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

SILICON VALLEY COMMUNITY FOUNDATION AWARDS GRANTS WITHIN SAN MATEO COUNTY

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 will receive $110,561 from the community foundation’s community endowment to expand its “Every Child a Reader and Writer” literacy program to Cunha Intermediate School in Half Moon Bay. In addition, the grant will help the district fund three full-time literacy coaches for the district’s elementary schools and a part-time coach at Cunha. “Every Child a Reader and Writer,” started eight years ago by the Noyce Foundation, allows teachers to provide targeted literacy workshops.

The community foundation also awarded $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.

The third grant will 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 $100,000 grant came from The John and Mary Perkins Fund, which targeted land conservation and was set up as a bequest.

Finally, the community foundation awarded Springboard Forward of Belmont a $75,000 community endowment grant 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.

Highlights of other grants in San Mateo County this year include:

• A series of community endowment grants were given to programs in East Palo Alto for youth and to help launch a farmer’s market in the city.
• In the Half Moon Bay area, the community foundation provided a grant to support the Environmental Science Education Project at Richard J. Elkus Ranch.
• Northern San Mateo County received a community endowment grant to support South San Francisco’s Learning Wheels Literacy Van, a 23-foot preschool on wheels, and the Youth Leadership Institute’s North County Prevention Programs, which target alcohol, tobacco, drug and violence prevention among youth.

“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 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 grantmaking 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 grantmaking 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.