Our History

Established in 1987, the Ventura County Community Foundation has focused on building philanthropy in our region by stewarding legacies through careful management of the charitable capital entrusted to us. We are committed to a long-term perspective for Ventura County. We honor donor intent by protecting endowments forever and we specialize in connecting philanthropic resources with community needs for the benefit of all. We invest in the future through scholarships, grant making, and collaborative partnerships.

Our Vision

We envision an engaged and thriving community inspired by growing generosity.

Our Mission

Connecting people, resources, and solutions to create lasting impact in our shared world.

Our Values

  • TRUST – We apply sound financial principles and invest wisely to steward the assets entrusted to us.
  • TRANSPARENCY – We conduct our work with honesty, intentionality, and accountability.
  • COMPASSION – We bring empathy, respect, and heart to all of our interactions.
  • EQUITY – We listen to and elevate diverse voices and experiences to advance fair and just opportunities.
  • TENACITY – We respond to dynamic challenges strategically and with immediacy, persevering until sustainable success is achieved.
  • EXCELLENCE – We consistently invest in education, operations, technology, and our human capital to ensure the highest quality of service and support to our donor clients and those we serve.
  • AUTHENTIC CONNECTION – We engage all partnerships with open collaboration and forthright communication, co-creating impactful solutions.

* Please learn more about how you can be of service to Ventura County by emailing Vanessa Bechtel, President & CEO, at vbechtel@vccf.org.

Our Charitable Tax I.D. Number is 77-0165029.

Your Community Foundation

Philanthropic Consulting Since its founding in 1987, the Ventura County Community Foundation has believed that everyone has something of value to contribute. With more than 22,000 donors from every corner of our community and across the nation, we specialize in connecting people, resources, and solutions to create lasting impact in our shared world.

Because of our generous donors we have granted more than $111 million since 2015 to support our community, with most of these dollars specifically allocated for Ventura County. These grants have supported 9,500 unique nonprofit organizations and local businesses as well as supporting the dreams of hundreds of local students as they pursue higher education and career training through the VCCF Scholarship Program.

VCCF’s Philanthropic Consulting Office helps individuals, families, and businesses on their philanthropic journey. Our services are tailored and include identifying causes, developing a strategy for impact, engaging future generations, researching pressing community issues, conducting due diligence on nonprofits, designing competitive grantmaking strategies, as well as providing education on how to maximize the benefits associated with charitable giving⁠—this is what VCCF can do for you!

Our expertise in planned giving provides us with meaningful opportunities to support donors and their professional advisors, and our experience in designing giving strategies provides for a wide range of benefits, including helping to provide for immediate income, reducing taxes and creating lasting legacies that exist in perpetuity. VCCF accepts gifts of various types, including cash, real estate, investments, and certain personal property.

Our Commitment to Community

Community Leadership The Ventura County Community Foundation is part of a network of more than 800 community foundations nationwide and so many more around the world. Together, we work to create a better future or all by pursuing our community’s greatest opportunities and addressing the most critical challenges, inclusively uniting people. institutions, and resources from throughout our communities and providing significant, widely shared, and lasting results.

As your community foundation, we’ve partnered with hundreds of local nonprofits, in addition to government agencies, economic development organizations, faith-based organizations, local service clubs, and thousands of community members to make a difference on a wide range of pressing community issues.

Some of these most recent community efforts include:

These are just a few of the many ways your community foundation has been supporting Ventura County.

We hear your hopes for our future. The possibilities of what we can accomplish together are endless and we are here to do all we can to help.

Privacy Statement

Approved by board of directors on September 7, 2010

The Ventura County Community Foundation is committed to maintaining the confidentiality, integrity, and security of personal information entrusted to us by current donors, potential donors, and the officers and staff of nonprofit agencies who approach us for funding and the people that they serve. This Statement of Privacy applies to the Ventura County Community Foundation Web site and governs data collection and usage. By using the Ventura County Community Foundation website, you consent to the data practices described in this statement.

Collection of your Personal Information

The Ventura County Community Foundation collects personally identifiable information, such as your e-mail address, name, home or work address or telephone number. The Ventura County Community Foundation also collects anonymous demographic information, which is not unique to you, such as your ZIP code, age, gender, preferences, interests and favorites.

There is also information about your computer hardware and software that is automatically collected by the Ventura County Community Foundation. This information can include: your IP address, browser type, domain names, access times and referring Web site addresses. This information is used by the Ventura County Community Foundation for the operation of the service, to maintain quality of the service, and to provide general statistics regarding use of the Ventura County Community Foundation Web site.

Please keep in mind that if you directly disclose personally identifiable information or personally sensitive data through the Ventura County Community Foundation public message boards, this information may be collected and used by others. Note: The Ventura County Community Foundation does not read any of your private online communications.

The Ventura County Community Foundation encourages you to review the privacy statements of Web sites you choose to link to from the Ventura County Community Foundation so that you can understand how those Web sites collect, use and share your information. The Ventura County Community Foundation is not responsible for the privacy statements or other content on Web sites outside of the Ventura County Community Foundation.

Use of your Personal Information

The Ventura County Community Foundation collects and uses your personal information to operate the Ventura County Community Foundation Web site and deliver the services you have requested. The Ventura County Community Foundation also uses your personally identifiable information to inform you of other products or services available from The Ventura County Community Foundation and its affiliates. The Ventura County Community Foundation may also contact you via surveys to conduct research about your opinion of current services or of potential new services that may be offered.

The Ventura County Community Foundation does not sell, rent or lease its customer lists to third parties. The Ventura County Community Foundation may, from time to time, contact you on behalf of external business partners about a particular offering that may be of interest to you. In those cases, your unique personally identifiable information (e-mail, name, address, telephone number) is not transferred to the third party. In addition, The Ventura County Community Foundation may share data with trusted partners to help us perform statistical analysis, send you email or postal mail, provide customer support, or arrange for deliveries. All such third parties are prohibited from using your personal information except to provide these services to the Ventura County Community Foundation, and they are required to maintain the confidentiality of your information.

The Ventura County Community Foundation does not use or disclose sensitive personal information, such as race, religion, or political affiliations, without your explicit consent.

The Ventura County Community Foundation keeps track of the Web sites and pages our customers visit within the Ventura County Community Foundation, in order to determine what Ventura County Community Foundation services are the most popular. This data is used to deliver customized content and advertising within the Ventura County Community Foundation to customers whose behavior indicates that they are interested in a particular subject area.

The Ventura County Community Foundation Web sites will disclose your personal information, without notice, only if required to do so by law or in the good faith belief that such action is necessary to: (a) conform to the edicts of the law or comply with legal process served on the Ventura County Community Foundation or the site; (b) protect and defend the rights or property of the Ventura County Community Foundation; and, (c) act under exigent circumstances to protect the personal safety of users of the Ventura County Community Foundation, or the public.

Use of Cookies

The Ventura County Community Foundation Web site uses “cookies” to help you personalize your online experience. A cookie is a text file that is placed on your hard disk by a Web page server. Cookies cannot be used to run programs or deliver viruses to your computer. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a web server in the domain that issued the cookie to you.
One of the primary purposes of cookies is to provide a convenience feature to save you time. The purpose of a cookie is to tell the Web server that you have returned to a specific page. For example, if you personalize the Ventura County Community Foundation pages, or register with the Ventura County Community Foundation site or services, a cookie helps the Ventura County Community Foundation to recall your specific information on subsequent visits. This simplifies the process of recording your personal information, such as billing addresses, shipping addresses, and so on. When you return to the same Ventura County Community Foundation Web site, the information you previously provided can be retrieved, so you can easily use the Ventura County Community Foundation features that you customized.

You have the ability to accept or decline cookies. Most Web browsers automatically accept cookies, but you can usually modify your browser setting to decline cookies if you prefer. If you choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to fully experience the interactive features of the Ventura County Community Foundation services or Web sites you visit.

Security of your Personal Information

The Ventura County Community Foundation secures your personal information from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. The Ventura County Community Foundation secures the personally identifiable information you provide on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use or disclosure. When personal information (such as a credit card number) is transmitted to other Web sites, it is protected through the use of encryption.
Changes to this Statement

The Ventura County Community Foundation will occasionally update this Statement of Privacy to reflect company and customer feedback. The Ventura County Community Foundation encourages you to periodically review this Statement to be informed of how the Ventura County Community Foundation is protecting your information.

Contact Information

The Ventura County Community Foundation welcomes your comments regarding this Statement of Privacy. If you believe that The Ventura County Community Foundation has not adhered to this Statement, please contact The Ventura County Community Foundation at vccf@vccf.org. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to promptly determine and remedy the problem.

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