Supporting a Stronger Future for Communities
MassMutual and the MassMutual Foundation are dedicated to advancing social and economic opportunities so that all families can build their financial capability and thrive.
Supporting the communities we serve is central to our Live Mutual philosophy and is one way we deliver on our vision to provide financial well-being for all Americans. The MassMutual Foundation fuels initiatives that increase financial resilience within our communities and fosters a culture of community engagement for MassMutual’s employees and affiliated financial professionals.
Building Financial Resilience in Partnership
with Opportunity Finance Network
The MassMutual Foundation is dedicated to helping people build financial stability in communities where it has historically been lacking. Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs), which are dedicated to expanding economic opportunities in low-income communities, are a crucial resource for helping cultivate that stability. In late 2024, the MassMutual Foundation committed $25 million to Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) — the nation’s leading CDFI member organization and intermediary focused on community development investment — and a CDFI themselves, to create and fund the CDFI Innovation Initiative, which will help build financial resilience in communities across the U.S.
Focusing Our Community Support to Make a Difference
The MassMutual Foundation’s community partnerships help people build and protect wealth through the strengthening of financial resilience. In 2024, the Foundation supported organizations working to drive progress across our key focus areas. The following are just a few examples:
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Building Networks
- A grant to Mason Square Transformative Development Initiative Partnership supports the creation of the Mason Square Urban Room, a transformative, dynamic community gathering space for fostering connections, creativity, and community-driven development in our home city of Springfield.
- Digital equity is crucial for daily life, including health, housing, food, education, banking, and more. The Alliance for Digital Equity, housed at Baystate Health in Springfield, works to get people the access — education, infrastructure, equipment, knowledge, and skills — needed to fully participate in modern society.
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Expanding Employment Opportunities
- A grant to Tech Foundry in Springfield — which connects low- to moderate-income people from diverse communities with equitable, accessible opportunities in the tech workforce — helps to enhance and expand its core IT Support Training Program. MassMutual employs several Tech Foundry graduates.
- Funding for Boston-based Breaktime’s Supported Transitional Program helps young adults break the cycle of homelessness with work readiness training, financial education, paid job placement, and more, building the skills, knowledge, and support needed to acquire long-term stable housing.
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Fostering Financial Health
- To support Forward Memphis in its mission to provide pathways out of predatory lending and debt in the Memphis area, a grant for its Freedom Fund Program helps provide affordable loans and personalized financial coaching as a trusted alternative to payday lending.
- Funding supports NeighborShare’s expansion to Boston, connecting donors with neighbors seeking support, helping to address critical unmet needs of $400 or less in the Boston community.
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Fulfilling Basic Financial Needs
- A grant to Way Finders supports the expansion of its City of Homes homeownership program, which renovates vacant or abandoned residential properties in Springfield and offers them to first-time homebuyers at an affordable price.
- Funding for Neighborhood Villages helps bolster the organization’s early childhood education and family support services in low-income neighborhoods in Boston.
- Support for Springfield-based Square One helps provide families with critical support services, including early education and childcare, job readiness support, and assistance accessing SNAP and housing resources.
Beyond providing funding, MassMutual and the MassMutual Foundation look for opportunities to engage residents, local organizations, and community leaders to co-create solutions that address their most pressing priorities. Additionally, we harness the passion of our employees, who volunteer their time and skills to deepen the impact of our company’s efforts, and put our business expertise to work by building financial resilience and expanding access to financial products.
Putting Our Live Mutual Philosophy to Work During Second Annual Live Mutual Week
In 2024, MassMutual employees and affiliated financial professionals donated time to more than 35 nonprofits during our second annual Live Mutual Week — a dedicated week of charitable service in which we honor our commitment to strengthen communities. Volunteers served food and sorted clothes at a rescue mission; sanded and painted playground equipment for a child development center; weeded, harvested, and watered plants for a food bank farm; and much more.
Investing in Our Communities
One Team, One Community, One Shared Purpose
Since the founding of MassMutual and the Boston Red Sox — each over 100 years ago — both brands have shared a powerful set of values, forging legacies of trust, protection, and bringing people together. The MassMutual Foundation and the Red Sox Foundation partner to create programs that support education, youth, and families to make Fenway Park welcoming to all.
Picnic in the Park
This annual celebration opens the historic ballpark, granting unprecedented access to invited families from Greater Boston and MassMutual’s hometown of Springfield to experience Fenway Park like never before. In addition to receiving game tickets, youth and families attend a post-game picnic in the outfield, followed by an unforgettable evening of entertainment, celebration, and community.
Fenway Park Learning Lab
The Fenway Park Learning Lab provides an innovative and exciting learning curriculum developed by Boston Public Schools (BPS) and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Using different areas and features within the ballpark to spark learning, the program offers activities focused on statistics, history, science, financial literacy, and more. This partnership aims to engage every BPS sixth grader to experience Fenway Park in a fun, immersive, and educational way, and reached over 1,500 sixth graders during the 2023–2024 school year.
Improving Access to Quality Healthcare
To make healthcare more accessible to our home city of Springfield, in 2024, MassMutual donated 10 acres of land from a corner of our campus to our longstanding partner Baystate Health, a nonprofit, integrated healthcare system serving more than 800,000 people across western Massachusetts. Over the next five years, the MassMutual Foundation will contribute $5 million to support the creation of Baystate’s new community health center in the heart of the city, consolidating services from four of its existing Springfield health centers, which today are limited in size and scope with many infrastructure challenges.
Baystate expects to attract top healthcare providers and serve more patients at its centrally located, state-of-the-art facility, providing medical care for children, families, and adults; integrated behavioral health programs; and ancillary services for the Greater Springfield area. Through this partnership, MassMutual and the MassMutual Foundation are committed to helping Baystate support Springfield’s most vulnerable, underserved populations, by improving health outcomes and working to address health disparities in the region.
Supporting Communities with Guidance from Employees
In 2024, the MassMutual Foundation issued a set of grants decided by our Economic Equity Grants Committee. Tasked with making thoughtful and strategic grant decisions that align with the MassMutual Foundation’s four areas of focus, the Committee also works to strengthen BRG community partnerships.
The Economic Equity Grant portfolio — made up of eight organizations across Massachusetts, each receiving $75,000 — represents a diversity of partners.
Bolstering the Volunteer Work of Our Financial Professionals
The MassMutual Foundation awards $275,000 annually through our Community Service Award program, which supports eligible nonprofit organizations where our affiliated financial professionals volunteer. Since the program’s inception in 1997, the MassMutual Foundation has made more than 400 donations totaling over $3.5 million to nonprofit organizations where hundreds of our participating affiliated financial professionals have volunteered thousands of hours, truly demonstrating what it means to Live Mutual. The MassMutual Foundation also annually recognizes the philanthropic efforts of MassMutual-affiliated firms across the country with a similar program.
Promoting Financial Literacy with FutureSmart℠
Since 2015, the MassMutual Foundation has worked with financial educator EVERFI on our innovative financial literacy program, FutureSmartSM, bringing critical financial education to middle and high school students, their families, and educators across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. In 2024, we celebrated a major milestone — 5 million students reached. We look forward to reaching our program goal of 6 million students in 2025.
Driving Innovation and Scaling Impact for Low-Income Communities
CDFIs are private financial institutions dedicated to expanding economic opportunities in low-income communities by making financial services and products more accessible for local businesses and residents. In October 2024, the MassMutual Foundation announced a five-year strategic partnership with OFN, whose network of CDFIs works to ensure that communities underserved by mainstream finance have access to affordable, responsible financial products and services.
The MassMutual Foundation is no stranger to CDFIs, having supported Common Capital in our hometown of Springfield, as well as the Oscar-nominated short documentary The Barber of Little Rock. Our partnership with OFN goes to the heart of the mission of the MassMutual Foundation — to fuel initiatives that increase financial resilience within our communities. It is also a culmination of all that we have learned in our years of talking with hundreds of community leaders and working with countless organizations locally and nationally, bringing us to this important milestone of establishing a national platform that helps to create financial prosperity where previously it hadn’t existed.
Through this partnership, the MassMutual Foundation and OFN will establish the CDFI Innovation Initiative, a first-of-its-kind model to support and strengthen CDFIs through capitalization innovations, new financing products, technology, operational efficiencies, and data. Funded by a $25 million grant from the MassMutual Foundation, the CDFI Innovation Initiative will invest in the infrastructure needed to help CDFIs grow, evolve, and scale into the future, with three core pillars designed to drive new strategies:
- Creating an Innovation Industry Advisory Council with investments in thought leadership and data-driven insights into scalable innovations.
- Establishing an Innovation Center, an action tank that will take insights and promising solutions and seed them with capital and support.
- Launching an Innovation Fund, a blended capital pool that will help take innovative and promising solutions to scale.
By supporting the CDFI industry, we are fostering financial health and resilience in low-income communities, expanding opportunities for entrepreneurship and homeownership, and accelerating a more equitable, sustainable economy.
An Oscar Nod for The Barber of Little Rock
Arlo Washington personifies what it means to Live Mutual. In opening his community’s first CDFI, he is working to build economic potential where it did not previously exist. In 2023, documentary filmmakers John Hoffman and Christine Turner created a short film following Washington’s journey. Funded in part by the MassMutual Foundation, The Barber of Little Rock went on to be nominated for an Oscar in 2024.
Washington’s story is emblematic of the most important lessons we are learning every day through our work at the MassMutual Foundation, as we strive to help families in underserved communities build financial resilience and thrive through increased access to critical financial capital, tools, and support. These lessons show us time and again that the residents of the communities with whom we work are essential in helping to identify solutions to the challenges they face. Washington and his People Trust CDFI are members of Opportunity Finance Network, and he sits on their board of directors.
