San Diego Giving Stories

Featured Stories
Submit Your Story
Why We're Doing This
Sponsors

The San Diego Giving Stories project began as a special initiative of San Diego Grantmakers in October 2009 to help communicate and promote the work of SDG members.  San Diego Giving Stories are brief narratives that provide examples of philanthropy's impact the community.  By sharing these stories with local elected officials, government staff, community leaders, members of the media, and other grantmakers, we are demonstrating the broader role of organized philanthropy in addressing our region's most pressing needs.

Featured Stories

The SDG Public Policy Committee selected an initial round of stories to represent a diversity of sizes and types of funders and giving areas and to illustrate how grantmakers made a measurable difference in addressing critical community needs.

• Addressing Homelessness Together: The Homelessness Working Group
• Leveraging An Investment at Gompers High School
• The Jewish Community Foundation Responds to "The Great Recession"
• The San Diego Workforce Funders Collaborative
• Bringing Art to a Broader Audience: The Kenneth A. Picerne Foundation
• Helping Kids be Healthy & Ready to Learn: The Donald C. & Elizabeth M. Dickinson Foundation
• A Different Kind of Scholarship Program: The Simon Family Foundation
• The Power of Employee Giving: Cox Communications
• Investing in Nonprofit Effectiveness: San Diego Social Venture Partners
• "The Game of Life" Financial Literacy Education
• "Coming Home to Stay" Prisoner Reentry Program
• Resident-led Change in Southeast San Diego: Jacobs Center for Neighborhood Innovation & San Diego Neighborhood Funders
• The San Diego Foundation's Climate Initiative
• The California Wellness Foundation Helps Make College a Reality for San Diego Youth

We Need Your Stories!

But SDG needs your help to continue this effort - we need more stories!  And because philanthropy comes in so many different forms, we'd like to feature as many different facets of our sector as possible.

The common denominator should be that there was a powerful benefit to the community that was made possible thanks in part to your efforts.  Telling these stories helps people understand what it is grantmakers do and how important philanthropy is to our society.

Submit Your Story

To submit your story, please complete this submission form and return it to SDG's Director of Communications Michelle Slingerland at michelle@sdgrantmakers.org.  The SDG Strategic Communications Committee will review submissions and select those to be featured.  Questions?  Email Michelle or call her at (858) 875-3331.

Why We're Doing This

Many leaders -- in the realms of public policy, business, media, and even nonprofit organizations -- do not know a lot about the work of grantmakers:

• Nationally, The Philanthropy Awareness Initiative has shown that most community leaders cannot cite an example of how grantmakers have helped their communities or even name a foundation on the first try. 
• At the same time, there has been increasing scrutiny of our field.
• Since we published The Grantmaking Report: Foundation and Corporate Giving in the San Diego Region in 2008, SDG has been building relationships with local leaders in order to help them understand the nature, scope, and impact of organized philanthropy in our community.

Project Sponsors

The San Diego Giving Stories project is made possible by the generous support of these sponsors.  If you are interested in supporting the project, let us know.