There’s something about September that makes change feel especially noticeable. The days get a little shorter, the leaves begin to turn, and the spaces and places around town bustle with students. The energy of summer falls away and our community settles into a new rhythm.

At GMCF, the transition to autumn will see the Q3 grant committees wrapping up another round of grantmaking and the 33^rd year of the YES! Fund campaign coming to a close.

But it’s not just the leaves that change with the seasons. Our community changes, too. And with that change comes an opportunity to ask what we’re doing today that will matter tomorrow.

Moments of change give us a chance to reflect and ask a important questions. This year we can ask: What will we say 30 years from now about the investments we’re making today?

Every grant we make today becomes part of the story we will tell about our community years from now. We may know the amount of the grant and the program it supported, but the bigger questions are harder (and arguably more important) to answer: What did that investment make possible? Who did it reach? What changed? And what did we learn?

That's one of the things we’re most excited about as we continue building GMCF’s impact strategy. Our goal isn't simply to make good grants. It’s to listen to what our nonprofit partners and our community members are telling us, understand what our investments are making possible, and use what we learn to make future investments even stronger.

As we close another YES! Fund campaign and begin the final quarter of 2026 grantmaking, we’re reminded that philanthropy is rarely about seeing the full impact of a single investment. It’s about having the vision to plant something today that we may not fully appreciate until years from now.

And just as the leaves will change and the seasons will come and go, our community will continue to change and evolve, too. Our opportunity is to ensure the investments we make today help shape a future we’ll be proud to look back on in another 30 years.

Here’s hoping that when that time comes, we’ll be able to look back and say that we listened well, invested thoughtfully, learned along the way, and helped create a community where more people had the opportunity to thrive.