Kern Community Foundation

Kern Community Foundation aims to build resiliency and long-term sustainability into our more than 300 registered nonprofit partners to help them survive AND thrive through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond. We are aiming to strengthen the nonprofit sector in Kern County and help it to work smarter, not harder, in their fundraising, networking, collaborative, advocacy and research work by providing agencies within the sector to achieve greater visibility, capacity, sustainability and resilience through the resources we provide.

Through its Nonprofit Strengthening Initiative, and armed with important lessons learned from every recent crisis in which it has intervened as a philanthropic first responder, Kern Community Foundation is well poised to instill resiliency and preparedness among its nonprofit partners—because the next crisis is just a matter of time.
Thanks to financial support from private and public funders and guidance from our peers in philanthropy, our service offering now includes:
• An open-ended virtual training series called “Growing Resiliency” to help Kern County’s nonprofits build skills in grant searches and grant writing, online fundraising, donor and board member engagement and cultivation, finding capital access tools and nontraditional financial resources, and more;
• An “Online Center for Nonprofit Resiliency and Sustainability” housed on our website, kernfoundation.org, that includes COVID-19 resources, virtual live workshops as well as self-paced online learning opportunities, grant announcements, access to Candid’s Foundation Directory Online, and facilitated virtual roundtables to help leaders in the local nonprofit sector learn from one another;
• A Community Calendar on our website that exclusively showcases nonprofit community fundraisers and educational events;
• Thought leadership through an in-depth introduction of “agile” thinking to Kern’s nonprofit sector to help community-based organizations adapt to uncertainty nimbly, embracing change and turning future challenges into strengths that can be harnessed to support a more vibrant community;
• Advocacy on behalf of nonprofits before civic leaders and the business community, to raise the value of the nonprofit sector in their eyes as an integral and dynamic part of the local economy;
• An ongoing commitment to Nonprofit Strengthening through our already existing efforts: Give Big Kern, Philanthropy on Tap, Jumpstart, leadership within the Kern Alliance of Nonprofits and donor-directed grantmaking.

Through its Nonprofit Strengthening Initiative, and armed with important lessons learned from every recent crisis in which it has intervened as a philanthropic first responder (the Erskine Fire of 216, the Ridgecrest Earthquakes of 2019, the ongoing Homeless Crisis in our state, $600,000 in emergency grantmaking in response to COVID-19 needs in 2020), Kern Community Foundation is well poised to instill resiliency and preparedness among its nonprofit partners.

Our Community Giving Guide and Nonprofit Search Engine on kernfoundation.org, make it easy for potential donors and volunteers to "find their passion" while browsing through our listing of hundreds of local nonprofits. Between 2017 and 2020, we increased the number of Kern County nonprofits featured in the Giving Guide and Nonprofit Search from 200 to 321, helping donors understand the local nonprofit landscape and its needs much better, and helping more nonprofits gain exposure as well as lean about one another.

Our Jumpstart Fundraising Technical Assistance program, in partnership with Network for Good and the Kern County Board of Supervisors, is helping local nonprofits learn to fundraise smarter, one agency at a time, through one year's worth of technical assistance coaching and use of state-of-the-art fundraising software.

We are the supporting organization for the Kern Alliance of Nonprofits, whose vision is to create a strong community benefit sector that plays a vital role in a healthy, prosperous and vibrant Kern County.

In 2019, established the Kern Preparedness and Resiliency Fund, an endowed fund at Kern Community Foundation to assist the local nonprofit community with future needs.

In spring 2020, mobilized approximately $600,000 in emergency grantmaking from fundholders and local donors to support local nonprofits and their community outreach efforts in response to the COVID-19 crisis.

In the fall of 2020, Kern Community Foundation assisted the City of Bakersfield and the County of Kern in educating nonprofits on how to access individual COVID-19 grants from the City and the County ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. The City and County reached out to the Foundation due to its expertise in doing effective outreach to the local nonprofit community when City and County efforts at outreach were not as productive as local government had hoped for.

Since 2017, the Foundation has steadily increased donor and fundraising nonprofit participation in Give Big Kern (www.givebigkern.org), Kern County's official Online Day of Giving, hosted by Kern Community Foundation. Donations raised have increased by 400% in that period of time, and benefited hundreds of local nonprofits. In 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 Crisis, Give Big Kern raised close to Three-quarters of a million dollars for 125 participating nonprofits. For two years in a row, 2019 and 2020, Give Big Kern has been the recipient of the Greater Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce's Beautiful Bakersfield Award for helping to create "A Better Bakersfield."

In 2020, Kern Community Foundation increased its staff size by 20%, and now boasts 40% English-Spanish fluent bilingual staff, which is beneficial to its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work.

DEI, grant searches, Foundation Directory Online, Candid Learning and other resources are now being compiled so that Kern Community Foundation nonprofit partners can access them easily through our website, kernfoundation.org, beginning in December 2020. This is an important part of our expanding Nonprofit Strengthening work.

Kern Community Foundation is confirmed in compliance with National Standards with respect to operational quality, donor service and accountability. It is a member in good standing of the League of California Community Foundations. Since 2010, the Foundation has been among the top 100 most active grantmakers among community foundations in the United States.