Monterey County Gives! sets another record year of fundraising.

The dangers of fentanyl and other opioids are well chronicled – in Monterey County, there were 138 deaths related to overdose in 2023, according to the most recent data available from the California Department of Public Health.

It’s well known thanks to the efforts of many people and organizations in the community, including Sun Street Centers, whose substance abuse prevention staff is spread out across 26 schools, among other places, throughout Monterey County. These staff mentor high school leaders on the consequences of fentanyl and other drugs, who in turn share that information with their peers. The program provided prevention services to 8,169 young people in 2023.

For its efforts, Sun Street Centers received the Ingenuity Award in 2024’s Monterey County Gives! campaign, adding an additional $2,500 to the $58,650 it raised during the annual campaign for its prevention programs.

Sun Street Centers raised a record amount in Monterey County Gives! for its organization out of all the years it’s been participating in the campaign, CEO Anna Foglia says.

Here’s another record: For 2024, Monterey County Gives! generated $14,278,798 for 206 local nonprofits, a 19-percent increase over the previous record-setting year in 2023.

The campaign, conceived by the Monterey County Weekly in association with the Community Foundation for Monterey County and Monterey Peninsula Foundation, ran from Nov. 14-Dec. 31.

The results were announced in a Zoom meeting with more than 200 nonprofit representatives and others on Thursday, Feb. 13.

“We don’t ever expect that it can keep getting bigger,” said Dan Baldwin, president/CEO of the Community Foundation. “It really raises the profile of philanthropy. The idea of a community coming together and supporting one another has never been more important. Monterey County Gives! is a really fantastic barometer of that.”

Individual donations from 7,982 people totaled nearly $9.7 million, an 18.5-percent increase over 2023. In another all-time high, nonprofits received a match of over 18 percent (for the first $75,000 they raised).

Also important for Monterey County Gives! organizers is the increase in young donors (ages 18-35 years old), to 507.

Weekly Founder and CEO Bradley Zeve says getting the next generation of donors active is critical to the future of philanthropy. “The program has been a great success, beyond our wildest expectations,” he says. “It continues to grow as a result of our partners and the growing overall Match Fund, nonprofits’ increasing skills to generate support in the form of Challenge Gifts, and increasing donations from participants. Win, win, win.”

Foglia says Monterey County Gives! helps Sun Street Centers reach new donors who may not have been familiar with the organization before.

“I’m really proud of the Ingenuity Award,” she says. “Our students are ingenious. We are able to empower them to create their own solutions.”