This fund helps donors make intelligent and impactful investments for communities in need.
With every $1 donated, the Maui Food Bank can provide 4 meals to the hungry living in our island community. Give now and together we can make a difference.
Maui United Way is stepping up to provide immediate support for local nonprofits offering disaster relief in the wake of recent events impacting Maui County.
In partnership with Ventura County Emergency Management and the cities of Oxnard, Ventura, and Port Hueneme, the Ventura County Community Foundation is making an urgent appeal for assistance on behalf of the resilient residents who were devastated by the catastrophic floods that struck our commun
This fund supports relief, recovery and resilience for natural hazard events in communities across the state of California. Through a statewide coalition of community foundations, funds support:
Relief
Our communities in Santa Barbara County have proven time and again to be resilient in times of disaster.
The recent floods have devastated many seniors in San Diego, leaving them to face recovery alone. The San Diego Seniors Community Foundation has launched the San Diego Seniors Flood Recovery Fund to ensure no senior faces this hardship alone.
When Stockton’s community organizations first mapped out a behind-the-scenes tour of the reinvention of their city, the route and the accomplishments it featured would easily have taken several days to traverse.
Join Moss Adams, RBC Wealth Management and Philanthropy California for a Not-for-Profit Education Series event featuring Rick Cole, Supervising Project Manager for the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
Optional Pre-Session - Census 101: 10:00 - 11:00 a.m.
Program: 11:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
The California Endowment 2000 Franklin Street, Oakland
What practices help buy ourselves up amid continued suffering, outsized need, and needless violence and put our shoulders behind possibility, transformative movements, and new connection? How do we maintain steadiness and clear-sightedness about the steps toward a future worth living?
In philanthropy, we sometimes overlook or deprioritize the interpersonal skills required to do this work well. This includes the ability to connect dots, show up in an emotionally intelligent way, listen actively and empathically, and know when to get out of the way. It also requires a clear understanding of power, and how power imbalances between funders and grantee partners are exacerbated by race, gender, and class inequities. Cultivating and advancing effective interpersonal skills requires practitioners to bring self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and willingness to take multiple perspectives into account.
The work we do in philanthropy—and the work of our nonprofit partners—is not immune to the complexities and chaos of a changing world. Amidst a global pandemic, threats to our democracy, and environmental devastation, we are pushed to be hyperproductive problem-solvers. While these tendencies are brought to bear “in the heat of the moment,” they’re limiting over the long-term, especially when strategic thinking and attuned sensitivities are needed. We cultivate the latter by slowing down, stilling our minds, getting in touch with signals from our body, and allowing the resulting data to inform our action. Beneath our professional titles and roles, trust-based philanthropy acknowledges that we are one piece of a longer arc of time and a larger ecosystem, and that sometimes, we have to go slowly if we want to go far.
Trust-based philanthropy is anchored in an understanding of power and privilege, historical and systemic racism and structural oppression, and how these shape people’s realities in profoundly different ways. As grantmakers, we have a responsibility to confront the reality that philanthropy originated from and has often contributed to systemic inequities, both in the ways wealth is accumulated and its dissemination is controlled. While these discussions may be challenging and difficult, this type of self-reflection is fundamental to the work of trust-based philanthropy. As individuals and institutions, we must be willing to recognize historical trauma and systemic power, examine our own relationship to power and money, and be willing to give up some of that power and control in a spirit of service and collaboration with those who are closer to the issues at hand.
Trust-based philanthropy encourages us to rethink our notions of traditional philanthropic roles, which tend to prioritize transactions over relationships. In fact, a trust-based approach encourages us to understand our roles as partners working in service of nonprofits and communities. Traditional Philanthropy has institutionalized and perpetuated harmful tropes about funders as experts and nonprofits as needy people who need to be held accountable. This has been perpetuated institutionally through our grantmaking practices, but also in less obvious ways, such as job descriptions, theories of change, program descriptions, and the language we use to describe our work.
Addressing Community Needs and Resilience Arising from Drought, Extreme Heat, and Wildfires | Part 3
Discussion theme: Enhancing Wildfire Mitigation in Low-Income Neighborhoods