Quick Take
An annual honor that recognizes small businesses for their work and commitment to their respective communities brought in $20,000 for Santa Cruz nonprofit Homeless Garden Project, which aims to use the award from financial giant Intuit to help fund a program that provides organic produce to underserved individuals.
Homeless Garden Project is getting $20,000 from finance giant Intuit to help drive the local nonprofit’s efforts – namely, its Feed 2 Birds program, which provides organic produce to underserved individuals in Santa Cruz County.
Homeless Garden Project is one of three businesses nationwide selected as this year’s Intuit QuickBooks and Mailchimp Small Business Heroes, part of an annual program that recognizes small businesses for their work and commitment to their respective communities.
“We really depend on this kind of community support,” said Homeless Garden Project’s executive director, Darrie Ganzhorn.
The grant money comes as many organizations around the county, state and country are facing federal cuts that could significantly affect the work they do, including addressing food insecurity. Second Harvest Food Bank Santa Cruz County is dealing with the loss of more than $700,000 in federal funding, for example.
While Homeless Garden Project doesn’t receive federal funding, it does receive 8% of its funding from government funding sources, primarily from the state. Some of its partners, however, will be feeling the federal funding pinch, which is likely to impact the other safety nets that support those who work with/benefit from Homeless Garden Project, said Ganzhorn.
Representatives from Intuit will join Ganzhorn on Wednesday morning at Homeless Garden Project’s farm near Natural Bridges State Beach on the Westside of Santa Cruz to honor the organization. Intuit is also kicking off its expanded Small Business Heroes program, which will now award grants to small businesses on a quarterly basis. Previously, nominations came from Intuit employees; now, the general public is welcome to nominate businesses from around the United States.
Winners were announced late last week at a ceremony at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, near Los Angeles International Airport, which Ganzhorn attended. Homeless Garden Project was the only nonprofit recognized. The other two winners were Perry’s Joint Cafe, a sandwich spot in Pasadena, and BJ’s Nevada Barbecue in Sparks, Nevada.
For more than three decades, Homeless Garden Project has provided employment, training and a sense of purpose for unhoused individuals in the community. It operates an organic farm on a 3.5-acre property and runs two retail stores that sell a variety of goods and gifts, many made by the project’s clientele. Currently, the organization has budgeted for 20 positions in its paid job training and transitional employment programs.
As part of its organic farming operation, the project operates a community-supported agriculture program in which local residents pay a subscription fee at the start of the harvest season and receive weekly boxes of organic produce. (In fact, it was the first such program in Santa Cruz County when it started in the 1990s.) The Feed 2 Birds program is an extension of this, in which 68 dedicated farm shares are reserved for 13 organizations that work with low-income and unhoused people in the community. This year, Homeless Garden Project’s leaders hope to raise $70,000 to pay for those shares and support the training and employment program; the Intuit grant will go toward that, said Ganzhorn.
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