Community Corner

Santa Clara County Charities Hit $2.1M Jackpot

The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is opening its pockets for many good causes.

Earlier this month, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation announced that it was giving $2.8 million in grants to charities in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Of that total, over $2.1 million benefits Santa Clara County directly.

“Silicon Valley Community Foundation is committed to improving the quality of life in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and the grants we’re announcing will help us do that in diverse ways — from ensuring that immigrants seeking the American Dream can get affordable legal help to providing shelter and food to those who need a helping hand,” said Erica Wood, SVCF’s vice president of community leadership.

Grant amounts range from $10,000 to $300,000 and are spread among three of the community foundation’s five grantmaking focus areas: immigrant integration; economic security; and safety net services.

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Search through the complete list of Santa Clara County charities below to see if your favorite made the cut:

$15,000 Bill Wilson Center: Support to provide homeless youth, ages 11 to 17, with shelter, food, and comprehensive services to prevent chronic homelessness and break the cycle of poverty.

$25,000 Community Services Agency: Support to provide direct financial rental assistance along with food distribution for low-income, homeless, unemployed and elderly individuals and families that meet HUD qualifying guidelines.

$50,000 Destination: Home: Support for an Intensive Case Manager who will work with 20 chronically homeless clients from the Housing 1000 Registry.

$10,000 Downtown Streets Inc.: Support for a transitional housing initiative, which includes a nine-bed housing facility for individual men and women on the grounds of the First Christian Church in San Jose. 

$25,000 HC LifeBuilders: Support for the Emergency Shelter Program to provide homeless individuals throughout Santa Clara County with emergency shelter services and basic needs assistance.

$20,000 Family Supportive Housing, Inc.: Support for the San José Family Shelter to provide temporary housing and safety net services to homeless families with children in Santa Clara County. 

$10,000 HandsOn Bay Area: Support for the Safety-Net Action Program to recruit and manage volunteers drawn from the community, including local corporations, to deliver more than 2,250 hours of direct service in support of food, housing access and health services.

$10,000 Jewish Family Services of Silicon Valley: Support for the Project N.O.A.H. Food Assistance Program to serve at least 1,100 under served, low-income individuals (particularly immigrants and refugees).

$15,000 Live Oak Adult Day Services: Support for meals and food supplements for frail, dependent, low-income senior clients enrolled in the specialized adult day care program.

$10,000 Loaves & Fishes Family Kitchen: Support to provide free, hot, nutritious meals and support services in a dignified, safe and caring environment to all needy individuals, with a focus on families with children, seniors and the homeless.

$15,000 Martha's Kitchen: Support to provide meals to those who suffer hunger due to job loss, income reduction, homelessness, illiteracy or extreme poverty.

$10,000 Rahima International Foundation: Support to provide food to needy families, most of whom are refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Somalia.

$50,000 Sacred Heart Community Service: Support for the Essential Services Program's Food Pantry to provide food to low-income families and individuals in Santa Clara County.

$200,000 Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo County: Support for food assistance programs and services to the community, which ensure that those in need have access to healthy, nutritious food.

$40,000 St. Joseph's Family Center: Support to provide essential food resources and rental assistance to help very-low-income families avoid hunger and homelessness, and for emergency respite stays in motels for homeless individuals.

$45,000 Sunnyvale Community Services: Support to provide emergency assistance for 7,000 low-income families and seniors, including financial aid for rent, deposits, utility payments and medical bills; as well as nutritious food, hot meals and fresh produce year-round.

$20,000 The Health Trust: Support for Meals On Wheels to provide critical home-delivered food services to Santa Clara County's low-income homebound frail elderly and disabled adults who cannot get support elsewhere.

$10,000 The Housing Trust of Silicon Valley: Support for the Finally Home Grant Program, which provides security deposit assistance to Santa Clara County's homeless individuals and families moving into permanent housing, and those at risk of homelessness.

$30,000 West Valley Community Services of Santa Clara County: Support for the Comprehensive Emergency Assistance Program to provide services to prevent hunger and homelessness among low-income families, seniors and single adults in the West Valley region of Santa Clara County.

$40,000 Asian Inc.: Support for Foreclosure Prevention/Intervention Program that helps distressed homeowners to avoid foreclosure or, when that is not feasible, to mitigate foreclosure consequences.

$20,000 Law Foundation of Silicon Valley: Mitigate the prevalence and severity of foreclosures in Santa Clara County by providing outreach and foreclosure-related legal services to affected homeowners, with a focus on South County (Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Martin and surrounding areas).

$40,000 Neighborhood Housing Services Silicon Valley: Support for Foreclosure Prevention Education and Counseling Program, which assists homeowners who are delinquent in their mortgage payments or who are struggling to maintain them.

$40,000 Project Sentinel: Provide foreclosure prevention counseling to low- and moderate-income households living in cities in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

$130,000 Center for Responsible Lending: Continued funding to expand CRL-California's statewide anti-payday lending coalition and help enact state policy reforms that will reduce the harmful impacts of payday lending on Californians.

$250,000 Law Foundation of Silicon Valley: Continued funding for the Coalition Against Payday Predators' (CAPP) work to limit the reckless financial practices of payday lenders in Santa Clara County through ordinance advocacy, public education and development of alternatives. 

$25,000 Across the Bridge Foundation (Downtown College Prep): Support coaching to plan and develop an aggressive blended learning math program for middle school. Highly differentiated instruction will strike the most effective balance between classroom teachers and technology use to increase fluency with the common core standards. 

$60,000 Campbell Union High School District: Support for designing a common placement protocol for entering grade 8 algebra students and entering grade 9 geometry students. Also for providing professional development in instructional practices that are reflective of the math common core standards and the importance of non-academic factors affecting student success.

$35,000 KIPP Bay Area Schools: Third-year support to ensure a successful transition and implementation of the common core state standards through professional development and blended learning technology.

$60,000 Krause Center for Innovation, Foothill College: Fourth-year support to provide professional development program to middle school mathematics teachers during the summer and follow-up learning sessions during the year. Programs will focus on content knowledge, pedagogical practices, productive persistence skills and the use of technology to achieve student academic goals. 

$60,000 New Teacher Center: Fifth-year support to provide targeted professional development for new and veteran mathematics teachers and for their mentors and administrators, with focus on educational equity. 

$75,000 Partners in School Innovation: Support to create year-long professional development program for mathematics teachers that will build middle grade professional learning communities; provide on-site coaching; support school alignment; and develop an effective plan for transitioning Franklin McKinley School District to the common core state standards.

$60,000 Pivot Learning Partners: Fifth-year support to continue to build the leadership capacity of site administrators and mathematics teachers to drive the transition to the common core standards; adapt instructional strategies and develop new aligned lessons; develop and implement a systems approach to curriculum and assessment management; and create online professional learning community.

$60,000 RAFT, Resource Area For Teaching Second-year support to provide mathematics teachers with professional development focused on hands-on learning, in order to improve their subject matter knowledge and their comfort working with inquiry-based teaching processes.

$50,000 Silicon Valley Education Foundation (SVEF): Second-year support to provide professional development for middle school math teachers of the school districts participating in the East Side Consortium of Districts project (school districts that feed into East Side Union High School District).

$10,000 Tower Foundation of San Jose State University: Support to provide a pilot, year-long professional development experience for early-career mathematics teachers to prepare them for common core standards implementation.

$21,000 Union School District: Support for mathematics teachers to participate in the Silicon Valley Math Initiative professional development program and build professional learning communities.

$50,000 Asian Americans for Community Involvement: Support for the Asian American Voices project, which facilitates immigrant integration by using film, dialogue, multimedia tools and community engagement programs to deepen understanding of immigrant experiences and contributions.

$20,000 Midpeninsula Community Media Center: Support for the Made Into America multi-media web site featuring stories of Silicon Valley residents and their ancestors who immigrated to the U.S., along with a series of initiatives facilitate ongoing interaction among site participants.

$60,000 PACT: People Acting in Community Together: Support for Changing Hearts, Minds & Policies Campaign, which promotes and demonstrates immigrant integration through story gathering and sharing, dialogues and grassroots community organizing.

$30,000 Peninsula Interfaith Action: Support for the “Safe Corridor” campaign from San Jose to San Francisco for immigrants and their families, to build cohesive communities that value families and offer opportunity for all.

$40,000 Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN): Support to lead and coordinate an advocacy and communication campaign in Silicon Valley for comprehensive immigration reform.

$250,000 Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County: Support for coordination of the South Bay Legal Immigrant Services Network, with an increased emphasis on the collaborative’s preparedness for widely anticipated comprehensive immigration reform.

$50,000 Mission Asset Fund: Support to expand Lending Circles for Citizenship and Lending Circles for Dreamers, two social lending programs that foster citizenship and immigrant integration in the South Bay region.

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