Our Donors’ Generosity Leads to Opportunity and Impact

Our Mission, Vision, and Values drive our actions

Our Mission

To bring together people, ideas, and resources to inspire philanthropy and accomplish great things.

Our Vision

To make Santa Cruz County thrive for all who call it home, now and in the future.

Our Values

Accelerating Solutions. Building Trust. Advancing Opportunities.

Our Grantmaking Overview

Our Grantmaking is guided by a set of eight principles we apply in awarding funds. Our approach is to provide flexible funding to organizations addressing pressing local issues and creating lasting positive impact. We prefer making grants to support the general operations of nonprofits. We continue to work with leaders of color to make sure that our grant funds are addressing historic and current inequities. You can view our 2024 Community Grant awardees below.

Community Grant Program

This May, we'll award $2.1 million through our Community Grants cycle. We'll continue to offer flexible grants that let awardees apply funds where most needed as they address pressing challenges and help make Santa Cruz County a place where all can thrive. The majority of available funds are restricted to benefiting children and seniors and are focused on education including in the arts and environment, end-of-life care, historic preservation, and human services. We’re welcoming proposals from an invited group of local nonprofits who most closely align with our dedicated funding sources.

Our Priorities

Our Community Grants are made from endowed funds that have been given to the Foundation over four decades. This year, those funds will provide funding to support:

• 33% for Seniors, End-of-Life Care & Historic Preservation
  
• 30% for Youth & Education
• 12% for Environment
• 8% for Health & Human Services
• 7% for Women & Girls initiatives
• 6% for Arts, Culture & History
• 2% for LGBTQ+ specific causes
• 1% Community Development

When we consider Community Grant proposals, we look at factors including alignment with our funding areas (above), the fit our funding would have in the financial picture, the organization's ability to produce compelling outcomes, and how they advance equity in Santa Cruz County, among other things.

We work actively to bridge donors’ interests and local nonprofits’ work to address our county’s needs. To stay accessible year-round and help make everyone’s work efficient, we offer a tool to share a profile of your organization’s impact with us and our donors.

Completing an Impact Profile is not a grant request. But its a chance to provide our donors the answers they're most curious to learn. To create one for your organization, first download the Impact Profile Instructional Worksheet.

After reviewing the worksheet, visit our portal to access the Impact Profile form. Don't have a login to our portal? Sign up here. Your responses will be collected in our online form and made available to donors as they consider grants from their donor-advised fund. We accept them on a rolling basis. If you submitted a Community Grant proposal in March, that will serve as your Impact Profile and no further action is needed.

Click the link to view our Impact Profile FAQs.

Learn more about our recent grantmaking:

• Rise Together
  
• Equal Access
• Opioid Grant Awardee Detail
• Fire Response Fund