St. Joseph Community Partnership Fund

Orange County Community Resilience Fund Evaluation Report 26 the philanthropic response, either alone or with the PPP, as the primary reason they had been able to weather the pandemic to this point. This was also supported by interviewees, who almost uniformly spoke about how the philanthropic community had supported their organization and sector. Another advantage to the large funds are process efficiencies for both applicants and funders. Instead of an organization needing to apply to multiple Orange County funders, they could fill out one (streamlined) application to a single fund. Funders saved resources that would otherwise be used running their own process. However, both the survey and interview respondents spoke of their concern about what will happen next, as they were not expecting a similar second wave of support from philanthropy or government. Many funders are now looking towards providing capacity building assistance to buttress nonprofits as they seek to adjust to the new normal. Survey respondents largely agreed that this would be valuable – 83% agreed with that statements that funding that incentivized collaboration and incentivized system and policy change would be useful. 52% of respondents (108 total) said they would benefit from technical assistance; Table 6 shows the services they would find most useful. While it was not identified as often as Fundraising and Marketing, there is a clear need for more technical assistance and support on Human Resource issues, particularly among smaller organizations. As noted earlier, larger organizations were more likely to have cut or furloughed staff, in part because they had a better understanding of how to legally do this. For smaller organizations, technical assistance on how they can navigate untenable HR costs while continuing to provide services and treating employees fairly may be the difference between those organizations survival and closure. The philanthropic community responded to the COVID-19 crisis quickly and effectively, and there is clear evidence that this response has been critical to the continuing work of the nonprofit sector and their support of vulnerable community members. The great challenge for the philanthropic community ahead is how they respond to the continuing, longer-term crisis. With another emergency response on the scale of the OC Community Resilience Fund seeming unlikely, regional funders and donors must find strategic, ongoing responses to buttress the safety net organizations that support our communities not to mention the nonprofit sector as an industry itself. The final section of this report discusses what how the philanthropic community can focus its response to greatest impact. Service Count Percentage Fundraising 64 59% Marketing 42 39% Human Resources 27 25% Technology 8 7% Safe Reopening 4 4% Table 6: Technical Assistance Needs for Nonprofits

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