Many community organizations had to make very difficult decisions of cutting back on programs or letting go of staff in order to keep their doors open. Yet the reality that the non-profit community in the region has been lacking adequate funding for several decades now is nothing new. According to a report on the state of nonprofits by the Center for Social Innovation at UC Riverside (CSI-UCR), foundation giving per capita for non-profits in the Inland Empire is less than 50 percent of the Central Valley’s and is one-ninth of what we find in Los Angeles County. Not only did COVID-19 impact their ability to survive as individual organizations, but it also created a setback for them in advancing their missions, sustaining current partnerships and successfully creating new ones.

With uncertainty about when life would return back to “normal,” leaders from CSI-UCR and Inland Empire Community Foundation realized the need to act quickly in order to bring communities, funders, and government agencies together, to share timely information and support each other during a time of great uncertainty. What started out as a few Zoom meetings soon became a regular occurrence institutionalized as the “IE COVID Response” weekly webinar, where nonprofit leaders continued to find value in building a learning community and fellowship with each other. In the course of a year, we have held 48 weekly meetings of the group, with breaks only for holidays.

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