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Rebecca Salner, Media Relations Officer
650.450.5525 or rsalner@siliconvalleycf.org

SILICON VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION AWARDS GRANTS TO PROGRAMS IN HALF MOON BAY

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Silicon Valley Community Foundation today announced that it has awarded grants to four San Mateo County-based programs that support youth, economic security and land preservation.

The grants, each of which was at least $75,000, were part of $1.8 million awarded since January to more than 60 organizations serving San Mateo County.

Cabrillo Unified School District was awarded $110,561 from the community foundation’s endowment to help expand a key literacy program to Cunha Intermediate School in Half Moon Bay.

The grant will allow the district to expand the “Every Child a Reader and Writer” program, which has been operating at its four elementary schools. It also will help the district fund three full-time literacy coaches and a part-time coach to work with teachers.

The program, begun eight years ago by the Noyce Foundation, allows teachers to provide targeted literacy workshops. In the Writer’s Workshop, for example, students study different genres, study the work of various authors and participate in daily writing exercises. The program started at Alvin S. Hatch Elementary School in 2000-2001 and has since grown to include all the district’s elementary schools.

Earlier this year, the community foundation awarded $50,000 to University of California Cooperative Extension to support the Environmental Science Education Project at Richard J. Elkus Ranch. The ranch offers a range of hands-on programs for Bay Area students, with a focus on urban, low-income and disabled youth.

The other June grants in San Mateo County were:

• $100,000 to help the Peninsula Open Space Trust acquire and protect Mindego Hill, a 1,047-acre parcel of land on the western portion of Skyline Ridge. The majority of the grant came from The John and Mary Perkins Fund, which targeted land conservation and was set up as a bequest.
• $75,000 to help 30 underserved public high school students in southern San Mateo County participate in a college preparatory program at the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford University.
• $75,000 to Springboard Forward of Belmont to support its Workplace Services program, which helps lower-wage workers in key industries identify career talents and get on a track for success. Rather than seek out workers in individual communities, Springboard Forward’s program focuses on the workplace itself.

“We’re committed to meeting community needs and tackling the challenges we face in communities throughout San Mateo County and across our region,” said Emmett D. Carson, Ph.D., CEO and president of the community foundation. “These grants will help excellent organizations continue that work.”

Since its launch in January 2007 through the landmark merger of Community Foundation of Silicon Valley and Peninsula Community Foundation, the new community foundation continued to follow the endowment grant guidelines of its parent foundations while conducting a Community Input Project to help inform a new grant making structure. As of June 30, the community foundation had awarded $11.5 million through endowment grants to nonprofit organizations in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The last grant making deadline using prior guidelines was Feb. 15, and the few final grants from that round will be awarded this summer. New endowment grant guidelines will be announced this fall.

Donors give to the endowment fund in order to support a permanent, charitable resource for the region’s changing needs. In addition to endowment grants, the community foundation partners with more than 1,500 fund advisors with donor advised funds. Payouts from these funds include grants to local, national or international nonprofits. A variety of assets, including cash, stock and real estate, may be used to open or add to a donor advised fund.