I sat down with Community Foundation board member Jason Danielson over coffee to get his perspective on the relationship between the Community Foundation and the local nonprofit ecosystem. Danielson has a deep love for Nevada County and the nonprofits that make our community such a special place to live. He and his wife moved to Nevada City full time after the pandemic, and they have owned property on the Ridge since the mid-90s. Jason maintains a conservation easement for BYLT and is active with SYRCL. While he lived in the Bay Area, Jason co-founded two Silicon Valley start-ups and spent two decades in Fortune 500 companies. He has also written two books of poetry and recently completed editing The Ridge Tapestries book for the North Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center.
What initially attracted you to the Community Foundation?
I wanted to understand the breadth of the nonprofit ecosystem in Western Nevada County, and I was attracted by a board of bright, community-minded people.
Is the Community Foundation competing with local nonprofits for the same dollars?
Some nonprofits may see us as competition just because we are another local organization, raising money. From a zero-sum and short-term perspective, it looks like we are competing for the same dollars. But at a closer examination, there is way more potential synergy between the Community Foundation and existing nonprofits. Small donors (a few hundred or thousand dollars) should keep donating to their favorite nonprofits. Medium sized donors can make room to contribute to the Community Foundation without decreasing their current nonprofit giving. I consider myself a medium-sized donor. I support the North Columbia Schoolhouse, SYRCL, Yuba Watershed Institute, Sierra Harvest, and BYLT. I own 50 acres on the Ridge, and I donate to maintain the trails. I didn’t take dollars away from these nonprofit donations when I gave to the Community Foundation, I increased the amount of our overall donating because I saw the long-term benefit for this area in a thriving Community Foundation.
The Community Foundation is attracting larger donors, positioning themselves to receive money from large buckets that local nonprofits often cannot attract like county, state, federal, institutional grants, and other community foundations.
Nevada County was the largest area in California without a Community Foundation because our local ecosystem of nonprofits do a terrific job addressing a myriad of specific challenges our community faces. Nevada City/Grass Valley has survived and thrived because of the hundreds of strong nonprofits here monitoring and improving the health of our forests, our river, and our community. They are doing a good job. The Community Foundation wants to help nonprofits be more effective at what they are already doing.That’s why we’ve folded the Center for Nonprofit Leadership into our work. In the short-term, while the Community Foundation builds its endowment for the future, we can optimize nonprofit leadership skills.
How can the Community Foundation help local nonprofits?
We are in the business of celebrating their missions and helping them do it better, by training staff members and board members through the Center for Nonprofit Leadership. The training and connections are very valuable. The Center for Nonprofit Leadership’s work helped persuade me to become part of the Community Foundation.
These nonprofit organizations are our greatest strength as a community. But what happens in an emergency? A wildfire could be an all encompassing catastrophe for people’s lives, livelihoods, houses, and businesses. One that individual nonprofits and even the County government will need a financial partner to help meet the challenges of rebuilding. Look at the pandemic: businesses were individually scrambling for state, federal, and county funds. An existing Community Foundation, if we existed in 2020, would have stood as a conduit for grants and large donations that in turn would have flowed into local nonprofits and businesses.
Over time, the funding conduit that the Community Foundation represents, along with the endowment the Foundation builds will be a non-governmental safety net for this area. We know we aren’t there yet. We are playing the long game. That is our goal and we are going to get there.
Community Foundations in California and the U.S. have a clear track record of raising these levels of safety-net funds more effectively than most single-issue nonprofits.
How has the Community Foundation made an impact on the nonprofit ecosystem so far?
This year we are convening nonprofits and creating with them game plans for rapid response in an emergency. This effort, referred to as Community Organizations Active in Disaster or simply COAD, coordinates the strengths of all the nonprofits in a way that makes all of these nonprofits more immediately responsive and effective in an emergency.
The Foundation is a back stop to the existing nonprofit ecosystem. We are here for emergencies, to improve the health of all the nonprofits, and to support the smaller nonprofits who don’t yet have the reach to get funding or the financial expertise to manage their own endowments. For instance, we recently raised and directed $20k to support two small nonprofits on the Ridge. It was huge for them. It will uplevel the quality of the services they deliver.
The Community Foundation is not just another nonprofit, it’s a catalyst for all the nonprofits that already exist and have been essential in creating a thriving area.
While it will still take years to develop the endowment we need, in the meantime there is a lot of blocking and tackling we are doing, helping nonprofits become stronger and work together in a more coordinated fashion.
What do you love about living in Nevada County?
The river. The forest. Small-town friendliness and the creativity of the people. As they say, “come for the river, stay for the people.”