GREETINGS FROM THE CEO

March 15, 2007

I continue to be amazed at the high level of excitement that people and organizations have for the new Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Since we opened our doors on January 1, we have been involved in creating the community foundation’s vision, mission and values, and the challenging work of creating an organizational structure that will enable us to fulfill these high aspirations.

At our first board retreat in mid-January, the board of directors discussed and unanimously approved:

The vision of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation is to be a comprehensive center for philanthropy that inspires greater civic participation throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

The mission of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation is to strengthen the common good, improve quality of life and address the most challenging problems. We do this through visionary community leadership, world-class donor services and effective grantmaking.

Our values:

• Collaboration
  
• Diversity
  
• Inclusiveness
  
• Innovation
  
• Integrity
  
• Public Accountability
  
• Respect
  
• Responsiveness

I hope that you agree that these statements, taken together, provide a powerful vision of what our community foundation hopes to achieve in the years ahead.

As mentioned above, we have begun the task of creating a new organizational structure (PDF). This structure is different from either parent and reflects the larger scope and different mission than either parent foundation. In particular, there are three departments that I would like to highlight: Donor Engagement (PDF), Community Initiatives, Convening and Research (PDF), and Investment (PDF).

The purpose of the Donor Engagement department is to actually empower our donor advisors in identifying unique opportunities consistent with each donor’s charitable interests. We also hope to actively bring together donors who have similar interests, to learn together and to jointly fund projects of mutual interest.

One of the special capacities of a community foundation is to convene diverse segments of the community to dialogue and to brainstorm solutions to our region’s more challenging problems. Such work lies at the heart of effective civic engagement, and we hope that it will become a hallmark of the community foundation’s work. Towards this end, we have developed a new department, Community Initiatives, Convening and Research that will help us achieve this goal.

Lastly, the new Investment department reflects our commitment to ensure that we are committed to providing the highest quality investment performance. The Grants and Gifts department will help ensure that we will continue to provide accurate donor statements on a timely basis.

We have made rapid progress in appointing 83 of 117 staff to new positions. As you might imagine, this has been an emotionally challenging process for all of us, and I am exceptionally proud of how staff have continued to provide outstanding service in all aspects of the community foundation’s work while adjusting to a new organizational structure and culture.

In the months ahead we will be announcing our process to engage the community in discussions about the community foundation’s new grantmaking directions. I look forward to sharing these developments with you as they occur.