$14,754 raised by 57 donors
74% complete
$20,000 Goal
OUR PHILOSOPHY
If you’re around homeless services for very long, you quickly realize that individuals experiencing homelessness need more than services. Those impacted need acknowledgement, friendship, dignity, and a voice in their own paths. They need a trauma-informed environment where in hope and healing might thrive.
They need a community that’s not just merciful, but restorative.
With our many friends and partners, we’ve come to understand some groundwork principles:
1. Poverty is far more than a lack of material resources, or a lack of access to services. It is a lack of agency for oneself, in all the physical, economic, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions of that.
2. Deficiency-oriented social services models have a hole in them. When we focus solely on poverty as material lack, we can unintentionally reinforce a cycle of habitual need without ever effectively addressing the absence of personal agency. To define individuals only by what they need is to force a needful self-identity on them. It robs them of nuance and dimension.
3. A holistic social services model must be assets-oriented. It meets urgent material needs, but it also intentionally values the skills, knowledge and experiences of each individual and creates avenues to leverage those assets into agency.
4. Holistic poverty reversal takes time. Cycles of impoverishment become deeply ingrained, and it's only through the sustained, long-term support of trusted friends and safe environments that those cycles can be interrupted. Constant encouragement, possibility and shared resilience are game-changing ingredients. This is doubly true for heavily traumatized populations like those experiencing homelessness.
We're exploring new ways to embody these principles in all that we do - from our holistic healing spaces like the RECOVERY CAFE WEST SACRAMENTO and the workforce development initiatives in our J.A.M ACADEMY, to our CalAIM CASE MANAGEMENT TEAM and the supportive services we provide at the City of West Sacramento's PROJECT HOMEKEY. No matter where we are, our goal is to build pockets of restorative community that can empower individuals and break cycles, allowing us all to thrive together.
OUR MISSION:
We are a diverse and inclusive community collaborative intent on creating restorative community by providing a circular ecosystem of social and recovery services to the unhoused and underserved of West Sacramento.
OUR VISION:
We want to help build a West Sacramento where everyone has a sustainable pathway to physical, emotional, mental and spiritual shelter, and where acceptance and encouragement are the two resources that encase every other.
We envision a community of people from different backgrounds, different faiths, different races & ethnicities, and different ideologies, linked in unity by a surpassing ethic of selfless service to the most vulnerable, and to one another.
OUR VALUES:
CULTURAL HUMILITY - We want to hear and understand, not dictate and assume. We seek to identify and harpoon our own entitlement.
DIVERSITY - We are awed by the richness, beauty and strength of the full human kaleidoscope. We seek to live and work in its nexus.
EQUALITY - We are allies and advocates for the marginalized in any context. We consider ourselves to be agents of change wherever there are disparities.
INCLUSION - The unseen, rejected and dismissed are our family. We have a seat at the table for all whose identities have been marred by culture or circumstance.
ENCOURAGEMENT - We see and speak the good. We see and speak the beauty. We see and speak the noble, the laudable, and the admirable.
RESPECT - We honor others. We appreciate alternative viewpoints. We meet people where they are, rather than judging where we think they should be.
ADAPTABILITY - We take joy in our agility when things don’t go as planned. (And let’s face it: things rarely go as planned.)
LOVE - We believe in possibility, in each other, that love and kindness are the keys to successful recovery.
1) Funding for Emergency Food Bags (EFBs) – In 2023, MC provided 11,930 EFBs to the City of West Sacramento’s Project Homekey. However, the need continues to rise. While we are grateful for our community partners, we are unable to keep up with the increasing cost. For context, at the beginning of 2024, we were serving 70 to 90 people a day. That number has grown to a staggering 120 people per day. As the need has grown, so of course has the cost.
2) Organizational Infrastructure - We have been so fortunate to learn and grow over the past year, providing 5 paid internships and 3 new permanent positions. Unfortunately, we are experiencing some growing pains and are suddenly in need of some basic infrastructure.
- Cubicles - our administrative needs have grown and although our staff is very adaptable, we would like everyone who needs it to have their own workstation.
- Phone/IT - Our case management work ramped up at the end of 2025. We've found our groove, but our increase in activity now warrants the use of multi line phone system and a HIPAA compliant software option that will allow for e-invoicing of CalAIM services.
These new supports would allow us to expand the reach of our mission and offer services to an increased number of our neighbors here in West Sac
3) Operating Support - We do so many cool things and we're lucky to have a number of grants and contracts, but those funds remain restricted and prevent us from reaching a target liquidity for sustainable operations. With your help, we can build a Mercy Coalition future that does not rely on (though we are grateful) restricted funding to keep our doors open.
4) Mosaic Village Programming - What started as a whisper and a wild idea has turned into multi-organization collaboration that will transform the landscape of social services, both in programming and quite literally. With plans for a new, larger, Recovery Cafe building with commercial kitchen, computer lab, and meeting space, an adjacent building for the operation of a partner non-profit (C4K), community garden, and 16 to 20 units of permanent supportive housing (which broke ground in April of 2025 thanks to a grant from Partnership Health of CA), already underway, this dream has become a moral imperative. Although we have a decent head start, we need your help to get to the finish line.
The Mercy Coalition of West Sacramento is passionate about inclusion, equity and diversity, and we strive to foster a sense of belonging and empowerment within our office, across the services we provide, and the community at large. On a daily basis, we strive to provide a host of services and a framework of support to our diverse clientele. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are integral parts of the Mercy Coalition’s history, organizational culture, and identity.
Organization name
Mercy Coalition of West Sacramento
2017
Tax id (EIN)
81-3581571
Mission Category
Human Services
Operating Budget
$500,001-$1 million
Organization Need
Funding: Unrestricted
Demographics Served
Seniors, Low-income individuals/families, Homeless/Underhoused/Unhoused
Local Counties Served
Yolo
Equity Statement
Equity Statement
Address
929 Drever St.West Sacramento, CA, US
Yolo, CA, US