Thank you to all who could join us for our recent Community Conversation on the pandemic and its impact on women, mental health, and gender disparities. We had a fascinating discussion and the evening could easily have gone much longer. Our panelists – Dr . Nirmaljit Dhami, Dr. Sandra Escobar, and Riley Simonsen –...
I’ve been looking ahead to our upcoming Community Conversation with a personal sense of both anxiety and anticipation. Mental health and wellbeing are deeply personal subjects to me. In my lifetime, mental health challenges led to the suicides of one aunt and my grandmother (both on my dad’s side). My younger sister passed away...
October 9, 2021, is a special day for Donor Advised Fund holders like you. It is the last day to apply for an opportunity to give matching grants to the nonprofits you support. Join the #HalfMyDAF movement and supercharge your donations. Some LAMV-CF DAF owners have already participated, and we want to make sure...
For the second time in its history, the Foundation has decided to change its name. When the Foundation was established thirty years ago, we were known as Los Altos Tomorrow. The name changed in 1995 to Los Altos Community Foundation because the use of “tomorrow” was not considered sufficiently descriptive of the Foundation’s purpose....
As I reflect on the last 12 months, I see a year of many changes and challenges coupled with significant accomplishments and activities. No one would have imagined how the pandemic and economic recession would affect our local communities, the Foundation, or our work. I believe we matured as an engaged local funder and...
Since the pandemic began, there's been lots of speculation about how our economy - and communities - will emerge from it. Economists describe the various 'recovery curves' that have existed for some time. As we move from pandemic relief efforts to rebuilding, a new curve has entered into this economic lexicon that we should...
When I began my relationship with LACF as a board member, I was excited by the Foundation’s willingness to support emerging nonprofits through fiscal sponsorships. Fiscal sponsorships – where a supporting organization like LACF will accept donations on behalf of a project or entity that does not qualify for tax-exemption on its own –...
A Conversation on Risk, Trust, and Equity in Philanthropy A few months ago, I had the privilege of hosting a conversation among a group of outstanding nonprofit leaders about the intersectionality of risk, trust, and equity in philanthropy. The philanthropic sector this year has made tremendous strides in responding to community needs, reducing...
Over the past months of this pandemic, I’ve witnessed and participated in emerging collaborations between funders – both institutions and local families with significant means – to tackle issues such as mental health, equity, and homelessness (more on that moving forward). Sustained collaborations between organizations remain challenging, but a willingness to minimize bureaucracy and...
So much of what philanthropy has done over the past few months in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was long overdue (also long overdue but perhaps not as clearly seen yet is the sector’s response to address inequities and structural racism – that’s a subject for a future post). In a matter of a...
