By Eliza Ridgeway
Two local non-profits, Community Foundation Silicon Valley and the Peninsula Community Foundation, announced plans to merge last week, becoming one of the largest community foundations in the nation.
The new organization, to be called the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, will have more than $1.5 billion in assets, comparable to some of the nation’s oldest and most established community foundations.
The governing boards of the organizations voted unanimously for the merger and will convene to select a CEO next month, and expect the new foundation to be up and running by the end of the year.
The Community Foundation Silicon Valley, established in 1954, has received support from past and present Los Altos and Los Altos Hills residents such as Steve and Michele Kirsch and Jeff Skoll. The Peninsula Community Foundation, established in 1964, made a $75,000 grant this year to the Mountain View Worker Center, a non-profit that educates day workers while connecting them safely with potential employers.
A central office for the new foundation will be established in Palo Alto or East Palo Alto. The boards plan to extend support across the Bay Area, while maintaining funding in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Many of the existing funds at the two organizations specify grants within those two counties. In support of the merger, an anonymous donor has already committed $3 million for discretionary grant-making throughout the larger region.
Community foundations pool donations from the community to coordinate grant-making on a local level. They typically operate on the endowment model rather than annual fund raising.
“Community foundations are positioned to be able to aggregate resources from a lot of donors and channel them to a specific community,” said Sally Osberg, president and CEO of the Palo Alto-based Skoll Foundation.
She said that because the foundations maintain communication with the non-profits working “in their own backyard,” they are able to understand the contexts and needs of the local community efficiently.
The new foundation’s assets will be less than that of some private foundations, such as the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, which has an endowment of nearly $6 billion.
Philanthropists without the time or fortune to direct their own foundation can channel their giving through community foundations, which can establish individual donor-advised funds. The Community Foundation Silicon Valley has, for instance, been the fiscal agent for the Town Crier Holiday Fund since it began in 2000.
“We have two superb community foundations in this region, but together they will be a force for positive impact in the entire Silicon Valley. It’s an outstanding development,” Osberg said. “Such mergers are not usual. Those two boards, to their credit, really took advantage of the opportunity.”
