Fresno County Economic Opportunities Commission
Helping people, changing lives.
Mission
OUR MISSION We fight to end poverty. OUR VISION A strong Fresno County where people have resources to shape their future free from poverty. WE VALUE Working together to accelerate change. Centering our work around equity and inclusion. Trustworthiness and transparency. The community’s voice and direction. Empathy, compassion, and the human connection.
Ruling year
1965
Chief Executive Officer
Emilia Reyes
Main address
1920 Mariposa Street, Suite 300
Fresno, CA 93721 USA
EIN
94-1606519
NTEE code
Human Services - Multipurpose and Other N.E.C. (P99)
Education N.E.C. (B99)
Employment Training (J22)
IRS filing requirement
This organization is required to file an IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ.
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Communication
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Fresno County Economic Opportunities Commission (Fresno EOC) fights poverty in a city that has the dubious distinction as home to one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the United States. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 30% of Fresno’s population lives below the poverty line. That’s more than twice the national average of 12.7%. In 2015-2016, 41% of children in the city lived below the federal poverty threshold, versus 20% in California and 10.5% in the United States. Persistent childhood poverty, living below the federal poverty level for at least half of one’s childhood, is strongly correlated to poor educational and economic outcomes (Kids Count Data Center 2015, 2016; Urban Institute, 2015). In addition, Fresno’s low-income residents are among the most educationally and economically divided and isolated of any large American city. This, in turn, affects the social and financial viability of disadvantaged children and their families.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Education
Head Start 0 to 5: A no-cost education program serving low-income children and their families. Fresno EOC has provided comprehensive child development services through the Head Start program since 1965.
Foster Grandparent Program: Bridges generations as senior volunteers provide one-to-one mentoring and emotional support to underserved infants, children, and teens throughout Fresno and Madera Counties, promoting literacy and academic success as well as fostering social-emotional and cognitive-behavioral development.
School of Unlimited Learning (SOUL): Provides comprehensive learning experiences in a manner and in an environment that enables students to obtain skills, knowledge, and motivation to be self-directed, life-long learners as they mature toward self-sufficiency.
Training and Employment
Local Conservation Corp: Provides young adults with employment and training plus educational opportunities.
YouthBuild Charter High School: Participants can work toward their high school diploma while learning job skills in construction, health care, landscaping, public lands, green jobs (solar and weatherization), recycling, and community clean-up.
Valley Apprenticeship Connections: Provides a 12-week pre-apprenticeship training to prepare individuals for the construction industry.
Workforce Connection Youth Adult Program: Provides young people (ages 14-24) with educational and employment training opportunities to facilitate their transition into self-sufficiency. Provides High School Graduates (ages 18-21) paid work-based training and career mentoring services each summer.
Food and Nutrition
Home Delivery: Home Delivery is a food service and product line designed to fit the needs of anyone who cannot or prefers not to prepare all of their own daily meals. Features an extremely cost effective and convenient means of fulfilling needs for balanced daily nutrition. Great tasting, easy to prepare, complete meals are brought right to clients’ doors on a weekly basis by delivery service professionals.
Summer Meals for Kids: Provides free, healthy meals to kids ages 1-18 during summer break.
Food Express Bus: Provides free, healthy grab-and-go meals for kids ages 1 to 18 at multiple locations.
Food Distributions: Provides food to families residing in rural communities and inner city areas impacted by weather issues and economic downturn.
Women, Infants & Children (WIC): WIC provides healthy foods, nutrition education, breastfeeding support, health & community referrals to pregnant women, new moms & dads, and children (up to age 5).
Community Building
Advance Peace Fresno: A community based public health and safety strategy that aims to transform lives and build healthier, safer, and more just communities by putting an end to cyclical and retaliatory gun violence in urban neighborhoods.
LGBTQ+ Resource Center: Provides supportive services to enhance the health and well-being of individuals of all ages in the LGBTQ+ community.
Central Valley Against Human Trafficking (CVAHT): provides awareness, training, technical assistance, advocacy and direct services about human trafficking and trafficking-related issues.
Health
Community Health Center: A primary care and comprehensive family planning and reproductive health clinic helping men, women and teens. Teens can call for a free ride to the Community Health Center.
California Personal Responsibility Education Program (CAPREP): Educates at-risk youth in Fresno County about teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections prevention, healthy relationships, clinical linkages, and substance abuse.
Adolescent Family Life Program (AFLP): Provides teen parents (ages 18 and younger) with support and guidance to enhance their parenting skills and obtain social and economic independence.
Free Denti-Cal Youth Services: Provides dental service connections and oral health education to youth (ages 0-20) who have Medi-Cal and live in Fresno County. Assists with finding local dentists, scheduling initial and follow up appointments.
Rural Tobacco Education Program: Educates the community about the dangers and increased risk of tobacco related diseases and smoke free policies; provides presentations and resources to live a tobacco free lifestyle in rural Fresno County.
African American Coalition / COVID-19 Equity Project: Connects Fresno’s Black Community to trusted, accurate, relevant, and timely information and resources that affect the population. Provides testing, vaccination, and education resources.
Housing/Shelter
Safe Place:
Provides access to immediate help and supportive resources for youth in crisis. Sites display the yellow and black sign. Youth can TXT 4 HELP. Text “Safe” and your current location (street, city, zip)] to 69866.
Transitional Shelter: Provides overnight shelter for homeless young adults (ages 18-24) and drop-in Center services for those under age 24.
Energy
Low-income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP): Provides financial assistance with heating and cooling cost (electricity, gas, propane, and wood), energy crisis intervention, and energy education to eligible households.
Weatherization & Solar: Provides low-income residents with no-cost conservation measures and energy education to reduce utility bills. Also includes a program to install Solar PV systems on low-income family homes at no cost to customers.
Transit
Provides safe, accessible, and reliable contract transportation service for school children, the elderly, the disabled community, and the general public in Fresno and Madera counties.
Social Enterprise
Café EOC Catering: A social enterprise of Fresno EOC which offers catering for events, weddings, and business meetings.
Small Business/Entrepreneurship
Access Plus Capital: Provides financing and business assistance for entrepreneurs to start, strengthen, and expand small businesses.
Where we work
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of meals delivered
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Families
Related Program
Food and Nutrition
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Reports and documents
Download strategic planLearn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Fresno EOC’s scope of service consists of almost all facets of human services and economic development. Programs ranging from Head Start and Early Head Start to vocational and apprenticeship training; from empowering at-risk youth in completing their high school education to senior citizen hot meal services; from energy conservation education to youth shelter and crisis intervention; from preventive health care to prenatal nutrition education; and from food distribution to rural and urban areas to job placement services. These programs are designed to help people help people and change lives.
Our organization’s target areas of poverty intervention include:
• Food Insecurity
• Health and Wellness
• Educational Achievement
• Community Safety
• Employment Opportunities
• Housing Stability
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Fresno EOC employs a holistic and strength-based approach in addressing every aspect of a family’s poverty challenges – for both children and adults – by capitalizing on the agency’s programs and resources and that of community partners and collaborators. By addressing obstacles and solving problems that block the achievement to self-sufficiency for the whole family, Fresno EOC’s comprehensive array of services strives for outcomes that ensure equal access to education, housing, health, mental health, workforce development, economic opportunities, empowerment services for low-income, homeless, and migrant individuals, families, and their children.
With programs spanning 15 components, Fresno EOC touches the lives of 120,000 adults and children annually. Alongside the over 200 collaborators, Fresno EOC leverages resources to serve the whole family, focusing on early childhood development, supporting disenfranchised youth in completing their education, and building skills as one transitions to gain employment and employability.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Fresno EOC is widely recognized as one of the largest Community Action Agencies in the United States. In order to make a real, measurable difference, our organization employs over 1,200 full- and part-time staff members committed to transforming lives and has a $100 million-plus budget.
Fresno EOC has over 30 programs to serve the community and lists more than 200 organizations and associations (both public and private) among our collaborators, partners, and supporters. Additionally, we are governed by a 24-member tripartite Board of Commissioners. Eight of those 24 members are public elected officials or their designee; eight members are from the business sector, public agencies, and community groups; the remaining eight members are elected low-income target area representatives from throughout Fresno County.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
After serving Fresno County for nearly five decades, Fresno EOC has accomplished a lot. We:
• Serve over 120,000 clients each year through a variety of innovative programs whose impact transforms lives and helps shape positive paths to self-sufficiency.
• Reach 4,300 preschoolers, infants, and toddlers with Early Head Start and Head Start each year.
• Have 300 youth enrolled in the School of Unlimited Learning (SOUL) with over 30 students graduating with their High School diploma each year.
• Give 12,000 households each year Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) assistance, and we help 3,800 homes each year lower their energy bills with weatherization services and heating system upgrades.
• Provide 2,000 adults with ABE/GED services.
• Assist 2,400 families in obtaining Market Match benefits at Farmer’s Markets and distribute 12,000 boxes of food and 140,000 pounds of food to the needy in the community.
• Serve 400,000 hot meals and snacks to seniors, provide 37,700 meals to SOUL charter school students, and 480,000 meals for Head Start children.
• Foster Grandparent volunteers provide over 76,000 hours of mentoring each year to over 1,900 infants, children, and teens. In total, volunteers log about 120,000 hours each year in support of Fresno EOC programs.
• Fresno EOC Sanctuary Youth Shelter serves 280 runaway and homeless youth each year with harm reduction, crisis resolution, and improved family relations in an effort to achieve successful reunification, when appropriate, and/or exit to a safe appropriate setting.
• Enroll 370 youth at the Local Conservation Corps and provided employment, vocational training, and educational opportunities.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection, It is difficult to identify actionable feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Fresno County Economic Opportunities Commission
Board of directorsas of 08/02/2023
LINDA HAYES
Linda R. Hayes
Target Area H
Zina Brown-Jenkins
Head Start County Wide Policy Council
Lupe Jaime-Mileham
Fresno County Superintendent of Schools
Catherine Robles
Target Area G
Jimi Rodgers
Association of Black Social Workers
Rey Leon
Target Area B
Lisa Nichols
Target Area E
Amy Arambula
14th Senatorial District
Jerome Countee
State Center Community College District
Daniel Martinez
Target Area D
Barigye McCoy
Fresno County Board of Supervisors
Maiyer Vang
The Fresno Center
Oliver Baines
16th Congressional District
Itzi Robles
Southeast Fresno Community Development Association
Ed Avila
Juvenile Court
Alysia Bonner
Target Area F
LeRoy Candler
NAACP
Felipe De Jesus Perez
Target Area A
Jewel Hurtado
Target Area C
Brian King
Mayor's Appointment
James Martinez
Fresno Reel Pride
Andrea Reyes
Economic Development Corporation
Ruben Zarate
14th Senatorial District
Charles Garabedian
Board of Supervisors
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 05/14/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We use a vetting process to identify vendors and partners that share our commitment to race equity.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
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