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WOMEN TRANSFORMING SONOMA COUNTY THROUGH COLLECTIVE PHILANTHROPY | OCTOBER 2021 | ISSUE 49
Impact Grant Committee
Ronit Rubinoff, ED, Legal Aid Sonoma County
Leticia Hanke, Founder of
The LIME Foundation
Naomi Fuchs, CEO or Santa Rosa
Community Health
The Impact Grant Committee is pleased to announce the three finalists for the 2021 Impact Grant.
 
Legal Aid of Sonoma County
Santa Rosa Community Health
The LIME Foundation
 
These nonprofit organizations were selected after several rounds of rigorous review of their grant applications, including face-to-face interviews and careful vetting. The Impact Grant Committee is confident that all three organizations are capable of putting our $100,000 grant to powerful use in our county.
 
Keep an eye out for the online ballot, which will be sent to you by email on Tuesday, October 19th. Members will have two weeks to read the finalists’ descriptions of their proposed projects, view their short videos, and cast votes for the winning organization. All ballots must be submitted by Wednesday, Nov. 3rd.
 
The top vote-getter will receive the $100,000 Impact Grant and the other two finalists will receive $12,500 Merit Grants. All three finalists will be acknowledged at our Annual Membership Meeting on Saturday, Nov. 6th. Stay tuned for more details!
Nov 6th General Meeting

After a long COVID-19 hiatus, the Events Committee has exciting news to share. This year’s Annual Impact Grant Meeting will be a live, in-person event, with a Zoom option for those who aren’t comfortable or able to attend in-person gatherings.   Our in-person meeting will take place at Sonoma Country Day School, located at 4400 Day School Place in Santa Rosa. The school has a large, modern theater for the presentations, and spacious outdoor grounds as well. We will have plenty of room for social distancing.
 
While we are excited to gather for the first time in nearly two years, we take very seriously our responsibility to protect the health of our members and their guests. We are working hard to ensure everyone’s safety, and that the program is informative, inspiring and fun. A few important requirements have been adopted, and we thank you in advance for your understanding.
 
First, all attendees must be fully vaccinated, and must complete a vaccine self-certification form prior to the meeting. Click here to complete the self-certification information.
 
Second, pre-registration for the event is a must. Invitations were emailed on October 12:

Click here to sign up to attend live.
Click here to sign up for Zoom streaming.

We sincerely want to avoid turning away members or guests who have not pre-registered or completed the self-certification, but our first priority is to ensure a safe meeting environment. Other safety protocols are outlined in the Registration email. Thank you again for your understanding and cooperation.

The highlight of our meeting will be the announcement of the winner of the 2021 Impact Grant Award, as well as the two Merit Grant winners. It’s the culmination of our year and always a rewarding and inspiring experience to see the positive changes our contributions make in our community. We will also have time for some long-awaited socializing, and light refreshments will be served.
 
Please mark your calendars now for this exciting meeting! We can’t wait to see you all and celebrate!
Values Task Force

Over the past 6 months, your task force has been exploring the values that have become intrinsic to our young organization. These are the values that are most important for shaping the manner that we relate to each other as well as the way we conduct our business with the community.
 
We began by asking you questions about values during our break out groups at our February Quarterly meeting. On the basis of your responses and to insure we could connect with as many of you as possible we followed up with a survey about your perceptions of our organizational values. Finally, we randomly chose a few of you to ask if you would make time for an interview so we could deepen our understanding of the values many of you had expressed. On the basis of all we have learned from you our committee created the list of values and definitions that you are receiving today.
 
In the process we realized, we couldn’t highlight values, without reconsidering our mission statement and a statement defining who we are. With approval from the Leadership Team, we created both documents. We took all of our work back to the Leadership Team who gave all the documents their full support.
 
We now are returning to you to ask for your support in declaring these values a touch stone in our work as an organization including the Mission Statement and Who We Are description. We ask you to read through all of it and show your support by clicking through the Google document attached to the Communique.

Click here to access the Values Task Force Member Concurrence document.

Our Task Force has worked hard on these documents. We would like to thank our committee members Chris Bitonti, Gail Ginder, Carol Orme, and Carol Lynn Wood on their time and work on this ad hoc committee. Many thanks go to our Consultant and Impact member, Sharon Keating for her expertise in facilitating our project.
 
ED TALK - October 21 - 4:30 p.m.
Laurie Fong
Laurie Fong, MA, Educational Leadership
"It Takes a Village for Kids to Succeed; Let's Move Beyond 20th Century Education
 
Life brings challenges and it seems like they are mounting at a precipitous rate. 
Are we preparing the coming generations to tackle the challenges ahead? Join us Thursday, October 21st at 4:30pm, as our next ED TALK speaker, Laurie Fong, ponders this question and more. 
 
Laurie is President of the Santa Rosa Board of Education. Her 23 year career as a teacher and a 19 year career as a school administrator gives her a broad view of where we have been, where we are.
 
Please join us as Laurie discusses the current state of affairs in education, considering, “how to do school in the 21st century.” Click here to view Laurie's bio.
 
Look forward to this exciting and thought-provoking conversation on Zoom on Thurs. Oct. 21, at 4:30-5:30. Click here to RSVP today! . Zoom link provided upon receipt of your RSVP.  
Join the Community Grants Committee for 2022!
 
The beginning of the 2022 Impact 100 Community Grants (CG) cycle is approaching! One of our first orders of business is forming a committee. A number of continuing CG committee members are already onboard to serve for the upcoming cycle. We’d like to extend the invitation to all Impact 100 Redwood Circle members to join in the fun! If you are interested in serving on the 2022 CG committee, please let us know by responding to impact100communitygrants@gmail.com no later than October 25.
 
All CG members will receive a timeline/calendar for the upcoming cycle and are asked to commit to four committee meetings from November 2021 through May 2022. Meetings include an overview of the CG process, information about evaluating and scoring applications, and an ongoing exchange of ideas about how to improve the CG process.
 
Committee members are responsible for reading and scoring qualified grant applications in the spring and selecting finalists to present to the Impact 100 Redwood Circle membership for voting. Last year committee members read and scored 47 grant applications and submitted 16 finalists to the membership for voting. All four of the Impact 100 Redwood Circle focus areas (Arts and Culture, Health and Community Betterment, Environment, Parks and Recreation, and Education) were represented in the 8 grants awarded to Sonoma County non-profit organizations
 
Community Grant committee membership is a fun way to increase your involvement with Impact 100 Redwood Circle. We hope you will consider joining us!  
Newsletter feedback is welcome and may be submitted to the Marketing Committee.