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 2023 Community Grant awardees below.

The County of Santa Cruz Health Services Agency Behavioral Health Division has contracted with Community Foundation Santa Cruz County to make grants for the prevention, early intervention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery of opioid related disorders and harm. A total of $810,000 will be distributed in Fiscal Year 2024/2025. Awards will be granted up to $400,000 and grantees will have a grant performance period of up to 2 years to spend the grant funds; funds must be expended by 6/30/2026.

Nonprofit organizations with service delivery in Santa Cruz County are eligible to apply. Click for more details.

Timeline

• May 14 – Application period opens
• July 10 – 11:59pm- Requests due
• August – Funding decisions announced and grant payments issued
• June 30, 2026 – Funds must be expended

Community Grant Program

This May we awarded nearly $2 million through our Community Grants cycle. The majority of these funds are restricted to benefiting children and seniors and are focused on education, youth development, end-of-life care, historic preservation, and human services. Find a list of our grantee-partners below.

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
• 2023-24 Winter Storm Recovery
• Fire Response Fund