Sunlight Giving

We maintained our commitment to provide partners with long-term flexible support with our regular grantmaking budget of ~$20M and distributed an additional ~$20M in COVID-19 responsive grants. This significant responsive grantmaking resulted in one-time shifts to the data that represents our usual practices. For example, where we usually award more multi-year grants than one-year grants for our long-term partners, all of our responsive grants to our partners in 2020 and 2021 were awarded as one-year grants.

Our primary focus in 2020 was to respond to the emerging public health and economic crisis caused by COVID-19. This was an incredibly challenging year for our grantee partners and the families they serve, in ways that we couldn’t have fathomed as the year began. In addition to maintaining all of our core grantmaking during the year, we did several rounds of COVID-19 responsive grants to our partners to help them address the unprecedented demand for services they saw throughout the year.

This year, we regularly heard from grantee partners about the urgent housing crisis, especially the growing displacement of families who are priced out of their homes and communities. Many communities are seeing rapid growth in requests for services, particularly across Santa Cruz and Monterey counties and the San Joaquin Valley, all places where wages tend to be lower amid an escalating cost of living for families.

This year was one of intense learning and growth. We established the foundation’s geographic reachand refined each giving area. The team spent considerable time in the field learning about the needs of communities and the providers serving families. We also spent time getting to know the other foundations that share our vision for a vibrant, diverse, and safe Bay Area. We were surprised by the limited philanthropic support in some communities, and noticed how the uneven distribution of services within each county made access difficult for many families.