JJ & Laurel McCarthy, monthly donors since 2020
When JJ and Laurel McCarthy talk about giving, one word keeps coming up: steady.
The McCarthys have called Napa home for about 25 years. JJ came to the Valley in 1999 for a career change into wine. Since then, he’s worked in production, sales and marketing, run a winery, and now leads a wine team at a local accounting firm. Laurel is an LCSW who manages a group of social workers for a regional health plan. They raised their two kids here and love the community they’ve built.
JJ first learned about community foundations from a finance director who explained the model. “I thought it was incredible,” JJ remembers. “Every community should have one.”
He found us while researching community foundations, and when COVID hit, the McCarthys got serious about giving.
“We asked ourselves, what’s the easiest way to put it where it can go to work quickly?” JJ says. “You guys are the experts.”
That’s when the McCarthys decided to set up a recurring monthly gift to Napa Valley Community Foundation, and they’ve kept it going for more than six years.
The idea came from a family member with fundraising experience, who gave JJ some simple advice: “For the causes you really support, just put them on autopilot.”
Steady support helps a nonprofit plan ahead. It also shows other donors that a committed core group stands behind the mission.
Laurel sees this in her own work. “It’s always easy to get startup money for an organization, but really hard to get money to keep it going,” she says. “Having regular monthly donors can really make a big difference.”
Social justice is close to Laurel’s heart, and so is the flexibility that comes with giving through NVCF. “Giving to the Community Foundation makes it possible to have funds go where they’re needed most,” she says.
Steady gifts like JJ and Laurel’s keep NVCF responsive, relevant, and ready.