Community Enhancement & Environment

Graced with mountains, beaches, and valleys, Santa Barbara County also is home to mesas, monarchs and manzanita. Maintaining the quality of our natural environment is an important issue in our community. The Foundation awards grants for the protection of wildlife and compassion for domestic animals, the health of our ocean environment, conservation, and the purchase of wild, open space.

The Foundation’s grantmaking in this area is funded through the income earned from donor unrestricted and field of interest endowment funds. These are permanent funds of the Santa Barbara Foundation and supply resources for grantmaking every year.

Unfortunately, those resources do not cover all the grant requests received. Nonprofit organizations applying for grants most often only receive a portion of the funds they requested.

In 2005, the Foundation awarded $234,388 to 16 area organizations within the areas of Community Enhancement and Environment. Click here to access list of grantees.

If you would like to support the Foundation in this area of grantmaking, you can help by:

1. Giving directly to the charities listed above
2. Giving an unrestricted gift to the Foundation for the support of Health & Human Services
3. Creating your own named fund (Donor Advised Fund) to support Health & Human Services