Note From Our Executive Director

Dear Thrive Community,

At the outset of this year, we kicked off an ambitious project to help nonprofits overcome pandemic challenges and strengthen their capacity to meet community needs and deliver impactful programs: Thrive's Strategic Alliances Initiative, with vision and support from the County of San Mateo. Thank you to the hundreds of nonprofit and community leaders who have provided input and insights in response to our call for your participation. We analyzed over 1500 San Mateo County nonprofits, received over 150 survey responses, and are in the process of completing over 50 stakeholder interviews, including conversations with key informants and focus groups on key issue areas and regions.

What we are learning is heartening: nonprofit leaders want to find new ways to collaborate, innovate, and even share services to magnify their impact on a local level. This validates what we know about the resilience and responsiveness of our sector, despite the obvious fiscal challenges: this is not a time to think small, shutter doors, or provide fewer services, but to creatively and collectively expand our reach, especially as community-based organizations are leading the community as a whole in its quest for equity and structural change toward racial justice. We know that this will not be an easy road, and will also involve maximizing existing resources to meet growing needs. We will be presenting our detailed findings to participants in June 2021 and next steps to the community this summer.

Concurrently, Thrive has undertaken critical internal work: we are in the process of strategic planning with our full board and growing staff; we are hiring for new positions; and we are completing our first year as a host site for the AmeriCorps VISTA program. We are grateful for the incredible people power of our sector that enables all our work.

Please reach out to me if you'd like to learn more about any of our special initiatives, and please read below to learn about all the great Thrive programs that continue in parallel to these efforts.

In Community,

Georgia D. Farooq

Gateways for Growth: Community Engagement Partners

The County of San Mateo’s Office of Community Affairs’ Immigrant Services program is embarking on an exciting new endeavor and looking for partners along the way. San Mateo County was recently awarded a Gateways for Growth (G4G) grant, a nationwide competitive opportunity for localities to receive research support and technical assistance from New American Economy and Welcoming America to improve immigrant inclusion in our communities. If you're interested in becoming a Community Engagement Partner in their Strategic Planning Process click here.

The 2021 Compensation & Benefits Survey

Nonprofit Compensation Associates, Inc. is pleased to announce that 647 nonprofit organizations in Northern California participated in the 2021 Compensation & Benefits Survey, which reports compensation levels for more than 250 jobs, making it the most comprehensive in the survey's 43-year history. For more information and to order your survey report click here.

Thrive Membership & Resources

Thrive Alliance is a cross-sector membership-based organization for nonprofits, government entities, foundations, businesses, and community leaders. Click here to become a member.

For information about grant opportunities, partner events, COVID-19 nonprofit resources, Thrive programs and more, visit Thrive's Website.

Thrive Highlights

Environment & Sustainability

Thrive has some bittersweet news to share. Doug Silverstein, Thrive's Environment & Sustainability Lead, will be leaving the San Mateo community in May to start a new adventure in Germany! Doug has led over 30 Thrive E & S community meetings since 2018 with over 100 speakers and 1000 attendees total. Doug has brought together groups across issue areas and sectors while creating a strong sense of community during his time with Thrive. We wish him the best of luck and thank him for his influential leadership and enthusiastic community building.

Thrive's Environment & Sustainability program will continue to provide a place for San Mateo County's cross-sector, multi-issue E & S community to meet, collaborate and advocate under Petra Silton’s dynamic leadership.

Make sure to attend the last meeting Doug will facilitate Thursday, May 20 at 3:30 pm! Youth climate activists will talk about the amazing work they are doing in San Mateo County. Sign up here.

COVID-19 Community Action Teams

Getting press is not always easy, no matter how newsworthy you think your story is. To help nonprofits doing outreach get media coverage in support of their activities, Thrive hosted a panel of media representatives to talk about best practices for engaging with the media. We had reporters, editors, and founders from The Daily Journal, Half Moon Bay Radio, Ding Ding TV, El Tecolote and the EPA Center for Community Media. The conversation gave our partner nonprofits an opportunity to build relationships with local media and to learn how to get media coverage to inform our diverse communities in San Mateo County about COVID-19 vaccines and precautions.

Civic Participation: Voting & Redistricting

Parolees have been granted the right to vote in California with the passage of Prop 17, but the challenge of educating and engaging them remains. Multiple advocacy groups are addressing the issue and are coordinating their efforts in our Voter Education Outreach Advisory Committee, building on our collective outreach to other underrepresented communities. In our next meeting, the League of Women Voter’s – South County will review lessons learned from their outreach efforts during the November elections and we will continue our discussions of pending legislation. Sign up here to join us.

Applications for the Redistricting Commission for the County are open and we hope there will be a diverse set of applicants. Click here to access the application, plus see more information about redistricting and Thrive's recordings of informative sessions and more.

Children & Education Peer Learning Series

Our Peer Learning Series is continuing to tackle the hardest of issues. Last month we focused on strengthening communications among schools, families, and providers. This month we will be looking at the new federal and state stimulus dollars, which will be a significant new source of funding. We will be discussing what this money can be used for and how to apply. Join us for the next event, and access recordings and more information on our Peer Learning Special Initiatives page.

Grant Announcements! Community Events! Performances! Trainings! Read All About It in the Thrive Weekly!

Find all of that in the Thrive Weekly newsletter delivered straight to your inbox, or on the Event page on our website. If you want to share important organization updates, grant opportunities, and event announcements with our exclusive Thrive community network, click here to submit your events online and we will be happy to feature them. It's free for Thrive members; there is a small fee for nonmembers. If you don't receive the Thrive Weekly but would like to, sign up here. Questions? Email Letisha Manual, Thrive's Marketing Associate.