
Grant Recipients
Grant Recipients 2024
Gigi’s Playhouse
Our doors opened on April 19, 2015. GiGi’s Playhouse El Paso is proud to be the 23rd Playhouse nationwide and the FIRST Playhouse in Texas! GiGi’s Playhouse El Paso provides free programs that are educational and therapeutic in nature to individuals with Down syndrome from birth through adulthood, their families and the community. Please look on our calendar for our current schedule and program descriptions.
Latinas Contra Cancer
LCC believes the quality of life is vital for a longer, healthier and more productive life; and addresses some of the root issues of cancer-care disparity–prevention, intervention and support. This is made possible through education, awareness, access to quality care and research.
Nine Lives Foundation
Nine Lives Foundation proudly provides lifelines for at-risk cats and kittens and affordable, compassionate care for our feline friends and the people who love them. Let’s save lives together!
Oasis for Girls
Oasis for Girls provides culturally relevant and gender-specific programs to empower girls and build sisterhood through shared experiences. They offer 3 programs (girls attend one at a time)—each with a different curriculum. These programs span academic and career exploration, creative arts, and social justice. Their girls are taught and mentored by Program Coordinators who mirror our girls’ backgrounds and serve as allies throughout their high-school years and beyond.
Safe Space
SafeSpace is a youth-led, mental health-focused organization that empowers young people to engage openly with their local schools and communities. We create and implement initiatives to change the conversation around mental health by educating and encouraging our peers to speak up, support others, and seek help when needed.
Canopy
Canopy is a nonprofit dedicated to growing urban tree canopies in Midpeninsula communities, enhancing green spaces and providing environmental education. They intend to utilize the funds to support their Teen Urban Forester (TUF) program, which offers 60 paid internships annually to low-income, BIPOC high school students, empowering them with arboriculture training, leadership skills, and community engagement opportunities.
East Palo Alto Academy Foundation
The East Palo Alto Academy Foundation supports students and graduates by providing academic, navigational, social-emotional, and financial resources, aiming to enable them to pursue meaningful careers and uplift their communities. They plan to use the funds to cover meals, lodging, and travel expenses for college and career exposure visits, including overnight trips to Southern California colleges for 70-80 10th grade students.
Environmental Volunteers
To promote the understanding of and responsibility for the environment through hands-on science education. Environmental Volunteers provides science and nature programming for schools and the community through nature field trips, classroom programs, homeschool programs, public programs and community programs.
Future of Reading
Future of Reading ensures all students read at grade level by fourth grade through a K-3 tutoring program. University students are trained as reading coaches, providing personalized support. Schools receive technology and training aligned with the Science of Reading for effective individualized tutoring. Funds would be used for training university students and supervising teachers to deploy the reading program.
Minds Matter Bay Area
Minds Matter Bay Area is a college success program for low-income, motivated students in the Bay Area, known for closing the opportunity gap and achieving a 100% acceptance rate to 4-year colleges since 2010, with 78% attending competitive institutions and 97% graduating within four years. They intend to use funds to provide material resources for students, including summer programming, laptops, SAT/ACT test fee coverage, study materials, weekly session lunches, and home high-speed internet access, enhancing their comprehensive mentorship and support programs.
Pablove Foundation
The Pablove Foundation improves the lives of children with cancer through pediatric cancer research funding and the Pablove Shutterbugs art program. The Pablove Shutterbugs initiative provides therapeutic photography classes to over 500 children annually, enhancing their photography skills and offering emotional healing and a sense of normalcy during treatment. Funds are used to support the Shutterbugs program by providing photography equipment, program materials, instructor fees, class operations, outreach, recruitment, exhibitions, and program evaluation.
ScholarMatch, Inc.
ScholarMatch supports first-generation college students from low-income backgrounds, providing personalized college success and career advising, financial support, emotional support, and mentoring. In the 2022-2023 program year, ScholarMatch served 480 students, helping them navigate the path to higher education. They intend to use funds to offer a free SAT/ACT test prep course for up to 25 first-generation, low-income students, covering the costs of 12-week classes and workbooks through a partnership with AJ Tutors.
Grant Recipients 2023
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Digital NEST
Digital NEST’s mission is to provide underserved Latinx youth with the skills, resources, and network to build confidence and launch successful careers.
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Mission Bit
Mission Bit inspires youth of color to explore the world of STEM with project-based computer science education that embraces their identities. Mission Bit programming helps keep our youth and residents part of the tech industry and prepares them for opportunities in tech and computer science they would otherwise not have access to.
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Venture Free Foundation
Venture Free seeks to empower young people of all backgrounds to foster a connection with the natural world in an environment that promotes healthy physical and mental development, leadership, respect, and a life-long appreciation for nature!
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Nine Lives
Nine Lives Foundation proudly provides lifelines for at-risk cats and kittens and affordable, compassionate care for our feline friends and the people who love them.
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Insights Science Discovery
Insights promotes STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) education through exploratory, interactive learning experiences.Insights is a vital resource for the community by inspiring curiosity for STEAM subjects and promoting innovative, collaborative and cross disciplinary thinking.
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Latino Outdoors
Latino Outdoors’ mission is to inspire, connect, and engage Latino communities in the outdoors and embrace cultura y familia as part of the outdoor narrative, ensuring our history, heritage, and leadership are valued and represented.
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Learn to Read
To deploy a highly effective reading program available to address each student's individual reading challenges in grades K-3 as the first step in their journey to a successful academic career. The Future of Reading provides the tools and strategies necessary to learn to read with proven, individualized reading lessons and the support necessary to read at proficiency by the fourth grade.
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Minds Matter
Minds Matter Bay Area is trusted by families and high schools in the Bay Area as a transformational college success program for low-income, highly-motivated students. We are a best-in-class college success program because: We are closing the opportunity gap in the Bay Area; We deliver life-changing and measurable results; We are sustainably funded, an institution that will serve families for decades to come.
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Post Carbon Institute
Post Carbon Institute’s mission is to lead the transition to a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable world by providing individuals and communities with the resources needed to understand and respond to the interrelated ecological, economic, energy, and equity crises of the 21st century.
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Propel
Propel's mission focuses on driving change in the social sector through the use of digital tools, with the aim of promoting and fostering the growth of social organizations. Vision: We want to be a vibrant, digital and articulated social ecosystem in Latin America.
Grant Recipients 2022
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First Graduate
First Graduate partners with San Francisco middle schools to provide tutelage, coaching and mentoring to low income students to support their becoming the first in their family to graduate from college, which creates a path toward college graduation for others in the family unit.
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Learn To Read
Our mission is to address the crisis that 65% of all fourth grade students cannot read at grade level proficiency. We execute on our mission by deploying a reading program that will address each student’s individual reading challenges in grades K-3. The program teaches reading strategies with the individual training and support necessary to develop that student’s journey to literacy. We believe this system can reach students in those underserved and disadvantaged communities and we believe we can employ people from the community to be the reading pals and the reading coaches for those students.
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Harmonious Home
Good design invokes happiness and soothes the soul. It can inspire confidence, security, and energy. Color, light, and texture in living spaces can induce feelings of warmth and safety. Furniture to place your belongings and a bed to sleep in improves your physical and mental well-being. Plants and flowers in the home improve and elevate mood.
We partner with the Center Against Sexual & Family Violence, The MacGuire Center and the Reynolds Home to find our clients who are transitioning from a shelter, transitional living center, and aging out of the foster care system. Our mission is to transform their lives by transforming their living spaces with as much gently used items as possible lessening our environmental footprint.
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Foundation For Excellence
The Foundation for Excellence (FFE) was founded with the mission to award college scholarships to students who, although financially constrained, showed great promise in the Engineering, Medical, BPharm and law programs, these being some of the most expensive higher education programs in India. Apart from FFE’s alumni, who support future scholars like themselves, donations come from all around the world from individual donors, corporations and foundations.
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Environmental Volunteers
At Environmental Volunteers, we inspire people of all ages to learn about the wonders of the natural world. We train volunteers (like you!) to lead hands-on science and nature programs in schools, community organizations, and at the EcoCenter in the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve.
We offer School Programs to K-6 classrooms in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Our hands-on curriculum meets State of California science education requirements. Our volunteers bring hands-on learning programs to over 10,000 students each year. In the classroom, our volunteers lead hands-on learning stations in small groups. On follow-up field trips, students discover natural science concepts through guided hikes to local nature preserves.
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Youth Art Exchange
Our vision is that every public high school student in San Francisco has a voice and agency in our city. We believe being exposed to the arts at a pivotal age and developing a strong connection to the arts through learning, creating, and making give youth tools to express themselves, exchange with others, and shape the world around them. We want spaces buzzing with the creative energy of professional artists and youth working together to make art, hang out, and build community – which we believe will make our city more connected, resilient, and reflective of all those woven in its fabric. Simply said, art changes lives.
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Canopy
Canopy plants and cares for trees where people need them the most.
Our mission is to grow urban tree canopy in Mid-peninsula communities for the benefit of all.
Our vision is a day when every resident of the Mid-peninsula can step outside to walk, play, and thrive under the shade of healthy trees.
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Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship
We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that builds and maintains great trails for everyone, and connects communities to nature through responsible outdoor recreation.
We believe that trails are a gateway to the adventure, fun, exercise and sense of wonder offered by the great outdoors. Our work expands and enhances sustainable trail networks so everyone has a place in enjoying and protecting the Santa Cruz Mountains.
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Nine Lives Foundation
Nine Lives Foundation proudly provides lifelines for at-risk cats and kittens and affordable, compassionate care for our feline friends and the people who love them. Let’s save lives together!
Our Vision: A community where all cats and kittens are spayed or neutered and safeguarded or sheltered.
Grant Recipients 2021
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Learn To Read
Our mission is to address the crisis that 65% of all fourth grade students cannot read at grade level proficiency. We execute on our mission by deploying a reading program that will address each student’s individual reading challenges in grades K-3. The program teaches reading strategies with the individual training and support necessary to develop that student’s journey to literacy. We believe this system can reach students in those underserved and disadvantaged communities and we believe we can employ people from the community to be the reading pals and the reading coaches for those students.
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Kits Cubed
Here at Kits Cubed, we are a team of Oakland-based youth who are motivated to make a change in our community. Our founder, Ahmed Muhammad started Kits Cubed out of his garage in April 2020, and quickly assembled a team of other passionate and dedicated students, all committed to one common goal: to introduce youth to the wonders of science through fun, affordable, and accessible means. By providing access to hands-on learning, we look to inspire the young scientist that exists within every student.
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Pablove Foundation
The Pablove Foundation is a US pediatric cancer nonprofit organization founded by Jo Ann Thrailkill and Jeff Castelaz. The organization is named for Thrailkill and Castelaz's son, Pablo Thrailkill Castelaz, who, in 2009, at six years old died from Wilms' tumor, a rare form of childhood cancer.
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Success through Technology Education Foundation
Success Through Technology Education (STTE) Foundation is a nonprofit organization focused on producing stories that inspire, building a future STEAM workforce, and fostering a startup ecosystem.
Grant Recipients December 2020
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Maitri
Maitri is a free, confidential, nonprofit organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area that helps families and individuals, primarily from South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives) facing domestic violence, emotional abuse, cultural alienation, or family conflict. Maitri’s mission is to empower South Asian survivors of domestic violence to lead lives of dignity and self-sufficiency through holistic programs, and enable healthy relationships and gender equity through community education, engagement, and advocacy.
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Project WeHope
WeHOPE’s Mobile Homeless Services meet the needs of the homeless where they are through initiatives that include access to free showers, laundry, safe parking for vehicle dwellers, virtual medical assessments and comprehensive case management to assist in securing permanent housing.
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Loaves and Fishes
Loaves and Fishes Family Kitchen prepares, delivers and serves over 100,000 meals a month to hungry families, children, seniors, students and disabled people in the Bay Area.
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First Graduate
First Graduate partners with San Francisco middle schools to provide tutelage, coaching and mentoring to low income students to support their becoming the first in their family to graduate from college, which creates a path toward college graduation for others in the family unit.
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Healthier Kids
Healthier Kids helps low income children in the bay area get needed healthcare including access to medicine, hearing, dental and vision screening by directly providing services and by helping navigate the complexities of the healthcare system to access available services.
Grant Recipients July 2020
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Environmental Volunteers
The mission of the Environmental Volunteers (the EV) is to promote the understanding of and responsibility for the environment through hands-on science and nature education. Our vision is that all people will learn about and be inspired by the natural world so that they become responsible stewards of the Earth. We achieve this by providing hands-on science and nature education to 1st to 4th grade students from Title 1 schools, by encouraging awareness of the interrelationships between people and nature, by fostering an attitude of stewardship for the environment, and by providing knowledge and skills to children so they can make informed decisions about the environment.
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Maitri
Maitri is a free, confidential, nonprofit organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area that helps families and individuals, primarily from South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives) facing domestic violence, emotional abuse, cultural alienation, or family conflict. Maitri’s mission is to empower South Asian survivors of domestic violence to lead lives of dignity and self-sufficiency through holistic programs, and enable healthy relationships and gender equity through community education, engagement, and advocacy.
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Project WeHope
WeHOPE’s Mobile Homeless Services meet the needs of the homeless where they are through initiatives that include access to free showers, laundry, safe parking for vehicle dwellers, virtual medical assessments and comprehensive case management to assist in securing permanent housing.
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Truckee Elementary Schools
Truckee Elementary School would be grateful to apply for funding support for an after school math tutoring program to provide additional support to carefully selected third, fourth, and fifth grade students who are very close to but not yet meeting proficiency on state math standards. This math tutoring program is particularly special because we plan to identify local students from Truckee High School who would benefit from earning a scholarship for being a committed, successful tutor! We are a Title 1 public school within the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District.