Santa Cruz Gives a Lot!

By Jeanne Howard

Happy new year, Santa Cruz Community. You should be delighted with yourselves for how well you showed up for the annual SC Gives holiday campaign. There is already a 30% increase over last year and final totals will not be posted to the home page until mid-January!

We accept checks postmarked through Dec. 31, and our bookkeeper is off for the last week of the year, so two or three weeks worth of checks are yet to be added. One donor let me know his $10,000 check to multiple organizations is among those, so there will be a decent jump.

Your generosity will ensure a better 2025 for many of our neighbors in need. They will be healthier, better informed, more empowered, and with improved opportunities for success. Our environment will have better outcomes, too.

The goal of Santa Cruz Gives is to create a new network of donors that strengthens our local community. The Gives team is grateful to all donors for being an important piece of this network.

Santa Cruz Gives Holiday Campaign 2024

As we embark on this year’s fundraiser for 63 local nonprofits, we can all be grateful that 2024 is the first year in quite a while without a community-wide crisis. While most years don’t have a pandemic, a flood, or a recession — for many of our neighbors, every year is challenging. Some groups that ask for your support work to provide essentials such as food and shelter for the neediest. Others elevate the quality of life for all residents to provide what government and for-profit enterprises do not—educational and arts programs, for example, that meet our aspirational hopes and dreams. Other organizations work to improve specific areas such as the environment, healthcare, animal welfare, etc. Our hope is that you will use this site to learn about the great local work being done, and will support the organizations that inspire you. We welcome our newest sponsor, the 1440 Foundation, and extend sincere thanks to our other sponsors who have returned year after year with countywide support: Good Times, the Volunteer Center, Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, Monterey Peninsula Foundation, Driscoll’s, Inc., Applewood Foundation, Joe Collins Foundation, 1440 Foundation, Santa Cruz County Bank, Wynn Capital Management, The Pajaronian, and Press Banner. Read more

What's the difference between challenge grants and matching funds?

By Jeanne Howard

Donors often ask about the difference between challenge grants and matching funds. So here you go: A challenge grant is an upfront grant to a nonprofit made by a major donor (minimum $500). These grants demonstrate support for a nonprofit, generally from philanthropists who are more experienced than most of us average donors at vetting organizations for effectiveness. The idea is that this encourages other donors to give and it also sets a goal for donors to match, even though the funds will be given whether or not the amount is matched. A “thermometer” on each nonprofit's profile page tracks progress toward the goal on on this site, and challenge grantors are recognized by name if desired. Our sponsors whose logos are at the bottom of the home page give matching funds. Those can be either proportionate or one-to-one. Because Santa Cruz Gives raises more than $1 million and we don't have as much in matching funds, we offer a proportionate match. Total matching funds are divided and granted based on the percentage of the total donations that each organization receives during the campaign. That is, if a nonprofit receives 3 percent of the total donated funds (challenge grants + individual donations — visible on each profile page), it will receive 3 percent of the matching funds. All donors can now contribute to matching funds (by checking a box and entering an amount on the shopping cart), so they increase during the campaign. Total matching funds are posted on the home page and will reflect any added. We're grateful to welcome Comcast as a new sponsor this year. On behalf of the team at Santa Cruz Gives and this year's 65 participating nonprofits, we extend a warm, grateful welcome to our friends at Comcast! We're feeling just as warm and grateful to our other sponsors: Good Times, Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz County, Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, Applewood Foundation, Joe Collins, Driscoll’s, Inc., Monterey Peninsula Foundation, Santa Cruz County Bank, Wynn Capital Management, The Pajaronian, and Press Banner. Read more