The Value of Institutional Giving. Meet our Team!

From top left: Sara, Maria, Cerrissa and Avanika.

Year after year, our Institutional Giving team works hard to research, applying for, and secure the grants and contracts from private, corporate and government funders that fuel Canal Alliance’s programs and operations. The team is made up of three amazing individuals: Maria Medua, Cerrissa MacNichols, and Avanika Sharda, with Development Director, Sara Matson, providing oversight, strategy and support. Today we want to share just a bit about some of the incredible progress this team has made possible for Canal Alliance.  

As of June 2023, the team has secured in $8.3M in funding toward our FY23 revenue goals, incuding $4.5M in grants and $3.8M in contracts. These funds support our programs and operations, including housing advocacy, workforce development, immigration legal services, youth and adult education, climate change preparedness planning, public and behavioral health, community engagement, and more.

For Avanika, Cerissa, Maria, and Sara, acquiring funding for Canal Alliance is more than just a job that supports existing programs. They also know that institutional funding can provide the means for Canal Alliance to grow and evolve, creating a pathway for organizational improvement.

Recent acquisitions have allowed us to exand, reshape or adapt our programs in important ways, such as funding from the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCH), Sierra Health Foundation, the Foundation for California Community Colleges Breaking Barriers Grant to Employment Initiative, and the James Irvine Foundation’s new Better Careers Fund. “These funding streams are critical to supporting our goals of co-creating community engagement, lifting resident voices, and increasing community impact,” says Maria. 

The NACCHO grant, in particular, increased bandwidth and permanence for our new health department, formerly the Covid team, which was created out of necessity during the early years of the pandemic. On top of providing more public and behavioral health resources for the community, this grant allowed Canal Alliance to hire more full-time staff to efficiently serve clients in the Canal neighborhood.  

Through the Breaking Barriers to Employment Initiative, the team secured $524,161 in new funding in January 2023 to expand our workforce programs, suporting our goal of helping to break generational cycles of poverty for low-income Latino immigrants in Marin County.  

Our Institutional Giving team members particularly enjoy pursuing new funding, sharing about the work that we do with new grantors and bringing them into our community. They also play a key role in engaging and stewarding our existing funders by providing reports and updates on the impact that funding makes for our programs, our agency and, most importantly, the community we serve. We appreciate their dedication and commitment to working hard each day for our students, clients and community. 

When they are not at the office, you can find Cerrissa fostering feral kittens, Maria reading or discovering new art exhibits, Sara planning long distance road trips across North America, and Avanika hiking with her huskie or searching for the best breakfast burritos in her hometown of Los Angeles. Please join us in showing our gratitude to these key members of the Canal Alliance team!