By Kathleen Reynolds
In 1994, a small group of Napa Valley residents got together to discuss forming a local
Community Foundation. In the past three decades, nearly $106 million in grant distributions and
scholarships have been awarded to nonprofit organizations and high school seniors.
According to Foundation Communities (Foundcom.org): “A community foundation is a public charity that typically focuses on supporting a geographical area. It is an independent registered philanthropic institution serving geographically defined territory, typically a city or administrative area. Community foundations facilitate and pool donations used to address community needs and support local nonprofits.”
“The Community Foundation has two jobs,” says Terence Mulligan, president of the Napa Valley
Community Foundation. “One is that, with the Board’s guidance, we distribute funds that the
Foundation controls. Two, we serve as consultants to local families who elect to conduct their
giving through the Foundation. Legally, the money is ours, but they get to recommend where
disbursements go, as donor advised funds.”
“There’re four focus areas for the Foundation right now,” says Terence, who has been with the
Foundation since 2004. “Number one is to invest in youth, which is about leveling the
opportunity playing field for young people in our county. The second is fighting poverty, chiefly
by bolstering the safety net and launching a new nonprofit called the ADU Center, which helps
homeowners navigate the process of building accessory dwelling units because ADUs create
more affordable workforce rentals. Third, we champion community through our One Napa
Valley initiative, which aims to create new citizens and a stronger community. The fourth is
disaster relief and recovery; we meet the moment when disasters happen, such as wildfires and
the pandemic.”
There have been changes since Terrence started with the Foundation 20 years ago. Staff then
consisted of a temporary administrative assistant, a part-time bookkeeper and him. Back then, the
Foundation awarded a couple of hundred thousand dollars in grants annually. Now, the staff
numbers 12 and the Foundation grants eight to ten million dollars per year.
How has the need changed in those two decades?
“Compared to 20 years ago, we have a much clearer understanding of the gaps that exist,”
Terence says. “I don’t think the housing crisis was as acute as it is today, and that 50% of our
work force wasn’t commuting into Napa County daily from less expensive communities. 20
years ago, it wasn’t true that 40-45% of the single-family homes in St. Helena were owned by
people who don’t reside there full time. Connected to that, the Napa Valley Unified School
District had more than 20,000 kids K-12 and now we’re just above 16,000 students and declining fast. Our worry at the Foundation is what kind of community do we live in when the child
population declines? The overall county population is declining too. This is driven by the high
cost of housing and the homes we lost in the 2017 and 2020 wildfires. The big arc of the Napa
story is that way back when, the breadwinners would have worked at Mare Island Naval shipyard or Kaiser Steel, later Napa Pipe. We were predominantly a blue-collar community with well-
paid, often unionized, jobs. Today, all of that’s gone. We don’t have a monopoly on this sort of
change, of course. Look at any of the cities in the Rust Belt.”
“We’ve managed to create a vibrant next chapter moving from that economy to a viticulture and
hospitality economy. The change in our economy also precipitated a rather sudden change in our
demography, meaning we went from having fewer Latino people in the community 30 years ago
to having 35% of us now, county-wide. I think another thing we’ve been attentive to is how do
we find a path forward together? I’m proud of the work we’ve done around immigration legal
services and helping people become citizens so that we can have a more connected and cohesive
community.”
Every five years, the Community Foundation revisits and reevaluates its Strategic Plan. They just
completed that process. Terence says that, while everyone involved is pleased with what they are
accomplishing, there is one area they are looking to make future investments.
“We’re creating some room as to what we might do with our money and influence around local
climate matters. We’re looking for a lane to occupy, not because we think we can solve the
problem globally, but climate mitigation has to happen someplace, right? It needs to happen in
communities across the world. Even if we do everything right for a decade and other regions
don’t, we feel like it’s our moral duty to try to take local action.”
“We don’t yet have answers, but in the last decade, we’ve made $30 million in post-disaster
disbursements. I’ve read that, statewide, the wildfires that we had in 2018 and 2020 erased 25
years of climate progress in California. So, instead of merely playing defense when the next fires
come, we want to also make some prospective investments. For example, our funding helped
support the creation of the CWPP, the Community Wildfire Protection Plan. Now, we are asking
ourselves if there are other things we might do to be of service that are adjacent to the disaster
recovery work we’ve done so capably in the last ten years. Certainly, climate change is the most
salient upstream cause of the increased frequency and intensity of wildfires. People might argue
with that, but I think it’s true.”
Why would a person or family give to the Napa Valley Community Foundation, rather than
directly to their favorite charity?
“It’s not a substitute for direct giving that people always do, but a complement to it,” says
Terence. “American philanthropy is deeply personal; we each give to our houses of worship, our
kids’ school, the local food pantry, the things that are most proximate to our hearts. That makes
total sense and all of it is beautiful and all of it is needed, but none of it is enough if you’re trying
to put a dent in a big problem, like disaster response or helping 2,500 people in Napa become
citizens over a decade or bending the adoption curve for accessory dwelling units. To do those
things, you need to point aggregated dollars at the bigger challenges because many of us doing
our own thing is like a million ships in the night, it’s not ‘either-or,’ it’s a ‘yes-and.’ So, we invite
people into our work, at all levels of giving capacity, to help us solve local problems as a
complement to things the nonprofits they support directly. I am deeply grateful that they do so. I don’t want people to give to us in lieu of giving to local non-profits. I hope they’ll give to the
Foundation in addition to giving directly.”
Giving to the Community Foundation can yield tax advantages for donors, but Terence believes
there’s more to it.
“There’re so many public assets that we enjoy in Napa—the way people turn up, the way
neighbors lend a hand, the way we all get along and look for pragmatic solutions to things.
That’s a long way of saying, beyond tax benefits, supporting the Foundation is a way to feel like
you’re a part of something bigger and making progress, especially at a time like now when
progress can feel elusive.”
“The Foundation is for everybody, meaning that you don’t need to be a gazillionaire to make an
investment in our work,” continues Terence. “Take scholarships for example. We are the largest
provider of scholarships by dollar volume to graduating high school seniors in the County. We’ve
spent about $500,000 a year for the last three years or so. Someone can write a check for $100
and say this is for scholarships and we’d say, ‘Thank you very much,’ because it all adds up. I
think there’s a perception that the dollars we distribute each year come only from the very well-
heeled and that’s not the case. We’re lucky that some of our donors have been very successful
and are very generous, but the lion’s share of the gifts we receive are modest in size. I remember
talking to a community member a few years ago who said, ‘I know this may sound silly, but I
didn’t realize you accepted contributions from the public.’ On the contrary, we’re a 501c3 Public
Benefit Corporation, and we rely on contributions from the public to do our work.”
“What I’m most proud of is that we’re responsive to what we hear in terms of community needs.
The culture of the Foundation is that we want to be useful. This is true on both sides of the
Foundation, when we send grant checks to our nonprofit partners and when we engage with local
donors to understand what causes they want to back. I think we are respectful and try to be good
listeners.”
Napa Valley Community Foundation is located at 3299 Claremont Way, Suite 4, in the Sato
Family Nonprofit Center in Napa. Call 707-254-9565 or visit napavalleycf.org for more
information.
“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its
members.”—Coretta Scott King
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