Impact Giving, an Orange County women’s collective giving organization and the brainchild of several Laguna Beach women, awarded six grants totaling $130,000 at its fourth annual awards ceremony earlier this month in Irvine.
Recipients included four local and two international nonprofit organizations working to solve societal problems. They include $40,000 for San Diego’s Just In Time for Foster Youth; $13,000 to Santa Ana’s after-school learning center KidWorks Community Development Corporation; $20,000 to Santa Ana’s Access OC, providing aid for surgical procedures; $15,000 for Irvine’s Families Forward, helping the homeless to gain self-sufficiency; $17,000 for Chhahari, Inc., for solar panels and batteries at an orphanage and school in Nepal’s Kathmandu; and $25,000 for Cambodia’s Lotus Outreach International, underwriting bikes to allow girls a way to school.
Impact Giving founding partner and grant chair Sam Dawson said the six were selected from 44 grant proposals. The group’s partners contribute $1,150 annually to the philanthropic pool and take active roles in the grantee selection process as well as in casting votes to determine the awards.
In its fourth year of grantmaking, the group’s 40 partners have awarded $475,000 to 26 nonprofit organizations, said Karen Wilson, Impact Giving chair and co-founder. “We believe we can do more together than we can individually.”
