Yolo Community Foundation

For over 20 years, the Yolo Community Foundation has worked to inspire and support giving and provide philanthropic leadership in our diverse community. A gift to YCF is leveraged, because we use it to support and grow all of the nonprofits in the Yolo community, thus serving all Yolo residents.

Grantmaking

You know that feeling you get after watching an amazing musical performance or play? Your senses are activated; you’re awakened and enriched.  These last few years, the challenges of the pandemic and economic uncertainty destabilized many Yolo County nonprofits, including those in the arts sector. With generous support from the City of Davis and advocacy from the Davis Arts Alliance, YCF launched the Davis Arts & Culture Grant. In late 2022 and early 2023, we made grants totaling $500,000 to twenty local arts & culture nonprofits, ranging from small organizations like Stories on Stage and the Chamber Players in Davis to established groups like Davis Arts Center and Davis Media Access. Now, we are working on programs to serve these nonprofits, like a board training program and an upcoming report about this sector’s needs. In the words of Steve Isaacson, executive director of Davis Musical Theatre Company, “The (grant) helped us keep our doors open, which allows us to interact with the community and to have more productions... that involve more people. We're touching the community every single day." 

The Davis Arts & Culture Grant is an example of the extensive funding YCF provides for Yolo County nonprofits, enabling them to serve the Yolo community. Other efforts include: 

• Granted $1.1 million in 2023, and over $450,000 in just the first quarter of 2024. 
• Grants covered causes as diverse as the Digital Minds Robotics Team through the Woodland Schools Foundation, animal health care needs through the Yolo County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, unrestricted support for the Winters Education Foundation, and a 100+ Yolo Women Who Care gift to the Yolo County Children’s Alliance. 
• Recently piloted the Voter Education Grant, funded by Yolo County and the Evalyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, to help voters in low-turnout precincts understand the ways that the Voters Choice Act has expanded voting opportunities.  

Nonprofit Support & Capacity Building

One nonprofit executive said, “One of the things that I've really valued about the work that YCF has done over the last couple years is bringing nonprofit leaders together to talk… You can feel so isolated and alone and like, ‘Is it just me? Maybe I'm not qualified to be doing what I'm doing.’ And then you get to hear from other leaders and you're like, ‘Oh, this might be normal. This might be what all of us are struggling with.’ Many of the things that YCF has done… gave (us) this opportunity to breathe for a moment and see what other leaders were struggling with and then learn from each other.” 

Over the past two years, we substantially expanded the Yolo County Nonprofit Leaders Alliance (NPLA), a partnership between the Yolo County Library, the Impact Foundry, and YCF. Through the NPLA, we build local nonprofits’ tool chests, enabling them to increase their impact in our community. The NPLA allows nonprofit leaders to learn from experts, but also to learn from and support one another.  

Recent nonprofit capacity building work includes: 

• NPLA trainings on topics like year-end fundraising, nonprofit pay, staff burnout, and nonprofit collaboration. 
• Brought together experts in fundraising, strategic planning, and communication to offer one-on-one support for nonprofit leaders via office hours. 
• Currently building Yolo NEON, a program to help dozens of local nonprofits to strengthen their back-office functions, minimizing risk and maximizing impact.

Inspiring Giving

YCF mobilizes local donors and volunteers to support local nonprofits.  With our annual State of the Yolo Nonprofit Sector report, we educate local donors and community leaders, to enable them to better support local nonprofits. According to Pence Gallery executive director Natalie Nelson, “One of YCF’s major contributions this year, the ‘State of the Sector’ report, I sent to our executive Board and staff. They described what I had only seen in my own experience at the Pence, but showed that drops in volunteerism and staff burn-out were trends that are on a county-wide (and larger) level.” 

Other initiatives to inspire giving to Yolo nonprofits include: 

• Honored 32 donors and volunteers with Yolo Philanthropy Awards, highlighting these role models to the broader community. 
• Hosted our first fundholder symposium, to educate and inspire our fundholders. 
• Awarded five scholarships through the Yolo Youth Service Award, which promotes volunteerism among the next generation 
• Promoted giving to local nonprofits on Big Day of Giving, via the Yolo Philanthropy Breakfast, the Yolo County Nonprofit Directory (distributed to 11,000 households), and the Yolo BDOG Outreach Toolkit. 

Please help us grow our impact this BDOG!