donors to Back Racial Equity Work?
Community Foundations Band Together to Fight Structural Racism (PDF)
Network of Community Foundations Hopes to Attract Big Bet Money From Foundations (PDF)
The Inaugural Cohort
There are six cohort members who continue to work together and refine this concept; The Cleveland Foundation was also part of the inaugural cohort through 2023.
- Connecticut Urban Opportunity Collaborative
(Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, Fairfield County’s Community Foundation, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving) - Hawaii Community Foundation
NEON is grateful for the advice and guidance of our Advisory Council and consultants.
Cohort Communities
More Information
Learn more about the Systems, Levers, and Metrics the cohort is focused on.