Leading the philanthropic response to the most destructive and deadliest wildfire in California wasn’t a job we wanted to do – but it was a job we were created to do.
The North Valley Community Foundation exists to reduce suffering in the world. When a major disaster strikes, we often open a relief fund so local people can donate to recovery efforts. We’d done it for a tsunami in Indonesia, hurricanes in New Orleans and Houston and fires in Napa and Sonoma County.
We’d find the local community foundation or disaster relief organization on the ground and send them the money. This time was different. We were the community foundation on the ground.
As the plume rose over the mountains that morning, I called Logan Todd, our director of grants and communications. Logan was one of six dedicated, part-time staff on our small team. We quickly opened the Wildfire Relief Fund (the fire was not named yet) and announced it on social media about five hours after the fire started.
Then the donations started rolling in, first a trickle and then a flood. It happened because of local relationships and the years of trust we had built up here through hard work.
The first mention of NVCF came when Sean Morgan, the mayor of Chico, was interviewed on MSNBC. Earlier I had told him we stood ready to help, so when MSNBC asked how people could help, Morgan mentioned our fund. Then it snowballed. We had the nation’s attention and every story in the national news mentioned our fund and the millions of dollars being donated to help.
Ron Howard, Cyndi Lauper and ESPN’s Adam Schefter were among the many well-known people with millions of followers who mentioned us on social media as the place to send help. Marc Benioff of SalesForce told Jim Cramer on CNBC’s “Mad Money” that he was donating $1 million to NVCF. Companies with huge name recognition like Wells Fargo, United Airlines, Verizon, JP Morgan Chase, Apple, PayPal, Raley’s and Comcast made significant donations to NVCF, which encouraged customers, employees and other businesses to do the same.
Sports franchises started donating and asked their fans to do the same. The Oakland Raiders were one of the first to call. Owner Mark Davis had attended Chico State and made a large donation. The San Francisco 49ers hosted the Paradise High School football team for a nationally televised game and encouraged fans and ESPN viewers to donate to the NVCF fund. The San Jose Earthquakes, whose star player Chris Wondolowski played at Chico State, made a substantial donation. The Golden State Warriors produced videos with their players encouraging donations to us.
We had the nation’s attention and tried to keep it. We knew that once the fire was under control, the world would move on. The government was projecting a $16 billion disaster. Philanthropy would have to be involved.
The first 10 grants were issued Nov. 11, 72 hours after the fire started, to all the shelters caring for evacuees. These were the first of hundreds of grants we would make to help keep shelter doors open, water and food stocked, and provide gas and gift cards for daily necessities.
We knew the only way to help the tens of thousands in need was to help the helpers. We could never become the service providers directly. We couldn’t possibly provide medical services, senior services, youth services and animal services.
The army of helpers did amazing relief work but needed money. We had the money but not the staff. It was a perfect match.
Even with our relentless determination, the seven of us had a hard time keeping up. A missed call was potential help from United Airlines. Or AARP. Or Delta Dental. We all had the experience of answering questions from an unidentified caller who would ask about our organization, our service fee and where the donations would be deployed. Often the conversation would end with: “Thank you. We’ll be sending you a check for $100,000.”
One morning I noticed a Facebook post from Priscilla Chan of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative. They were committing up to $1 million in a dollar-for-dollar match through Facebook to help with the Camp Fire, and NVCF was their beneficiary. Their Facebook campaign would push our name around the globe.
We would get crates of mail every day. The envelopes would be full of checks, or sometimes we’d get packages full of gift cards. Our lobby was always full of people who had checks to present to us – Buddhist Monks who traveled from Sacramento, local restaurants with relief jars at the counter, bands playing benefit concerts, people who made shirts they sold and the underage kid who brewed beer to give all the money to help.
Gifts continued pouring in from throughout the United States. In all, we received nearly 600 donations of $10,000 or more. But the fund probably got its biggest boost from a pair of nationally known locals, Aaron Rodgers and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Sierra Nevada’s owners, Ken Grossman and Katie Gonser, have long held a family foundation fund at NVCF. They have always taken care of the community with little fanfare. They did so again after the Camp Fire, both privately and through one very public campaign — they provided the recipe and the ingredients for more than 1,400 breweries nationwide to make Resilience IPA. The proceeds from each pint sold would come back to the community for Camp Fire recovery.
The Aaron Rodgers NorCal Fire Recovery Fund at NVCF raised more than $3 million. His trust and national influence made a huge impact on our little operation. Two months after the fire, in early January, we created the Butte Strong Fund out of the Sierra Nevada, Aaron Rodgers and NVCF partnership.
That’s when the real work started as we worked strategically to leverage the donations to best benefit our area’s long-term recovery. In the five years since the fire, we have issued $64 million in grants through the Butte Strong Fund and all other Camp Fire funds.
We created NVCF to help reduce suffering in this world. We built trust and relationships for just such a moment. And then thousands of people and businesses, many of which had never heard of Butte County before Nov. 8, 2018, answered our area’s call for help. At the worst possible time, we saw people at their best. And our area’s recovery is much farther along because of it.
Alexa Benson-Valavanis is President and CEO of the North Valley Community Foundation.
