Greatest Needs Fund

In 2021, the Community Foundation started the Greatest Needs Fund. It enables immediate impact on the community’s most pressing challenges, giving people a simple, powerful way to respond to urgent needs.

As we move into a new era of shifting budgets, rapidly changing federal policies, and H.R.1 and all its impacts, gifts to the Greatest Needs Fund help provide flexible, rapid response funding to allow our local safety net organizations to adapt to shifting needs and keep staff in place.

Recent Grants

This community gains tremendous momentum when neighbors help neighbors. The Greatest Needs Fund has granted nearly $500,000 in recent months to agencies responding to critical and emergent needs including Second Harvest Food Bank, Community Bridges, Community Action Board, Catholic Charities, Grey Bears, Dientes Community Dental Care, Salud Para la Gente, Santa Cruz Community Health, and Watsonville Law Center.

Grants have supported emergency food during the government shut down; planning and strategy work for community health clinics facing revenue and service reductions; education and outreach to immigrant communities about changes to Medi-Cal, legal clinics and assistance, preparing childcare safety plans, and more.

Our team will continue listening closely for opportunities for the fund to offer timely assistance to organizations solving pressing local issues.

Local Giving Matters

Your gifts to the Greatest Needs Fund make an impact. Local giving always matters. In these times, it matters even more.