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California’s COFO’s Inspire at Fresno Conference

I had the amazing opportunity to join over 175 of my colleagues from across the state at the League of California Community Foundation’s Statewide Conference on September 25-26. Community foundations are leveraging their role as convenors and catalysts in extraordinarily creative ways:

Humboldt Area Foundation is incubating the Redwood Region Climate and Community Resilience (CORE) Hub, centering community and equity into projects such as the Offshore Wind Farm.

Our host, the Central Valley Community Foundation, recently received $14M for their Community Economic Resilience Fund as part of Governor Newsom’s California Jobs First Initiative.

And our neighbor (and mentor) Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation just last week announced its largest grant ever- $1M to The Sierra Institute for Community and Environment to support the development of a Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) operation in Taylorsville. CLT is an innovative building material that offers a carbon-smart, fire-resistant, and seismically sound alternative to traditional construction methods. CLT is derived from “woody biomass”—small and mid-sized trees, alive and dead, many of which traditionally hold little to no market value.

Did you know that our Center for Nonprofit Leadership of the Sierra (CNL), also provides nonprofit training to Placer County? Placer Community Foundation CEO Veronica Blake credits CNL in strengthening their nonprofit community’s ability to tackle the increasingly complex challenges of nonprofit leaders and Board members. “We love CNL!”