Gratitude and Generosity

Happy May Day! Happy Beltane! Happy Big Day of Giving!

For the first-ever Thursday edition of The Newsletter we turn to one of our two favorite subjects: the nonprofit organizations that work to build the civic fabric of every California community. (Our other favorite subject, as many of you know, is How California Works.)

I write to you today as usual from your Capital City, where flowers are blooming, trees are exploding with every shade of green, and birdsong fills the air. Spring reminds us that life is good.

Meanwhile, we can’t deny it, our newsfeeds remind us that life is also difficult and fraught with peril.

Faced at once with all this beauty and depravity, let us focus this week on a couple of things we can do to promote the good stuff and defeat the other stuff. Let’s be grateful for what we have, and let’s do what we can to share it.

Here in the Capital Region, May 1 is celebrated as the Big Day of Giving. Launched in 2013 by the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, this campaign makes it easy for people in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, and Yolo Counties to donate to nonprofits working on something they care about. 

Over the past 11 years, this effort has helped more than 60,000 donors spread love to the tune of $104 million. (That’s 11 Big Days!) Below you will find an article about the community foundation that started it all. 

You’ll also find an interview with Stacy Caldwell, CEO of the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation—the woman who helped me understand how important organizations like hers are to their communities. Just today, TTCF released its Spring 2025 Quarterly Impact Report and I reccomend it to all good-hearted people—the stories it tells about the work being done by its affiliated community groups are astounding. (Full disclosure: We are proud that California Local helps TTCF produce their stunning Impact Reports.)

Also below you'll find a touching tribute from our friend Chris Neklason to his friend, the late, great  Ralph Abraham, a genius mathematician whose memorial takes place in Santa Cruz this week.

As Tom Waits once remarked, “It’s a sad and beautiful world.”