Celebrating the Slow, Patient Work of Change

Dear Friend,

Advocacy is patient work.

It requires showing up every day, year after year, and trusting the cumulative effect of all those efforts will result in a fairer county for everyone who lives here.

That truth came into sharp focus earlier this month, as Connecticut’s 2026 legislative session came to a close. It was a short session—the kind where lawmakers introduced more than 1,100 bills and only 218 passed in the CT House and Senate. In that environment, every win is hard-earned.

Going into the session, the Community Foundation and our grantee partners championed a policy agenda of seven priorities aligned with our strategic focus areas: civic engagement, economic mobility, education, health, and housing.

We emerged with meaningful progress on three of them.

• Connecticut will soon become the 29th state to offer no-excuse absentee voting. At a time when many other states are making it harder for citizens to exercise their right to vote, Connecticut voters will have the option to cast their ballot by mail without needing to provide a reason. And they’ll be able to do so for this year’s primaries.
• Universal free breakfast is now available to every public school student in Connecticut.. This is a victory many years in the making, and one that recognizes a simple truth: children cannot learn on an empty stomach.
• Scholarship displacement will now be prohibited at Connecticut public colleges and universities participating in the Roberta B. Willis Scholarship program. This means more students will be able to keep the full value of the scholarships they’ve earned, rather than having those awards quietly clawed back by the institutions they hope to attend.

Each of these wins represents real, tangible change for thousands of Fairfield County residents.

And each one is the result of years of coalition-building, testimony, organizing, and persistence, often led by grassroots organizations and amplified by the more than 215 members of our Allies Advocacy Network.

These victories also remind us why advocacy has become a cornerstone of our work at Fairfield County’s Community Foundation.

The challenges facing our region—from housing instability to economic disparity to gaps in healthcare and education—cannot be solved by philanthropy alone. The government must also do its part.

That’s why, alongside our grantmaking, we invest in advocacy in four interconnected ways by:

• funding the local nonprofits doing the day-to-day work of organizing and pushing for change;
• using the Foundation’s own voice in public statements, op-eds, and direct engagement with policymakers;
• activating residents as advocates through training, networking, and connection to lawmakers; and
• strengthening democracy itself through nonpartisan civic engagement.

This approach is helping move Fairfield County forward—and it’s earning attention beyond Connecticut as a model for how community foundations can drive systemic change.

But our work is far from finished.

For example, while we’re pleased that many students attending public institutions will no longer be hurt by scholarship displacement, the practice is still allowed at private colleges and universities.

In addition, four of our seven priorities did not advance this session, including expanded just cause eviction protections and a permanent, refundable Connecticut Child Tax Credit. Both of these efforts gained significant momentum and built broad coalitions of support, even though they did not cross the finish line this year.

That’s how this work goes. Rarely do the largest policy proposals begin and end in the same legislative year. The support we’ve built around these issues sets us up for continued progress in the sessions ahead.

We are deeply grateful to the donors and partners whose generosity makes this work possible. With more partners and investment, we can build on this strong foundation and accelerate our progress in creating a thriving region for all.

The systems that shape our community took generations to build. Changing them will take time too. But this session reminded us that change is possible—and that when we show up together, we can move Fairfield County forward.

In Community,

Mendi Blue Paca
PRESIDENT & CEO
FAIRFIELD COUNTY’S COMMUNITY FOUNDATION