Women’s Lunch Place is one of 130 local nonprofits to receive grants of $100,000 to $500,000 each through Cummings Foundation's $20 Million Grant Program. We were chosen from a total of 738 applicants during a competitive review process.

“Women’s Lunch Place is so grateful for the Cummings Foundation’s investment to support innovative programming for women experiencing hunger, poverty and homelessness, and we are honored to be among the community of human service agencies they recognize as essential to providing dignity and security for our most vulnerable women,” says our Executive Director, Jennifer Hanlon Wigon.

Since our application to Cummings Foundation and the onslaught of COVID-19, WLP has witnessed our already-burdened guests struggle with increased isolation, hunger, insecure housing, and homelessness. WLP’s commitment to providing healthy meals and advocacy/case management services to 250 highly vulnerable women a day was complicated by the architecture of our day community space and private counseling offices. These logistical challenges required an emergency response and a restructuring of how, what, and where WLP’s services would be provided. We are proud that we were nimble and our pivot was immediate.

We continue to operate six days a week with essential frontline employees. 100% of our services are now offered as an Outreach Advocacy Initiative. The grant from Cummings Foundation will directly support services offered through this Outreach Advocacy Initiative, including:

Advocacy/case management including legal aid and emergency financial assistance
PPE, including: masks, hand and surface sanitizers, which provide guests with a measure of control to keep their personal environments clean
Guest/client educational materials to explain the COVID-19 crisis
Assistance regarding housing search, eviction prevention and public assistance benefits
Healthy breakfasts and lunches with fruits and snacks, boxed for take-out
Pantry boxes with food and supplies, delivered to provide stabilization services and encourage elder women and those with complex medical/mental health conditions who are housed and significantly at risk for a poor health outcome to shelter in place and avoid possible exposure

WLP’s Healthy Meals Program has been providing 200+ meals a day to women in need and is distributing an additional 700+ meals a week to its community partners.

Advocates work with guests and deliver pantry baskets to elderly and medically compromised guests around the community.

Direct Care team members provide takeout packages with nutritious meals, toiletries, PPE, and other basic necessities to women in need each day.

The Cummings $20 Million Grant Program supports Massachusetts nonprofits that are based in and primarily serve Middlesex, Essex, and Suffolk counties. Through this place-based initiative, Cummings Foundation aims to give back in the area where it owns commercial buildings, all of which are managed, at no cost to the Foundation, by its affiliate, Cummings Properties. Founded in 1970 by Bill Cummings, the Woburn-based commercial real estate firm leases and manages 10 million square feet of debt-free space, the majority of which exclusively benefits the Foundation.

"We have been impressed, but not surprised, by the myriad ways in which these 130 grant winners are serving their communities, despite the challenges presented by COVID-19," said Joel Swets, Cummings Foundation's executive director. "Their ability to adapt and work with their constituents in new and meaningful ways has an enormous impact in the communities where our colleagues and leasing clients live and work."

Cummings Foundation has now awarded more than $280 million to greater Boston nonprofits.

Social distancing requirements will prevent Foundation and grant winner representatives from convening for a reception at TradeCenter 128 in Woburn, as planned, to celebrate the $20 million infusion into greater Boston’s nonprofit sector. Instead, Cummings Foundation expects hundreds of individuals to gather virtually for a modified celebration in mid-June.

The Cummings $20 Million Grant Program resulted from a merger of the Foundation's two flagship grant programs, $100k for 100 and Sustaining Grants.

The Foundation and its volunteers first identified 130 organizations to receive grants of at least $100,000 each. Among the winners are first-time recipients as well as nonprofits that have previously received Cummings Foundation grants. A limited number of this latter group of repeat recipients will be invited to make in-person presentations in the fall, when public health related circumstances allow, proposing that their grants be elevated to long-term awards. Thirty such requests will be granted in the form of 10-year awards ranging from $200,000 to $500,000 each.

This year's diverse group of grant recipients represents a wide variety of causes, including homelessness prevention, affordable housing, education, violence prevention, and food insecurity. The nonprofits are spread across 40 different cities and towns, and most will receive their grants over two to five years.

The complete list of 130 grant winners is available at www.CummingsFoundation.org.

A great deal more information about Cummings Foundation is detailed in Bill Cummings’ self-written business book, "Starting Small and Making It Big: Hands-On Lessons in Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy." The brand-new, and significantly updated, 6th edition is available on Amazon or www.Cummings.com/book.

WLP Awarded Cummings Foundation Grant