WHO WE ARE OUR APPROACH OUR IMPACT HOW TO APPLY
ABOUT
WHY CATALYST?
OUR TEAM
Our Approach
Catalyst provides the additional resources—beyond what funds day-to-day operations—that are essential for our local nonprofit sector to meet the growing needs of Sonoma Valley.
A Pooled Fund
Donations to Catalyst become part of a pooled fund at Community Foundation Sonoma County. This pooled fund represents the generosity of our community of donors, combined into one shared resource that allows our team to invest nimbly and strategically—thinking long-term while funding new ways to meet urgent needs in Sonoma Valley.
What We Fund
The biggest challenges facing Sonoma Valley—including federal funding cuts, housing affordability, and food insecurity—generate crises that call for urgent responses and demand innovative efforts that create long-term solutions. Our approach spans both horizons.
Two Horizons
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Catalyst provides nonprofits with the additional funding and problem-solving support needed to respond to crises, rapid shifts, and urgent community needs. Our rapid, nimble funding ensures support reaches the frontlines when and where it is needed most.
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It is evident that the root causes of Sonoma Valley’s chronic challenges demand more than the existing efforts of individual nonprofits. Catalyst funds research and development that generates the data needed to identify gaps, test pilot programs, and drive innovation. Our team works closely with community leaders across all sectors, anticipates needs based on what is happening at the national level, and makes bold and strategic investments that result in foundational shifts necessary for long-term change.
If you are a grant seeker, here’s how to apply.
How We Fund
Creating immediate impacts while fostering innovative and long-term solutions takes a dynamic grant-making approach, which evolves to meet both today’s realities and tomorrow’s uncertainties.
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Reimagine Grants include all phases of innovation: research, experimentation, pilots, and partnership development with a focus on:
Efforts that involve critical cooperation and collaboration among key actors who must work together for a solution.
Efforts that involve leveraging government resources, or utilizing them better; public-private partnerships.
Ideas for new solutions that need to be tested, piloted and designed further (including building an organization’s capabilities to execute the new solution).
Research and convenings to define an emerging or chronic problem and seek solutions that no single organization can address alone.
Currently, this is our only open grant cycle. → HOW TO APPLY
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Through ongoing analysis and deep relationships across Sonoma Valley, Catalyst regularly identifies needs and launches Research and Development grants.
THE HOUSING AFFORDABILITY ROADMAP (2025)Catalyst funded Sonoma Valley Collaborative to create an action plan to address our community’s housing affordability crisis over the next three years. The Roadmap advances the 3 P’s of housing: producing and preserving affordable infill homes, and protecting precariously housed residents.
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THE STATE OF AGING IN SONOMA VALLEY (2025)
Catalyst sponsored a white paper examining what it means to age in our community—especially for those without significant personal wealth. The study revealed that our community lacks the infrastructure to meet the financial and personal challenges many residents face as they grow older. Beyond raising awareness, the report offers insights and starting points for addressing these challenges, helping the Valley prepare for the future.
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FOOD SECURITY STUDY (2022)
Catalyst hired Community Planning Collaborative to perform an in depth analysis of food-related trends, needs and resources in Sonoma Valley, which revealed that an estimated 1 in 5 Valley residents struggles to have enough to eat or is chronically worried about having adequate food. Because of these fundings, Catalyst founded The Food Security Initiative to create a sustainable local food security system that is strategic, coordinated and cost effective.
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STATE OF THE VALLEY (DATE)
Description.
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Catalyst proactively reaches out for grant requests when our research and development identifies opportunities for innovation, and we launch phases of grant criteria—based on current community needs—that organizations can apply for during those grant cycles.
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Catalyst leverages its Sonoma Valley expertise to help other individual and institutional donors make high quality grants.
Beyond Grantmaking
Catalyst goes further than funding—we strengthen our local nonprofits’ organizational capacity and even hire staff for special initiatives when needed. We build connections and understanding of community issues across sectors and generations.
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Our 2022 Food Security Study revealed that 1 in 5 people in Sonoma Valley lack consistent access to enough food for every person in a household.
Using the recommendations from the study, we, in partnership with the local food providers, have created a multi-year plan to expand access, increase choice and reduce waste, and improve the food security system by investing in coordination and collaboration.
→ READ THE FULL STORY
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Organizational Development
Succession planning
Board development
Research and benchmarking
Catalyst will sponsor experts to embed within an NPO to support capacity building in the context of a Catalyst initiative or to support a specific objective.
Case study—Jill and Andrew
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Catalyst creates opportunities for donors and community members to build relationships and deepen their understanding of issues in ways that inspire creativity, action, and strengthen connections across sectors and generations.
→ JOIN OUR COMMUNITY OF DONORS→ JOIN OUR MAILING LIST
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We are thought partners to all of our grantees. By holding the big picture, we help community leaders on the frontline make connections, share information, and align efforts for greater impact.
Our Decision-Making Process
Listen First
There is no substitute for the knowledge of those who understand problems the best. Wise philanthropy begins with humility and deep listening and proceeds through diverse partnerships based on trust. Our community is beset by separateness—of language, culture, income, understanding and more—divides that can be bridged with work and relationship.
Solve for the Whole Community
Frontline knowledge, in isolation, is insufficient. You can’t fill gaps you cannot see. That requires looking at the community as a whole, not just single issues, populations or organizations. Communication, connection and cooperation are increasingly essential.
Respond and Initiate
Funders must be able to act on obvious needs while also creatively initiating problem-solving. Frontline leaders are often consumed with operating realities and survival, which are hard challenges that deserve dedicated support. They also need backing to come together and generate new approaches that can attract sustainable support.
Stay flexible
In a time of rapid change and growing uncertainty, funders must adapt with openness, trust and nimbleness as essential companions to long-term commitment. Catalyst has learned to expect the unexpected. Funders have to be able to move at the speed of the need, not their own convenience, striving to make it easier rather than harder for frontline leaders to do their jobs.
What We’ve Learned
Catalyst got its start by taking initiative during the COVID-19 pandemic, working with 125 donors to deploy more than $1.3 million in 44 grants—all aiming to provide the additional resources direct service providers needed to go above and beyond their day-to-day to reduce suffering and raise spirits in the midst of an emergency.
The pandemic taught our team to spot gaps, bring community leaders together, catalyze new solutions, and help nonprofits and government avoid duplication. In that time, we built an efficient fundraising and grantmaking system that moved resources out the door week after week—keeping people fed and housed, boosting vaccine uptake, supporting mental health, and helping small local businesses survive—while also laying the groundwork to address the deeper system failures the crisis brought to light. As a result, we were able to have a cumulative impact across the community that no individual donor could have had working alone—creating the foundation for our continuing mission.