Founded in early 2020, the Napa Sonoma ADU Center is making it easier for homeowners to understand the process of designing, and building, accessory dwelling units—sometimes called granny units. The center is a fiscally-sponsored project of Napa Valley Community Foundation with support from Community Foundation...
Since the release of the Portrait of Sonoma in 2014, we’ve talked about the tale of two counties. What we know now is that the inequalities that exist locally have only been exacerbated by the devastation of the fires, the covid pandemic, and the economic...
It's been just over five years since the Tubbs and Nuns fires changed life as we knew it in Sonoma County. We launched the Sonoma County Resilience Fund knowing that while the immediate needs would be great, our community needed a fund that would be...
In 2014, we helped develop The Portrait of Sonoma, a groundbreaking study which collected and interpreted census data to illuminate issues of inequity. Using the American Human Development Index (HDI) measurements of health, wealth, and education, the study compares race, ethnicity, gender, and geography data. The...
Growing economic uncertainty is stretching local nonprofits to their limits. They’re working hard to help an influx of new clients who need support physically, mentally, and financially. The sharp rise in the cost of living has led to financial stress among low-income families struggling to make...
For people living on the remote stretches of the North Coast of Sonoma County, it can be challenging to find social and other services. This reality, along with the sense of isolation that comes with rural living, was compounded while the nation sheltered-in-place during the...
During the last stretch of her thirty-year career as a self-proclaimed “international workaholic,” Taya Levine left her then home base of Arlington, Virginia and made her way west to Sonoma County. Born and raised in Fremont, California—which was then an agricultural town that she remembers...
When Robin Bowen, Executive Director at Child Parent Institute (CPI) in Santa Rosa, first called her staff together to discuss the impact COVID-19 would have on the organization, she—like many others—wasn’t expecting the pandemic’s duration would last this long. “We just all thought it was going...
Fundraising can be tricky during a local disaster like a wildfire or flood. It can be even trickier during a global pandemic that spans an entire year and counting. COVID-19 and successive years of wildfires hit the Healdsburg and Geyserville communities hard. With grapes left...
In June 2020, about 10 Sonoma Valley civic leaders gathered in a backyard to discuss the future of Sonoma Valley. Roughly three months into the pandemic, the group was worried: How would small local businesses survive shelter-in-place orders? How would those who were now unemployed...