Six organizations, including the Spartanburg County Foundation, Mary Black Foundation, Spartanburg Regional Foundation, United Way of the Piedmont, Spartanburg Academic Movement, and the Chapman Cultural Center, make up the Spartanburg Joint Funders, a group committed to intentional collaboration and coordination. Each member is an individual nonprofit organization with a unique mission doing impressive, impactful work across our community. We often find issues common across all our focus areas. Together, we can learn more about the issues, develop strategies to address them, and sometimes even co-fund solutions. By aligning our knowledge and resources around a shared community issue, we can achieve more powerful collective impact. We collaborate with nonprofit partners, grassroots community members, government institutions, the business sector, and other funders to advance health, civic engagement, community vibrancy, and economic prosperity for all.

Examples of our Collective Impact

Addressing Teen Pregnancy

In 2007-2008, the Joint Funders were looking at data through the Spartanburg Community Indicators Project (now known as Strategic Spartanburg, Inc.) and saw that teen pregnancy was directly or indirectly related to every indicator of community well-being. At the same time, the primary nonprofit working to reduce teen pregnancy closed its doors.

  • We came together for the first time to pool our resources and address the issue in a comprehensive and coordinated way.
  • We hired a consultant to conduct a needs assessment and develop recommendations for how we should move forward as a community.
  • We launched a collaborative action plan.
  • As a result, 15 years later, we have one of the state’s most successful approaches to teen pregnancy. We’ve gained national attention and over $10M in federal funding.
Addressing Behavioral Health

For over ten years, the Behavioral Health Task Force has been successfully identifying and implementing strategies to increase access to behavioral health services for people living with mental health or addiction issues. There was a time, though, when services happened in isolation, and there was little
communication among service providers.

  • The Joint Funders stepped in after a key service provider went out of business. Together, they funded an assessment of our local needs.
  • The picture was grim, but the funders committed to bringing service providers together to create a more effective system of providing services in the community.
  • The Behavioral Health Task Force has seen many successes including expansion of trauma-informed approaches in schools and community
    organizations.
  • The Peer Living Room at The Eubanks Center, was opened, designed
    to reduce the stigma of getting support for mental health symptoms by providing services in a home-like setting.
  • In 2026, Vital Spartanburg launched as an extensive collaborative initiative, supported by Spartanburg Joint Funders and numerous community partners, to address our mental health crisis—immediately and universally.
Improving Nonprofit Effectiveness

Spartanburg County Joint Funders are individual nonprofit organizations with unique missions and doing impressive, impactful work across our community. Often, we find issues common across all of our focus areas. Together, we can learn more about the issues, develop strategies to address them, and sometimes even co-fund solutions. By aligning our knowledge and resources around a shared community issue, we can achieve more powerful collective impact.

We collaborate with our nonprofit partners, grassroots community members, government institutions, the business sector, and other funders to achieve greater health, civic engagement, community vibrancy, and economic prosperity for all.

  • Nonprofit organizations work throughout Spartanburg County and provide direct services to meet residents’ needs.
  • The Joint Funders provide a variety of education and training opportunities, including effective governance, storytelling and communication, fundraising, strategic planning, and building financial acumen.
  • The Joint Funders believe collaboration is the best way to achieve our individual missions.

Each of Spartanburg’s Joint Funders provides unique and powerful service to our Spartanburg County community. Together, they harness their collective power, insights, and resources to develop and implement strategies to address our community’s most pressing issues.

Meet the Joint Funders

Committed to Collective Impact