Orinda Action Day, shown above, is only one way the Orinda Community Foundation contributes to the city. The Citizen of the Year award, of course, gets a lot of publicity, but OCF’s grants help numerous community programs and projects.
“The goal of the Orinda Community Foundation (OCF) is to make the city better,” said James Keefe, the OCF board president – and with its ability to fund-raise, support civic activities and honor a Citizen of the Year, it’s become part of the fabric of Orinda.
And speaking of Citizen of the Year, nominations for the prestigious honor will be accepted until the end of September. Nomination forms can be found on the OCF website (orindafoundation.org). The winner will be celebrated at a November dinner at the Orinda Community Center.
At the same time one OCF board subcommittee is sorting through those nominations, another subcommittee will be hard at work deciding how to allocate the upcoming OCF grants. (Those forms can also be found on the website, and can be submitted from Sept. 1 to Oct. 15.)
And though cash is nice, the Citizen of the Year award is the most prized. The first Citizen of the Year was chosen back in 1948 – Dr. Ralph C. Hall, if you were wondering, with Rich Thompson the most recent – and has been continually selected since then. But the OCF has only been handling the process in recent years, as its volunteers stepped up to oversee the award.
“Volunteers” is definitely the right word, as Keefe pointed out “Nobody makes any money.” The all-volunteer board does all its fund-raising and community work without the need for any paid staff – and there’s more to that task list than just Citizen of the Year and handing
out grants.
The grants, for example, require money, and one of OCF’s biggest jobs is soliciting donations. The group also directly sponsors some events, such as the Orinda Action Day and the brand-new Light Up Orinda, which adds Christmas flair to the holiday season.
Another aspect of OCF is its eye on the future. “We want long-term sustainability,” said Keefe. “We want to be around for future generations.”
To that end, overhead is low to the point of being non-existent, and the OCF board focuses on long-running projects within the city of Orinda.
“We are a steady source of support for Orinda,” said Keefe, “year after year.”
