Attributed to: Jenny LaForest, Executive Director, Holloway Family Foundation
About Holloway Family Foundation
Jenny LaForest, Executive Director, Holloway Family Foundation
The Holloway Family Foundation is a lean-staffed private foundation based in Colleyville, Texas. Its three focus areas include workforce development, youth mentorship, and creative expression for children from under resourced communities. Our geographic funding areas include Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and Nashville, Tennessee. We are also fortunate that our Board of Directors is currently comprised of three generations of Holloway family members.
Why does Holloway Family Foundation support Workforce Matters?
The Holloway Family Foundation was a supporting member of Workforce Matters prior to my joining the foundation in 2018, and it quickly became one of my top resources for consistent and relevant learning opportunities, incorporating national perspectives on best practices and peer networking for workforce development funders, which continues to be the reason we are still supporting members today.
What is something Holloway Family Foundation is excited about in 2025-2026?
As a previously single-staffed foundation, we are thrilled to welcome Donna James-Harvey to our team as our new Regional Director for North Texas. Her expertise and local knowledge of the nonprofit landscape in DFW is already proving to be such an asset to our work and strategic partnerships, and we look forward to what the rest of 2025 and 2026 will bring!
What’s something in Holloway Family Foundation's workforce grantmaking you’d like others to know about?
It doesn’t specifically apply only to our workforce development portfolio, but one of our equity- and trust-based initiatives is our annual Relay Grant, aimed at recognizing the disparities in philanthropic funding to nonprofit female leaders of color. Each year, our Board of Directors nominates one of our nonprofit partners led by a woman of color to receive an unrestricted grant, which they are then asked to “relay” to another leader in their network to receive a grant of the same amount, and so on, until the funds are depleted. While we have received positive feedback from the recipients, it has also broadened our network of nonprofits within our geographic funding regions with which we otherwise may not have been connected.
