A letter from our 2022 Inspire Giving Chair, Alan Hernandez
Dear Inspire Giving Community,
These have been some of the most tumultuous times that we as a society have gone through due to the global COVID pandemic. However, we’ve continued to be resilient in the face of adversity. In 2021, Inspire Giving completed its mission of supporting its grantee Improve Your Tomorrow and its four-week intensive STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math) summer school program. While there were a few COVID-related challenges, it was overall a huge success with 45 students who participated in the program. Benefits of the program included reduced learning loss, easier transition into the next school year, and increased parent involvement. Although health guidelines limited our ability to volunteer in person, we did have a few of our donors join virtually to share their career experiences and personal insights with the youth who participated in the summer school program. In addition, we joined forces with Metro EDGE to hold a joint volunteer event at the River City Food Bank. And so we continued our tradition of creating positive change within the Sacramento region for the 11th year with $115,000 in grants and over $1,000,000 in in-kind support and services.
We are ecstatic to announce that our grant recipient for 2022 is Saint John’s Program for Real Change! Their Economic Workforce Development project is designed to train previously homeless women in attaining the job skills they need to enter the workforce and maintain long-term employment.
In 2021 our endowment fund grew by nearly $9,000. Thank you to our sponsors for their support last year: Delta Print Group, Sutter Health, and Teichert. Our membership process remains unchanged from previous years with the goal of being accessible to residents of the Sacramento region. An annual membership requires minimal investment ($25 a year) while providing a big impact. Our members vote on and determine our annual priority giving area and the grant recipient as well as have the opportunity to volunteer their time and talent to support our recipients.
In the past few years, Inspire Giving has evolved to become more efficient and structured. With this in mind, we have updated our vision and set three new goals for the 2022 Leadership team to accomplish:
- Determine the main objective for future use of additional funds raised (i.e., organizational support, continuing to grow the endowment, etc.).
- Determine allocation of excess endowment grant funds.
- Work towards a self-sustaining organization by creating a strategy and setting it in motion.
We have also carried over one goal from last year that continues to require our focus as we seek to diversify our Leadership team and create a pipeline of community leaders:
- Continue to strengthen and diversify our leadership pipeline, ensuring our leadership is representative of the greater Sacramento region.
We are optimistic about 2022 and everything we can accomplish with Saint John’s Program for Real Change to improve the lives of women and children. Inspire Giving will continue to be nimble and adapt as we face new challenges. We hope you can find a way to get involved: either by donating your time at an upcoming volunteer event or by contributing financially and voting to help with the selection of future grant recipients. If you’d like to get involved or have questions about Inspire Giving, send me an email at exia92@gmail.com.
A little is enough, if enough people do it.
Alan Hernandez
Inspire Giving Chair