Rancho Santa Fe Foundation awarded the first nonprofit recipients of its new Advancing Education grants program: A Step Beyond and Casa de Amistad.
A Step Beyond, located in Escondido, is a creative youth development organization serving youth and their families living at or below the poverty line with free after-school dance classes, academic support, and social services. A Step Beyond received a $100,000 grant award that will be distributed over two years.
Solana Beach-based Casa de Amistad, a community outreach program that works to strengthen underserved youth and families through tutoring, mentoring, and enrichment activities, also received a $100,000 grant award that will be distributed annually over two years.
These grants are unrestricted awards, giving the organizations the autonomy to shape their projects in response to the specific needs of the communities they serve. The first $50,000 grants were awarded in December, and the remaining $50,000 grants will be awarded in December 2024, for a total of $100,000 awarded to each organization over two years. Awarding multi-year grants — as opposed to one-time grants — allows for increased sustainability, more freedom to innovate, and reduces the administrative load for grant applicants, among other benefits.
Rancho Santa Fe Foundation’s Advancing Education Impact Pillar is designed to support nonprofit organizations working to create a seamless pipeline of learning opportunities, starting with early childhood education and continuing through K-12, post-secondary education, and workforce development. Through this grantmaking pillar, the Foundation seeks to catalyze sustainable solutions to educational disparities that persist among San Diego’s diverse communities.
“A Step Beyond and Casa de Amistad exemplify the spirit of our Advancing Education Impact Pillar,” said Karen Sprigle, interim president and CEO, of Rancho Santa Fe Foundation. “By supporting endeavors that address learning loss in third through eighth-grade students in San Diego County, we believe we can bridge educational gaps—gaps that only widened during the pandemic—and create a ripple effect to positively impact our region’s academic landscape for generations to come. These organizations are embedded in the communities they serve, doing the work. With unrestricted grant awards, they have the freedom to deploy funding as they see fit for maximum impact.”
The Advancing Education Impact Pillar is one of three grantmaking focus areas for the Foundation; the others include Building Healthy Communities, which supports San Diego nonprofit organizations that promote physical, mental, and environmental health, and Supporting Our Heroes, which awards grants to local nonprofits that advance critical work to support military service members, veterans, and their families.
The next grant cycle, Building Healthy Communities, will focus on communities and organizations working to improve youth mental health in San Diego County, with a special interest in our local North County community. Nonprofit organizations are encouraged to submit letters of intent. For more information, please visit Rancho Santa Fe Foundation’s Building Healthy Communities webpage.