Frank Fernandez is quietly reshaping Atlanta’s housing landscape. As CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, he has turned the organization into one of the city’s most muscular backers of affordable housing, steering more than $235 million into projects and programs across the region in 2025, which is nearly double what the foundation awarded in 2020. That spike in philanthropic cash is now a key piece of the financing stack for new construction and preservation deals that might otherwise never get off the ground.
According to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, the foundation’s housing grants pushed past $235 million in 2025, almost twice its 2020 total. The outlet credits the surge to fresh donor commitments, targeted loan funds and a more aggressive investment posture under Fernandez, who has effectively turned the foundation into a quasi-housing bank for the region.
From pledge to payouts
The current wave of funding traces back to a 2023 public-private initiative that combined a $100 million commitment from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation and the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation with city funding, a package designed to catalyze roughly $200 million for affordable housing. The Community Foundation built out loan and grant tools such as TogetherATL and lower-cost loan pools to move money into both preservation projects and new construction. The original pledge and the city partnership were detailed in reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Where the money is going
Foundation figures and local coverage show the dollars are being spread across preservation of existing affordable units, supportive housing and gap financing that helps developers pull in other public funds. Roughly $121 million has been allocated toward building or rehabbing nearly 5,000 affordable homes, with more than two dozen deals already closed and a significant pipeline still in line.
The demand has been so strong that staff had to tap the brakes. “We actually stopped taking applications at the beginning of this year,” one foundation official told local reporters, as the team works through sequencing capital for projects already in the queue, according to Atlanta Civic Circle.
Why the jump matters
The timing is not accidental. Mayor Andre Dickens has set a high bar, with a goal of creating or preserving 20,000 affordable units, and philanthropic money has become a critical lever for hitting that mark. Atlanta’s braided approach, which layers public, private and philanthropic dollars to close deals more quickly, has started to draw national attention as a potential model for other cities, as reported by The Guardian.
The Community Foundation has also widened its lens beyond bricks and mortar to focus on the nonprofits that actually build and operate this housing. In late January, it announced a multi-year nonprofit sustainability fund in partnership with the Nonprofit Finance Fund, an effort aimed at shoring up local housing providers and other community organizations so they can survive the long haul, not just the ribbon-cutting.
Fernandez has been clear that the fundraising push is not finished. By mid-2025, the foundation had raised more than $150 million toward its $200 million housing goal and was courting additional private and institutional partners to close the remaining gap. For developers and tenant advocates, that growing pool of subsidy can be the difference between a project breaking ground or gathering dust, and in a city with a tight supply of affordable homes, that can translate into thousands more families landing stable, long-term housing.
For more detail on the pipeline and the underlying financing strategy, see reporting from The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta.
