** NEON is Expanding!**

  Click here for more information about expectations of participation and an application.  Please let us know of your interest no later than July 11, 2025.

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 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)

Please follow this page to learn along with us as the cohort tracks its work and impact.