What We Do

We Serve Donors - We Make Grants - We Provide Community Leadership

Serving Donors

The Community Foundation of Mendocino County helps donors identify and select the most personally gratifying ways to make charitable contributions. We help donors sort through the hundreds of nonprofit, scientific, and educational organizations to which they could potentially give.

  • We help guide donors to their “heart of giving” – the causes that will have the most meaning to them.

  • We help ensure donors achieve maximum allowable tax benefit from their giving.

  • We invest and steward donations to ensure prudent returns in perpetuity.

  • We provide personalized administrative services that ensure giving is an easy, pleasurable experience.

  • We help create personal legacies through named endowment funds.

  • We collaborate with philanthropic people and their professional advisors to coordinate the philanthropic, financial, and legal aspects of giving.

Making Grants

The Community Foundation of Mendocino County provides grant support in many areas of community life including, but not limited to, education, the arts, community health, alleviation of poverty, youth, and environmental stewardship. We also administer scholarships.

  • We seek proposals from nonprofit organizations that are based in Mendocino County or from any organization with a project that has specific benefit to Mendocino County residents.

  • We ensure that donations go to organizations with the capacity to achieve their stated goals.

  • We monitor the work of grantees to ensure our grant making is effective.

Providing Leadership

We are a local organization supported and led by thoughtful and engaged people who care about Mendocino County.

  • Our board, staff, and volunteers continually cultivate a deeper knowledge about the issues and opportunities that shape our community and monitor community needs and opportunities in a variety of areas.

  • We work on a local level, using our knowledge and our relationships to find the best return on every donor’s philanthropic investment.

  • We collaborate with community leaders to build the capacity of local communities to meet the needs of residents.

  • We bring diverse voices and groups together to address local issues.

  • We build permanent community capital.

  • Learn more about our Community Leadership

Next: For Donors »