Stories of Giving Back- Community Foundation of Mendocino County [CFMC]

Disaster Preparedness Grant Program Round 2

I have a secret tradition in my office. When we have a special win, I do a happy dance. It’s a brief moment of celebration as we take one toe-tapping step closer to our goal of helping our county thrive. When we created the Community Resiliency and Disaster Preparedness Fund in 2018 in the wake of the 2017 Redwood Complex Fire, we called upon our supporters to help us raise $100,000 for our efforts and they answered the call. Disaster recovery can be a long and challenging path and this new fund was the light at the end of the tunnel. Cue happy dance.

Startup Mendocino - A New Approach to Economic Development

“Economic development and entrepreneurship has always been in the Mayfield DNA,” John and Sandy Mayfield's son, Jim Mayfield, tells me. “What Startup Mendocino brings is an opportunity to triple our impact as locals doing good locally – by matching contributions from our fund with other local sponsors and local community organizations, we can make a much bigger impact.”

Startup Mendocino is a business bootcamp and pitch competition from the West Business Development Center. The John and Sandra Mayfield Family Economic Development Fund at the Community Foundation provided the necessary funding to get the project off the ground, and when I chat with John Mayfield and his son Jim, their pride in supporting the project is evident.

Forging a Path for Education

Pathways to giving have many iterations, and Supervisor John Haschak found his own path to supporting what is most important to him – education. As a public school teacher, education has always been at the forefront of his mind, and when the Board of Supervisors voted in a salary increase Supervisor Haschak chose to work with The Community Foundation of Mendocino County to redirect his increase into a scholarship for students within his district – Willits, Laytonville, and Round Valley.

Founding a Community Foundation - Part II

In celebration of our 25th anniversary I have decided to look at the roots of the Community Foundation’s success over the past two and a half decades. The hiring of Susanne Norgard as the first Executive Director in 1999 is a pivotal moment in that story. Founding board chair, Bob Armanino, put it succinctly: “One of the best things we did as an organization was to hire Susanne Norgard.”

Early board member Sharon DiMauro, who knew Norgard from her work at Mendocino Coast Hospital and Foundation, echoed this sentiment. “I got a call from my friend Dennis Wilson, who was a founding board member of the Community Foundation, and he said, ‘Do you know anything about Susanne Norgard?’ I said, ‘Hire her.’ Dennis said, ‘You don’t even know what the job is.’ ‘It doesn’t matter, whatever the job is, she will do a great job. Hire her."

New Construction Takes Flight

Since our work began after the Redwood Complex Fire, we have often said that we are building the plane while flying it. Disaster recovery is a new role to many involved in Mendocino-ROC, and each phase has offered up new opportunities to learn. Our greatest goal throughout the process has been to get fire survivors back home – whether that means into a long-term rental, purchasing a house, or rebuilding. Over this spring we realized the need to develop multiple building tracks to help survivors, given the construction time required to complete a single home. We are pleased to share that we now have more options in place.

Founding a Community Foundation - Part I

“Imagine, we said to ourselves, if there was something in the county where our philanthropic dollars could stay local.” I’m sitting across from Tom Montesonti, one of the founders of the Community Foundation of Mendocino County, and his enthusiasm is still evident 25 years later. In celebration of the Foundation’s silver anniversary, I’ve decided to talk with the visionaries who brought it about and discover how we grew from a handful of people with thirty-six cents for postage to a thriving organization with over $36M in assets.

In the late 1980s people were giving their estate gifts to alumni organizations and causes across the country, and local non-profit and business professionals began to ask themselves, “How do we keep this money local and support the work happening right here in our own community?” The solution came with the arrival of Herb Pruett and Sherri Gregory-Pruett, Willits residents returning from a few years living in Southern California. They began talking with friends, including Tom Montesonti, about the need to replicate the model of community giving they witnessed there. “The community foundation in Southern California was doing such good work,” Herb Pruett tells me, “I knew we needed one here.”

An Anniversary Gift Better than Silver

There was a moment this weekend, with the soft breeze coming in off the lush green vineyards to cool the bright June air, when my heart literally paused, skipping a cardiovascular beat, from the outpouring of love and support for the work we do every day. But first, let me lead you up to that moment.

A great oak tree casts a welcome shadow across the nearly 150 well-wishers gathered to celebrate the Community Foundation’s 25th anniversary. Our organizational founders stand shoulder to shoulder with our current board. The spectrum of our history stretches across these faces, the visionaries that made our organization come true, the donors that make our work possible, the community that makes our future a vibrant one.

In Celebration of Giving

A silver anniversary is deserving of a certain degree of fanfare. To mark twenty-five years of grant-making, the Community Foundation is celebrating by honoring our local non-profit community. As a “community treasure chest,” our vision has always been for a thriving Mendocino County. By honoring our donors’ intent, we are able to work with our amazing non-profit partners to bring this vision to life. Together we make lasting change in the county, providing growing opportunities for people of all ages to lead healthy lives and to work, learn, create, contribute, and prosper.

Building a New Foundation for Mendocino County ReLeaf

The seasons of a year are beautifully illuminated in the foliage that surrounds us. A stroll downtown in spring is bursting with plum blossoms and pale greens. Then summer mellows into a welcome canopy of rich greens and vivid yellows. Autumn turns to a riot of golds and reds before deciduous trees bare their branches leaving the evergreen pines and redwoods to brighten winter all on their own. On a broader scale, a tree goes from seedling to sapling to maturity and age. Life cycles are found in everything, and organizations are no different.

Moving Back Home

The scent of drying putty is fresh in the air as a 10-year-old fire survivor walks me through her future bedroom. “My dad said I can have the master bedroom and he is taking the smaller room across the hall,” she says with a smile. Just weeks from moving home after a year and a half living in FEMA housing she shares with excitement, “We went to the furniture store and I got to pick out my new bed and dresser.” A sense of ownership and restoration to the childhood interrupted is heavy in her voice, and I tuck away the lump in my throat and smile. The work the Foundation has been able to do as leaders of Mendocino-ROC has been detailed in the data, but the true impact is found in this bare bedroom overlooking scorched trees where a ten-year-old girl is getting excited about picking up where her family left off.