Innovative Business and Community Strategy Serves Families in Need in North Tahoe

Tags: Collaborations, Community House, Impact Investing

KINGS BEACH, Calif. July 24, 2014 – Responding to expanding community needs, Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation launched a visionary project this month that will result in serving thousands in the North Tahoe/Truckee region.

Background

In 2010, three vital North Lake Tahoe social service non-profits, serving over 4,000 annually for food, domestic violence and crisis service realized a troubling trend—service numbers, rents and populations were going up yet donations and grant income were going down.

Something had to change. An entirely new way of providing services had to be invented.

“We knew that our organizations were serving many of the same people and that the logistics and strain of retelling painful stories to multiple agencies set clients, already in crisis, further back. We knew we had to reinvent not only the way we provided services but how we funded them as well,” said Stacy Caldwell, CEO of Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation.

In 2012, Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation convened a group of creative minds to develop a solution to the rising strain on local service agencies and the people they served. Non-profit and business leaders, county staff, major employers, community organizers and front-line staff brainstormed ideas around serving those in need. The group wanted to achieve multiple outcomes: strengthen community, stretch dollars, build resiliency, improve lives of children and rebuild neighborhoods. What would this look like? How much would it cost? Who would pay for it?

In short, this team of tenacious community leaders acted like a Silicon Valley start-up with the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation serving as the “investor.” Yet, instead of defining success in dollars, they set out to measure success in terms of social benefits to individuals, families and communities.

A Creative Solution Forged

The name of this social impact invention, brainstormed two years earlier, is Community House and after months of tireless volunteer hours spent, funds garnered, building challenges solved, it opened its doors this month in the heart of Kings Beach. The innovative initiative raised $2.2 million in public and private dollars, transformed a blighted 1950s hotel into a welcoming center and today, families and individuals access a variety of services—all under one roof.

“The Community House approach gives community members access to all of the resources they truly need, not just those a single agency is set up to address,” said Karen Carey, executive director of Tahoe SAFE Alliance, one of the critical anchor agencies at the new facility.

“Integrating our services is the most effective and dignified way to help community members in need of support,” said Amy Kelley, executive director, North Tahoe Family Resource Center, another anchor agency at the site.

Community House is a project of Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, a local philanthropic organization working to connect people and opportunities and generating resources to build a more caring, creative, and effective community. For more information please go to www.ttcf.net.

Photo: Local leaders step up to create innovative solutions to community needs in Tahoe at the newly opened Community House in Kings Beach. Pictured (left to right): Andy Wirth, president and CEO, Palisades Tahoe, Patti Boxeth, Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, board member, Jennifer Montgomery, Placer County 5th district supervisor, Stacy Caldwell, CEO, Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation, Amy Kelly, executive director, North Tahoe Family Resource Center, Heidi Allstead, executive director, Project MANA, Paul Bancroft, program director, Tahoe SAFE Alliance, Photo credit: Freshtracks Communications

Posted by FreshTracks Communications on 7/25/2014, courtesy of YubaNet.com. See the article here.