This week, I traveled back to Cincinnati to join the celebration of this year’s grant recipients and 25 years of Impact100. The culmination of the evening was the presentation of huge checks determined by the votes of our 2026 members. The photos shared here represent this year’s grant recipients smiling beside the check to their nonprofit to commemorate this moment.
The energy in the room always changes when the oversized check is revealed.
There is applause, sometimes tears, and almost always a moment when a nonprofit leader seems to understand, maybe for the first time, that the project they have carried in their heart is really getting funded.
It is easy to think that this is the conclusion of the Impact100 story. It is not.
Each grant is often the beginning of several stories unfolding at once.
A nonprofit gains the resources to launch a program, expand its reach, renovate a space, or serve people in an entirely new way.
Members who learned about the organization during the grant process begin following its progress. Some may volunteer. Others make personal contributions, introduce the organization to friends, or offer professional expertise.
The original gift becomes a catalyst for more generosity. We call it the Impact of Impact100.
According to Giving Tuesday’s Giving and Civic Intent Trends in 2025, people who practice generosity frequently do so in more than one way. They may give money, volunteer, contribute needed items, or advocate for a cause. Generosity is not always a single transaction. Often, it becomes a pattern of participation.
That is exactly what I have watched happen through Impact100.
A woman may join because the model makes sense to her: one woman, one donation, one vote. She may initially plan to write her check, attend the annual meeting, and cast her vote.
That alone is enough, and it carries tremendous impact, but it is often just the start. She then learns about a local need or challenge she did not know existed. She meets a nonprofit leader whose commitment moves her. She serves on a grant review committee and discovers that her professional experience is useful. She realizes that generosity is not only about what she can afford to give.
She has time. She has knowledge. She has relationships. She has a voice.
Impact100 creates a place where all of those gifts can find purpose.
This is why we always talk about generosity in the broadest possible way. A generosity of spirit, the sharing of our time, talent, and treasure. Few of us have all three available in equal measure at every stage of life. Our capacity changes over time, and our form of participation may change with it.
What matters is that we remain open to the invitation.
The checks presented at the Annual Awards Celebration are significant. They are just the beginning of the story. The impact is then found in everything it sets in motion: the programs launched, the relationships formed, the additional gifts made, the confidence developed, and the next woman invited to join.
The impact of generosity rarely ends with the initial gift. Because generosity has a way of spreading.
Impact100 gives it somewhere to begin.