Monterey County’s giving nature shines through with a record-breaking donation campaign.

Erik Chalhoub here, noting that the impact of Monterey County Gives! can be found in nearly every corner of the county, often where you least expect it.

I was browsing through today’s agenda of the Marina City Council, and noticed an item for a children’s sensory garden next to the Marina Branch Library. Sustainable Marina is looking for the council’s approval to build the garden on city-owned property. It may be relatively small—40-by-40-feet—but the group has big plans for it, primarily to teach children the importance of nature and how to grow their own food.

That’s a big idea. It’s also Sustainable Marina’s (capital-lettered) Big Idea for the 2025 Monterey County Gives! campaign.

It estimated it would need about $20,000 to build the garden. Instead, the group raised more than $25,000 through MCGives!

Exceeding goals seems to be a theme for MCGives! The final numbers for 2025 are now in: $17,166,876 was raised during the year-end giving campaign, nearly $2.9 million more than the previous year’s total (which was a record itself).

MCGives! is a project of the Monterey County Weekly, Community Foundation for Monterey County and Monterey Peninsula Foundation. Since the Weekly established a donor-advised fund in 2000 that later morphed into MCGives! in 2009, it has raised $99,976,417.

Community Foundation President/CEO Dan Baldwin says the team never imagined it’s possible to beat the record year after year, “and then much to our surprise, it just continues to grow.”

“We need to congratulate the nonprofits that really generate enthusiasm for all this giving among their donors,” he says. “We need to also congratulate the donors themselves. They’re the ones that make this so powerful.”

This year, 8,048 donors contributed to 213 nonprofits.

“That’s a testament to the collective and collaborative efforts here, from the major partners’ support to the nonprofits’ increased sophistication to raise money from their major donors, to the effectiveness of the website,” says Weekly Founder and CEO Bradley Zeve. “All are great indicators of a wildly successful community effort.”

Baldwin adds that it’s a combination of factors that contribute to the campaign’s growth—the ease of the donation platform being one of them.

But looking at the broader picture of social uncertainty in the present time may also have an impact. The Food Bank for Monterey County, for example, raised the most funds ($590,714) and had the second-highest number of donors (867), perhaps a reflection on the federal government withholding food aid funds earlier this year for millions of Americans.

“I think that made people aware of how fragile some of these systems are,” Baldwin says. “They want their philanthropy to provide a sense of stability and fill those needs.”

That speaks to the nature of Monterey County residents.

“We live in a real philanthropic community,” Baldwin says. “There are only 435,000 people who live in this county. It’s pretty powerful when you think about these numbers and the size of our market. There’s just a culture of giving in Monterey County.”

“Monterey County Gives! is a remarkable program,” Zeve says. “It's partnership with a capital P. It's the result of hard work, from many, many people and organizations. And most importantly, there's some magic here, too.”