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Alexandria Fund for Human Services

The Alexandria Fund for Human Services (AFHS) aims to support human service needs for the City’s most vulnerable residents across the lifespan to advance conditions in their respective environments of origin to ensure wellbeing, safety, self-sufficiency and resilience through equitable processes, practices and outcomes.
Page updated on July 3, 2025 at 2:26 PM

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About the Fund

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The Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) coordinates and administers the Alexandria Fund for Human Services (AFHS).  Through a competitive grant application process, grant funding supports organizations whose programs and services address human service needs for the city’s residents across the lifespan to advance conditions in their respective environments to ensure the wellbeing, safety, self-sufficiency and resilience through equitable processes, practices and outcomes. The programs and services will reflect the City of Alexandria’s diverse communities and values. This includes community and recipient voice in practices and decision making. Additionally, AFHS will support organizations in the community positioned to offer services that are sound in practice and innovative in delivery to respond to emerging and critical human service challenges.

Focus Populations

  • Children and youth (including ages 0-5)
  • Individuals with low incomes and low wealth
  • Individuals with dental, physical health, mental health and vision care needs
  • Individuals facing crises
  • Survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault
  • Older Adults
  • Historically marginalized communities: This population includes, but is not limited to Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), immigrant populations (including those who lack documentation or families with mixed status), Justice involved individuals, LGBTQIA+, Persons with disabilities across the lifespan to include support for care givers, Individuals with Limited English proficiency, Unhoused /Housing Insecure /Housing Cost Burdened

Grant Priorities

  • All children and youth are school ready (this includes young children 0 to 5).
  • All Alexandrians are socially connected, emotionally secure and culturally competent.
  • All Alexandrians are economically secure and career ready.
  • All Alexandrians have access to physical, dental, mental health and vision resources and services.
  • All Alexandrians are assisted in and empowered to prevent and remedy crises (this includes food insecurity, evictions, and financial crises).

Community Science AFHS Evaluation

The Department of Community and Human Services is pleased to share the recently completed evaluation of the Alexandria Fund for Human Services. We are grateful to all those who contributed to this study, sharing your experiences, your insights, and recommendations. We also want to acknowledge Community Science, the research and evaluation firm that carried out the evaluation.  Community Science is a MWBE with more than twenty-five years of experience providing consultation, research and evaluation and strategy development to foundations, nonprofit organizations, and governments. Their research and evaluation approach has been rooted in a mission that uses science to promote equity and justice for communities of color and others who are historically disadvantaged and excluded. 

Click here to view the evaluation

About the Evaluation

After accepting the award recommendations for the Fiscal Years 2024-2026 grant cycle, City Council requested an independent evaluation of the AFHS. Council specifically asked for:

  1. Comprehensive analysis and recommendations on the impact of the current AFHS grantmaking practices.
  2. Benchmarking of best and promising practices in human service grantmaking practices in neighboring jurisdictions with similar funding mechanisms.
  3. Recommended framework to support Essential Human Services (EHS). 

Community Science employed a mixed-method evaluation approach using document landscape scans, reviewing relevant literature from the field, interviewing neighboring jurisdictions, conducting a survey and focus groups with community partners (of which many of you participated), and interviewing DCHS program staff.

Next Steps

The evaluation report was presented to City Council during its June 10, 2025, Legislative Session, and comments regarding the report were received during City Council’s June 14, 2025, Public Hearing.

City Council subsequently directed DCHS staff to propose an implementation framework for the FY 2027-2029 grant cycle that incorporated the evaluation recommendations. 

To help inform and advance the work associated with this directive, DCHS conducted a series of listening and input sessions with community partners and stakeholders. The aim of these sessions was to:

  1. Gather feedback related to DCHS’s proposed enhancements to the AFHS Request for Proposal (RFP) and grant-making processes.
  2. Seek validation that the proposed enhancements to the AFHS RFP would attract proposals addressing the community’s human service needs, values, priorities and lived experiences, and that the related grant-making process would be reasonable and transparent. 

The final plan of operation was scheduled to be presented for City Council acceptance at one of its September 2025 legislative meetings.

For information regarding the upcoming listening/input sessions contact DCHSAlexFund@alexandriava.gov.  

Fiscal Year 2024-2026 Grantees

See a list of the AFHS fiscal year 2024 - 2026 grantees, a description of their programs and contact information.  This list is organized by the priority areas that the grantees support.

Questions About the AFHS 

Inquiries regarding the AFHS may be forwarded to DCHSAlexFund@alexandriava.gov.

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