CASE STUDY
Central Valley Community Foundation
CVCF’s current equity journey began in 2018, when a group of community and civic leaders gathered for a roundtable with The Kresge Foundation to discuss how the local economy impacted Fresno residents.
Theory of change, Governance
Background
The Central Valley Community Foundation (CVCF) began in 1966 as a conduit to facilitate giving options for individuals, families, businesses and other foundations to invest in programs that address social and environmental needs in the Central Valley of California. CVCF partners with donors and nonprofits to promote effective philanthropy and forge stronger communities. The Foundation currently manages $112 Million in philanthropic assets, including endowed funds, programmatic funds, scholarship funds, and donor-advised funds (for a total of 262 funds). In 2019 CVCF issued 774 grants totaling $7,275,236 and distributed $895,390 to fund 276 scholarships.
The equity journey
CVCF’s current equity journey began in 2018, when a group of community and civic leaders
gathered for a roundtable with The Kresge Foundation to discuss how the local economy impacted Fresno residents. The results of this examination showed that Fresno was in need of tens of thousands of new jobs to address local unemployment and under-employment. Research from the Urban Institute also ranked Fresno 59th out of 59 large cities in California for racial and economic inclusion. In 2019, CVCF convened a group of civic, business, education, and community leaders to serve as a DRIVE (“Developing the Region’s Inclusive and Vibrant Economy”) Executive Committee to assemble community efforts into a cohesive, ten-year economic-investment plan. The Fresno DRIVE investment plan now calls for $4.2 billion of public, private, and philanthropic investment over the next ten years to create economic mobility for all residents.
In 2016, faced with extreme levels of inequity in the Bay Area, TSFF set a new strategy with racial and economic equity at its core. This strategy was called People, Place, Power.
Theory of change
CVCF spearheaded the effort to develop the ten-year, $4.2-billion Fresno DRIVE investment plan, launched in 2019. DRIVE was conceived as a commitment to race equity, especially for communities of color in the Fresno area. DRIVE comprises 19 investment areas, each with a detailed business plan, and focuses on 1) neighborhood development; 2) human capital; and 3) economic development. The DRIVE Theory of Change was adopted in 2020 to align the investment-plan initiatives with economic growth based on increased diversity, equity and inclusion of racial-minority communities.
The DRIVE investment plan is expected to result in nearly 50,000 new jobs; 14,000 housing units and vouchers; 64,000 workers trained; 270,000 residents positively impacted and involved; and nearly 3,500 small businesses supported by 2030.
Governance
To forge the Fresno DRIVE initiative, in spring 2019 CVCF assembled a 46-member group of civic, business, education, and community leaders to serve as an executive committee to collate the community’s collective efforts into what became a ten-year, $4.2-billion economic investment plan. The executive committee in turn led a 300-person steering committee in a planning process to study comprehensive local data, develop shared values and vision on race equity, and curate a set of initiatives to transform Fresno’s economic trajectory. The steering committee examined 106 individual ideas and initiatives, refining these into 25 major investment themes, which the committee distilled into DRIVE’s 19 final investment areas. After four months of consultation throughout the summer of 2019, the steering committee spent six weeks conferring with expert research and consulting partners, resulting in the draft Fresno DRIVE investment plan, with each of the 19 investment areas focusing on economic development, human capital or neighborhood development.
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