Strong nonprofits don’t happen by accident.
They’re built from flexible funding, thoughtful Board and staff leadership, and some degree of foresight, because turbulence of one kind or another is almost always on the horizon. When our nonprofit organizations are strong, our whole community is stronger.
Last year, the ground shifted under Napa County’s nonprofits. Funding they’d counted on for years — from local, state, and federal sources — was cut, delayed, or failed to keep pace with inflation.
At the very moment that nonprofit funding got tighter, more of our neighbors were coming to these organizations for help: to put food on the table, stay in their homes, or navigate the complex and often confusing process of accessing services like CalFresh, Medi-Cal, school-based supports for children, or care services for seniors.
That’s why Napa Valley Community Foundation created the Elaine Jones Safety Net Fund grants program last year. We wanted to meet the moment: to ensure that local nonprofits continue serving our neighbors when they have been asked to do more with fewer resources.
In our first year, we invested $1.65 million in 15 local organizations — groups that are working hard to ensure that our residents don’t fall through the cracks.
Our grants came in two flavors. General operating support grants let these organizations retain skilled staff and keep programs open through a year of rising need, without layoffs or pauses in service. Capacity building grants gave them something rare and just as important: the time and resources to strengthen leadership, diversify revenue, improve governance, and plan for the future. In other words, the support to stabilize today while strengthening tomorrow.
Please keep reading to meet three of last year’s grant recipients — Community Health Initiative, Puertas Abiertas Community Resource Center, and ParentsCAN — so you can hear, in their own words, what our support made possible.
The Fund’s name honors Elaine Jones, who spent her life championing Napa’s nonprofits and the people they serve — even through her hardest days. The Fund carries that same spirit forward: showing up, especially when times are tough.
This fall, we will begin our second year of grants. The need hasn’t diminished, and we still have work to do to fully fund the next round of grants. If these stories inspire you, we hope you’ll join us by giving to the Fund.
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The Place Families Know They Can Turn
As demand surged by 31 percent, Puertas Abiertas Community Resource Center remained a trusted first stop for Napa County’s Latino and immigrant families. It was a year of change for Puertas Abiertas Community Resource Center: a leadership transition, a move into a new building, and — in the middle of it all — a wave…
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Looking Beyond the Crisis
ParentsCAN knows that children can’t thrive at school until their families have stability at home. Flexible funding helped ensure they never had to choose between today’s needs and tomorrow’s. A nine-year-old was getting into trouble at school — constant, escalating trouble — until a ParentsCAN advocate sat down with the family and learned the real…
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Keeping Coverage When the Rules Kept Changing
As healthcare rules shifted and uncertainty spread, Community Health Initiative helped thousands of Napa County residents maintain coverage—and used Safety Net Fund support to build a stronger future. Every community depends on organizations that quietly help people through life’s hardest moments. But what happens when those organizations face a crisis of their own? Last year,…