Greetings—

Last week, we presented a forum to hear local agencies and volunteers share insights about valley programs that help veterans, part of our donor engagement series to dive more deeply into issues so our donors and the foundation can explore how to be more effective in giving.

$25,000 challenge grant announced

At the session, I was proud to announce a $25,000 challenge grant from our board of directors, to be matched by community members that would be used to establish a new grants cycle to help local agencies who are helping veterans and their families readjust to civilian life, to cope with lingering effects of combat and duties in dangerous parts of the world (including PTSD), as well as ways to translate the extraordinary leadership skills and talents developed by our troops into sustainable jobs, businesses and communities.

In issuing the challenge, we wanted not only to highlight the importance of helping veterans at a time when we as a nation celebrate, honor and remember their service and sacrifice, but also remind ourselves that the work of helping veterans takes more than a day of attention. Veterans from conflicts prior to the Gulf War also seek help, although we recognize that the last dozen years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan - the longest sustained conflict in our nation’s history, have created needs that will stretch for decades ahead. That many of our veterans served multiple tours – some as many as 5, 6 or 7 times, only adds to the burdens being carried back into civilian life.

Help local agencies do their good work

Our priority is to challenge the community to raise funds to help veterans, so that through our grantmaking we can let local nonprofits do their good work – as educators, health professionals, therapists, job trainers, colleagues and friends – work that helps returning veterans and their families come home.

Greetings—

We have a great privilege at the Community Foundation to invest in the hard, persistent and sometime visionary work of our grantees, work that is focused on creating a better future for our children.

This past week, we distributed $800,000 in grants from our High Impact program, funded by the James Irvine Foundation and contributions from our own Bee Fund and a generous gift from the Central Valley Foundation. The fourth and final grant cycle in this four year initiative, these grants are to local institutions in Fresno and Tulare counties that are assisting parents in helping their children get ready to learn to read at grade level.

High Impact to sustain ways out of poverty

Our focus emerged from a year-long effort to determine how high impact grants could help families find the most effective way out of poverty, with the belief that education for children remains a critical pathway. Helping children read at grade level is an important step, particularly as they transition from learning to read to reading to learn. Single year and multi-year grants have been distributed since 2012 and we are already digesting lessons learned, opportunities to focus more tightly on strategies that are effective, and how to develop ways to articulate the progress made by these organizations.

This ability to synthesize and draw conclusions from grants invested in communities will become an important contribution to the community’s ongoing discussions about expanding opportunities for our children, a set of priorities deeply embedded in the new Cradle to Career Partnership being organized by leading institutions.

Collective Impact changes how we approach solutions

Each program funded – 6 out of the original 42 seeking support through letters of interest – has its own characteristics, goals and objectives. Measurements of success are included. But I think the spirit of the enterprise was captured most succinctly in remarks by Galen Quenzer, from the Boys & Girls Club of Tulare on the “Lea Conmigo/Read with me” effort underway in Farmersville.

Greetings—

In a room squarely at the center of the State Capitol building in Sacramento, a briefing this past week on the impact of the drought brought together local residents, academics, public officials, staff for legislative leaders and philanthropic & community leaders from around our region.

Brought together by The California Endowment and others, it was a way to bring the impact and needs of the drought to the center of our State’s political leadership.

The message is clear; the impact is real.

The message remains focused and straightforward: people in our valley are hurting – due to economic dislocation, changing agricultural work and patterns, stress and other components that come with four years of drought. For many, water is expensive, work is scarce and families are hurting.

The drought is both an issue of immediate need, and a call to adapt to new realities.

Residents from communities that have run out of water, or where the work for local farmworkers has been reduced, spoke eloquently of the impact on their communities, on the schools, families and neighbors.

Others spoke about the need to pay attention to health needs – some tied indirectly or others more directly, like valley fever’s prevalence in drier times, to the impact on economic livelihood of small cities struggling with the changes wrought by the drought.

Greetings—

The familiar melody of Pomp & Circumstance accompanied the graduates to the stage at the Fresno Convention Center, as the 1000+ crowd attending the Fresno Rescue Mission recognized and cheered the accomplishments of the men and women who have completed their 18 months training, many turning to a new direction for their lives.

As was shared eloquently – on the stage and on video, lives that carry the weight of past addictions, behavior and abuse can be turned around and, with assistance and support, can face a new future buttressed by faith and a belief in skills and self.

But it takes a lot of work, dedicated time by volunteers and staff, to help folks who turn for help when they have the courage to admit they are broken, or who no longer want to live the life they have been living. Hard questions are asked, mostly of themselves.

Anyone who attended the Rescue Mission’s annual event saw the extraordinary combination of faith and redemption, and how it works wonders in the lives of those whose lives have gone seriously off track, but who have chosen a different path.

It is inspiring, particularly given the distance many of these individuals have traveled.

Higher High School Graduation Rates matter

It was an interesting bookend to a community wide meeting that morning, attended by educators and community leaders focused on helping make sure students graduate from high school. Fresno is part of a national movement to reach a 90% graduation rate, a goal above the current 78.8%.

Greetings—

This past week, Bill George – former CEO of Medtronics/current Harvard Business School professor, came to Fresno to launch the fall series at Fresno Pacific University on the challenges facing our economy. He spoke eloquently about the ideas embedded in his seminal work Authentic Leadership, and in his updated Discover Your True North.

As he distilled his message to local business and community leaders, it is pretty simple. Success in a business comes from respecting core values and its mission, and not being diverted from those values regardless of the short term opportunities.

At a time when United’s CEO departs in a scandal with a $20 million severance packet, and VW demonstrates how quickly it can destroy a global brand through deceit and obfuscation, his message was a timely reminder of the importance of core values.

Finding your own pathways

His examples were of leaders whose values were reconfirmed and forged in those crucible moments when hard choices are actually hard. Relating his own experience of examining his own life goals with a pending corporate promotion, he found his own true north in leading an organization whose values aligned with his, and with its products, and with the impact those products have on people all over the world.

He shared a conversation he had with one of his line workers who made artificial valves (one of its core products), noting her commitment to 100% results; she said she couldn’t live with herself if someone died because she had not done her job properly. That reflects how deeply values were imbedded in the workforce.

Reviewing our organizational values

Prof. George’s talk was timely, as our Foundation board reviewed and approved this week a statement of organizational values developed over the summer through a series of conversations among staff colleagues and among the board.

As we identified what values we felt were important to us, and explored what they mean and how they should be implemented, we moved through discussions, wordsmithing, and different definitions, with a chance to hear perspectives, explore our own history and define expectations for our work. That we would spend several hours discussing the language describing each value was an encouraging sign that we did care about which values matter, and why.

Values and core assumptions

So here they are: 

Stewardship 

Respect, inclusion and diversity 

Integrity 

Leadership and Vision 

Accountability 

 Innovation and a culture of learning

Underneath each - and part of all - these values, we noted the following assumptions that we agree apply universally to our work – excellence; strategic thinking; collaboration and belief in supporting each other; kindness, thoughtfulness and caring; utmost confidentiality; honesty; and the courage to do the right thing. These connect our values and each other, sinews that reflect everything we do, and should do.

There is always a risk in publishing a list but if we are serious about these values, we should not be afraid to be held accountable for them either. As Bill George reminded us, values are the anchor we use when we make the decisions that impact our work, our customers, our partners and our communities.

Or as we were reminded as children – they are what guide what we do when no one is looking.

As value based organizations demonstrate success in navigating the challenges in the current economy, we believe that exploring how and what these values mean, helps sustain the trust that rests at the heart of our mission.

As value based organizations demonstrate success in navigating the challenges in the current economy, we believe that exploring how and what these values mean, helps sustain the trust that rests at the heart of our mission.

Greetings—

This past week, we formally dedicated our Center for Community – as a place to gather, to share and to build.

And we unveiled a new name that better reflects our ambitions for the days ahead.

But first: why this space? A simple answer is that we like meetings. And now we have rooms in which to meet!

A deeper answer is that we believe in the nonprofit sector, and its capacity to shape community. As the region’s community foundation, we believe that helping that sector achieve a higher level of effectiveness, leadership, capacity, and funding will help the region we all work to strengthen.

More than just grantmaking

Many know us by our grantmaking, both from donors and from the partners who have helped us invest in families help their children succeed by the third grade, encourage smart growth, work with arts organizations, help students go to college and graduate school, and reduce teen pregnancy.

It remains a fundamental part of our work.

But our mission is more than be just a grantmaker to local nonprofits. This Center gives us the space to do that broader work:

• provide free meeting space for organizations to do that face to face work – perhaps even more important in an age when we are connected digitally 

•help convene organizations around issues that matter and skills to be taught 

• provide workshops to help CBOs do their business better – at the staff and at the board level -- to be more effective in our work, share our best stories, engage more donors, and master the tools we use 

• bring donors together to learn new tools to help make their giving more effective 

• understand research, data and how our work shapes that of others 

• foster collaboration among public, private, nonprofit and other partners 

• and work together to raise new charitable capital, which remains for many the lifeblood of our work and the means to transform lives.

The nonprofit sector in Fresno County alone is a $4 billion business – we cannot fund solutions to every problem with grants but we can help each other build an effective platform to do the work that only nonprofits can do.

We also announced the board has approved a change in our name, to reflect two key disciplines of our work: our focus on the Central Valley of California and our brand as a community foundation.

Community Foundation brand

Community foundations have spent the last twenty years refining what makes us unique and different, what distinguishes this part of American philanthropy. It is reflected in part in the national standards movement but also in what the brand should be about:

• a physical place and the people that are there 

• engaging donors and helping them be more focused and effective in their work, measuring outcomes, thinking through strategies, exploring products, and understanding the legacies that are to be protected, for good for ever. 

• being a long term steward, protecting those legacies as an organization that is never going away. 

• And building the charitable sector to be an effective steward of - and for – community.

A community foundation is both a trusted steward of capital, protective of the donor’s intent and expectations, and a place that engages others in how to use philanthropic dollars to strengthen our region – the institutions, the individual people, the community, and --in a sense --the future itself.

We are here for the long haul.

Central Valley Community Foundation continues the work

Under our new name, logo and tagline, we will continue to build on the work of board members and donors who have partnered with the Fresno Regional Foundation for almost fifty years.

And that work will focus on the Central Valley.

Our new name will be the Central Valley Community Foundation, with our mission, vision and core identity reflected in our tag line: Effective philanthropy. Stronger communities.

Our new logo reflects our deep connection to the land we serve, and the rich agricultural heritage that will be a part of our future. Our mission to cultivate smart philanthropy, lead and invest in solutions that strengthen community is one that will shape our efforts for years ahead.

We recognize that we cannot do this work alone but rather can do so much more if we recognize a deeply held truth: we do better work when we work together. That is true when we work with donors, our efforts through this Center for Community and our work in, and as, a community.

To what end?

We look forward to you joining us in the coming weeks and months – with a class or workshop, a lecture or convening, a contribution or a new fund, a planned gift or agency endowment: a partner in this great work of community philanthropy building community – not just here in Fresno but across the entire central valley.

And what is our goal? A stronger community for all of us, a better sense that we can shape a prosperous future for more of us, a commitment to this region and the rich, broad and diverse people that have built California’s fifth largest city, its most productive valley that feeds the nation and part of the world, and what I believe will be the next great chapter in the California story.

It can be a way that our generation will take the gifts and legacies bequeathed to us, and invest them in building communities worthy of those investments made in us, worthy of the challenges we face today, and worthy of our dreams. It is within our ability to do so, working together.

Come join us in this good work.

Greetings—

At a convening on this past Tuesday morning, FRF unveiled a new report on the impact of the drought on our region's nonprofits, many of whom are at the forefront of responding to those suffering across the valley.

The full report “Beyond Almonds and Blond Lawns” is available on our website, at www.fresnoregfoundation.org. We are grateful for the support of the California Endowment in bringing this study to fruition. 

How can donors help?

The purpose of the study was to find ways that donors and funders could respond to the sector’s needs, some of which are deep seated and some of which have been exacerbated by the drought itself. Through a series of online surveys, direct interviews and community convenings, we identified a number of strategies that we think are worth exploring.

Some are obvious. Some focus on what happens after it starts to rain.

They include providing financial support to nonprofits operational sustainability, long term infrastructure investment, economic development, and for increasing organizational effectiveness. The recommendations also include taking their story/stories to a wider audience, and working with regional, state and national funders to help local agencies doing important work.

Long term issues will matter too

Some longer term issues will need attention, even after the winter rains convince some the drought is over. More efficient use of water – not just by farmers but by consumers, will be on our agenda for years. So will the need to boost underserved communities, and to strengthen nonprofit effectiveness so they too can do work only they can deliver. As community partners and donors, we are also called to pay attention to the evolving needs, to donate directly to CBOs that are struggling to meet new or extended demands for services, to learn how to become smarter investors and to deepen the conversation among the parties where collaborative action can make a huge difference.

There is plenty of work to be done to help those struggling – both those with immediate needs like no water or cascading health problems, as well as those who are grappling with social and institutional changes that impact their ability to make a living, provide for their families or build for a better future.

Issue crosses county lines

As a community foundation that serves a broader geographic region, we recognize that some issues cross county lines. This is one that affects the entire Valley. We appreciate the participation with the Kern Community Foundation, whose county was included in the study. We are planning to have additional sessions in Bakersfield, Tulare and Merced, so we can explore how local action can help as well.

FRF is exploring ways to respond

Greetings—

Two engagement sessions this past week focused on our recent high impact grantmaking, helping nonprofits, school districts and intermediaries explore what builds success by the third grade.

Our two panels – one here in Fresno and the other in Visalia, brought together donors, grantees and community leaders to share lessons from investing in this area of fast changing opportunities.

Thinking about the whole community can be a paradigm shift

A school superintendent shared that one of the paradigm shifts in his thinking requires the need to think beyond the needs of the school district to focus on the needs of the larger community. As we digest new research and new observations about how children learn and develop, from the earliest ages, the importance of the first years on brain development are being understood more broadly.

All that happens before anyone shows up at school.

Seeing the dots connect between the stages of child development, starting in the womb, should help direct priorities as our children develop. Each stage has its critical importance in building skills and talents; each feeds the next. One of our panelists suggested we think of the highest impact, where the brain development is most rapid: 0-18 months.

One of our community’s challenges is to understand more clearly these connections. Institutions are wrestling how best to help families and parents get their children ready, both formally and informally. Important work by the First 5 B-3 initiative has helped districts here in Fresno understand how making these connections more effective can help children be ready to start kindergarten, first grade and the stages afterwards.

Three years of high impact grants help us learn what is working

Our three years of high impact grants have been focused on efforts to help families prepare their children for success by the 3rd grade, which emerged from a months long process to identify effective pathways out of poverty. Successfully navigating that all important transition from learning to read to reading to learn, a component of ‘grade level reading’, is an outcome we seek.

We are of course pleased to hear of successful results from our grants, from grantees who are engaging parents in getting their children ready, strengthening literacy at the parent and the child level, helping bridge cultural gaps, and reaching out to sustain families as they gain the skills and tools to connect to the organizations and schools looking after and teaching their children.

We are in the midst of our 2015 grants - to be distributed in November, the final of this cycle of grants made possible by a partnership with The James Irvine Foundation, whose critical investment is in projects of high impact that emerge from community needs here in the San Joaquin Valley. We remain grateful for this significant investment.

Change at a faster tempo

America has been wrestling with its education system for generations. The Nation at Risk report was issued in 1988, raising concerns about the efficacy of our school preparation in light of our economy’s needs and global changes. It seems as if every decade, new efforts are directed at ‘strengthening the schools’, from both the federal and state level; local schools – officials and teachers together - adjust and absorb, all the while moving forward with their critical work preparing the next generation for success.

But the world continues to change as well, often at accelerating speeds.

Local authority responding to global tempos

American education has long been a local issue, which has served the nation well over the past two hundred years. Major reforms in the early years of the last century helped the nation transform from its agrarian roots to a more industrial global economy, and the new high school provided graduates with tools and skills. The GI Bill moved a new postwar generation to college, and a vast increase in students stepped up their game, rebuilding the economy after World War II.

The 21st century economy has its own needs. We are adapting to the new norms and connections of technology, globalized and diverse populations and a faster clip of change. That puts local school board, teachers and administrators on a shorter turnaround time, as each district tries to balance its community, resources and expectations. Progress can seem uncertain or uneven.

One of our panelists suggested we need to move beyond acknowledging it takes a village to raise a child; we need a new village. I think the new village is being created around us, with change emerging faster than the institutions who are charged with the responsibilities for educating our children. We need help, so we can help them succeed.

As we respect the needs to get ready for a new generation, we are mindful that human pace for change sometimes runs on a different tempo. Connecting the two keeps everyone focused on the objective, developing the means to do right by our kids. It takes a community to help each other through these tectonic changes, remembering the long view, and setting the stage for that more prosperous future.

Come join us in this good work, as we learn how we can be more effective in making these investments in helping the next generation succeed – not only at the third grade but beyond.

Greetings—

This past week, the foundation was privileged to distribute funds to local grantees for two of our competitive grant cycles – teen pregnancy prevention and aiding college bound youth in the communities of Dinuba, Reedley, Cutler-Orosi and Orange Grove. In a late afternoon event held at our new Center for Community, we once again were able to translate grant dollars into programs that transform people’s lives.

It remains one of the great privileges of being a community foundation, to provide that connection between a donor’s passion and the next generation

Grantmaking Connects FRF’s many stakeholders

For FRF, competitive grantmaking brings together key strands of our work: 

• and foundation staff working to ensure the funds are properly used, with results measured, evaluated and then shared with multiple stakeholders

 Effective philanthropy often takes time, discipline and follow up, and in both cases we are proud of the work distributed this week.

The Mitsuoka Legacy for Dinuba, Reedley and Orange Cove

Dorothy Mitsuoka worked hard as a citrus farmer, and believed in the power and importance of a college education to the children in her local community. Her bequest to the foundation set up a permanent endowment, whose grants support programs that would expand the number of local students ready and able to go to college.

$100,000 was distributed to four organizations – Central Valley Higher Education Consortium for a boot camp for first generation college bound students, Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE) engaging 185 parents to support the college readiness at two local high schools, Community Services Employment Training for a program that connects high school students in Cutler Orosi with a chance to develop leadership skills, to learn how to use technology and to build career and college preparation. The fourth grant to Teen Success was for supporting teen moms transition to being able to go to college.

Teen Pregnancy Prevention – a multi year partnership continues

Other grants distributed are part of multiyear support from the Hewlett Foundation to reduce rates of teen pregnancy, which locally - despite recent reductions in the national numbers - are among the highest in California. This year’s $303,000 in grants included support for the Madera Coalition for Community Justice, to provide comprehensive sex education to youth and parents, for ACT for Women & Girls, to support two programs that use teens as educators focused on reducing teen pregnancy, the Peer Health Ambassadors Program of Fresno Barrios Unidos, providing outreach and education to 3,000+ teens and 350 parents, and for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Fresno County, to expand its Safer Choices program to engage 990+ youth and 530 parents in workshops, again aimed at reducing teen pregnancy.

Program directors shared their appreciation for this support, noting this work is not universally welcomed but critical in making headway in reducing the alarming rates across our six county region. Whether it is investing in education and awareness, for both teens and their parents, the grantees believe that giving teens accurate information is an important ingredient to changing behaviors, and in expanding opportunities for success in the future.

In the same way, investing in the capacity, awareness and skills of teens exploring college becomes an effective tool for those exploring life after high school, especially for those students who are forging a pathway never followed before in their family. These programs help them imagine a future embedded in the dreams of parents, some of whom are navigating these choices for the first time, just like their children. Given the potential impact of going to college, getting ready early is often vital.

Effective investments transforms young lives

Whether partnering with donors or foundations, we know the effective investment of philanthropic dollars can not only sustain a legacy, a program or an education but provides for a future to be transformed, lives made promising through new opportunities, and a community’s next generation strengthened.

Congratulations to our grantees, and the thousands of teens that will be helped over the coming year. That is one measure of philanthropic capital well invested. Come join us in this intergenerational investment - good work indeed.