Funding Rural | Episode #13 | Season 2: Gina Zottola: We Need More Magic
There are food deserts and childcare deserts throughout America—places where services are few and far between and in much of rural America, there are similar gaps with philanthropy. With so few philanthropic organizations based in rural parts of the country the geographic responsibility for each organization can be vast. Gina Zittola of Humboldt Area Foundation and the Wild Rivers Community Foundation knows this space well. Her regional footprint stretches broad areas of rural southern Oregon into northern California. She’s a natural networker, a connector, who has done amazing things by bringing non-rural philanthropic organizations into the places she cares about, and helps them see the great things that can happen when they expand their horizons.
“It’s not always about money. For rural regions, it’s about listening.”
–Gina Zottola
Apple | Spotify | Amazon & Audible | iHeart | YouTube
More about Gina Zottola
Gina J. Zottola is VP of Advancement & Philanthropic Innovation at Humboldt Area Foundation, whose leadership in advancement and philanthropy has been pivotal in enriching rural communities across California and Oregon. Over a decade’s tenure has seen HAF grant upwards of $90 million, bolstering programs that resonate with diverse local voices and needs.
Gina’s efforts in rural philanthropy aren’t about funding or money; they’re centered around authentic relationships that embody the spirit of shared learning, deep listening and meeting community and people where they are at and at their pace. Collective stewardship and keeping regional people at the center of the work helps enrich and foster generosity and inclusion.
With deep generational ties to rural, Gina’s role is to facilitate national engagement, showcasing the narratives of the regions’ inhabitants and fostering stakeholder collaboration. The recognition as “Woman of the Year” by the California State Senate underscores her shared commitment with HAF+WRCF in elevating rural perspectives and the transformative power of community-centric philanthropy.
“Trust-based philanthropy really means to me that you’re going to show up and listen and participate, but listen without an agenda. And then once you listen without an agenda, and you hear what folks are needing, then that’s where you have to show up as a funder and fund it. It may not fit in your logic model. It may not fit in your strategy.”
–Gina Zottola
Discussion Questions
- Gina talks about inviting other funders to experience what life is like in the rural region she supports and she acknowledges this requires a commitment of time and travel. What steps can you take to seek or accept opportunities to be physically present in rural spaces with rural funders?
- List 3 examples of where you used trust-based philanthropy to support rural spaces – ones that really defied logic and strategy. What were some unexpected outcomes?
- Disaster preparedness is key to any region but are funders prepared? Gina talks about convening, making decisions and cutting checks within a day after a natural disaster. Does your organization have a crisis management plan so you can spring into action when people most urgently need help? What obstacles or processes could bog you down and how can you plan now for work-arounds?
Resources
- Gina Zottola – Humboldt Area Foundation
- Hawaii wildfires: What will recovery look like? – Center for Disaster Philanthropy
- Klamath River Fund – Humboldt Area Foundation
“People should not be having to call us for help in times of a disaster; they have their hands full. We need to show up and call them; answer them; go to meet them where they’re at and see what we can do and what resource we can be.”
–Gina Zottola
Transcript: Episode #13 | Season 2: “We Need More Magic” with Gina Zottola
Erin Borla 0:20
It’s Funding Rural, I’m Erin Borla with the Sisters Oregon based Roundhouse Foundation. We talk about food deserts and child care deserts throughout America, places where services are few and far between. In much of rural America, there are similar gaps with philanthropy. With so few philanthropic organizations based in rural parts of the country, the geographic responsibility for each organization can be vast. Gina Zottola is no stranger to that challenge. She’s the Vice President of Advancement and Philanthropic Innovation for Humboldt Area Foundation and the Wild Rivers Community Foundation. Her regional footprint stretches from rural southern Oregon into Northern California, covering Curry County, Oregon and Trinity County, Humboldt County and Del Norte County in California. But Gina is undaunted by the size of her region, quite the contrary. In fact, it’s her home. She grew up in a farming family in Northern California. She’s a natural networker, a connector, who has done amazing things by bringing non rural philanthropic organizations into places she cares about and helps them see the great things that can happen when they expand their horizons. I met Gina early in Roundhouse’s growth, and immediately felt like I’d found a kindred spirit. I’d say she’s allergic to red tape. She works to stretch boundaries and just get stuff done. When she sees people who need help, she gets to work. I started out by asking her about this idea about philanthropic deserts.
Gina Zottols 1:46
In a rural region such as ours that has a huge geographical span, miles and miles right there. There aren’t any other resources, really, that are right next door. It’s not like you’re in a neighborhood when you know, I was down and I lived in the Bay Area. It’s not like I’m in a neighborhood. And if someone says no, when you need support or funding for a project, oftentimes you can go two streets over. You can go somewhere else, really close. That’s That’s not how it works in a rural region, resources are scarce, and therefore people really tend to work together to solve complex problems. And that’s one of the beauties of why I came home after I left, after college and came home, is I wanted to be in this place. I wanted to be of service to the people that I love and know and the people that I don’t know. And rural, you can see, feel and touch the change often. And it doesn’t necessarily mean it takes millions and millions of dollars. It takes effort, and it takes showing up and listening and then participating in the solutions that are appropriate to the people who are telling you what’s happening. So be in there.
Erin Borla 2:56
Yeah, well, and that participatory piece is really interesting. I think, you know, we get asked, as a funder, often like, What do you mean? You show up and you go to those places and you go to the meeting, or you, what does that? What do you mean? And so that participatory piece, by having the funder at the table at the same time as the direct service organization is really an interesting thing that I don’t think every foundation or philanthropic organization does talk about that work that you’re doing and convening.
Gina Zottola 3:28
Yeah, we have done well when listening to the community. We’ve done some really different things. At one point we really heard about and Roundhouse was instrumental in this as well. But we’ve heard about just the resources, the lack of resources, in the community, and understanding and listening to our organization saying we don’t have the capacity, nor do we have the knowledge, to tap into any larger grants or funding, whether it’s state or federal, like we don’t even know how to start. So through a group of really experimental funders who are willing to go on a journey with us, we created a cohort for 16 months with organizations that could participate in learning how to write for grants. And it’s just not about when you just get a grant, how do you, like manage the grant, the accountability, the tracking, and everything else that goes with it. So I think that’s that’s one of the ways in which we sort of showed up in a non traditional way. But I think most community foundations maybe wouldn’t just start some program based out of what they heard.
Erin Borla 4:25
Yeah, no, and I think that was super helpful. It’s always interesting to see sort of what comes from that, right? Because it’s one thing to be able to apply for a regional foundational grant, you know, that’s sort of the taste test, right? They get an opportunity to do that, but then leveling up into those state and federal opportunities can be really, really difficult, but it requires building trust with folks, and I know that you all work closely with trust based philanthropy. What does that mean to your organization?
Gina Zottola 4:52
Well, first I’m going to tell you what it means to me personally. That’s really important. A lot of this, I think you know, but I mean trust based philanthropy really means to me that you’re going to show up and listen and participate, but listen without an agenda, and then once you listen without an agenda and you hear what folks are needing, then that’s where you have to show up as a funder and fund it. It may not fit in your logic model. It may not fit in your strategy, but if you’re going to show up and listen to what they have to say, and hear the needs or the opportunities to participate and partner with this organization, could truly it is a partnership and it is a relationship, then you have to be able to on the front end and say, here’s the funding to support that it can come in the form of operational support and then general operational support that maybe doesn’t have a grant report. I mean, really showing up a funding that has no strings tied to it, allowing the organization to actually do their best work. I think that’s a piece of it. When we talk about trust based philanthropy, I don’t, I don’t want, and I want, you know, not transactional relationships. Transformative relationships mean that you know, funders and people are in it for the longer haul. It’s not just you know, right now in this moment, here’s a grant and see you later. I don’t have any interest in doing more harm in my community, and what that means is that we want people to be on a journey with us, to learn what it truly means to be rural. There’s mutual learning that takes place in trust based philanthropy, but there’s also coming on board, going on the journey, getting in the boat, going down the river and being willing to experiment in a different way that doesn’t always fit in people’s logic model. And we have to break out of that mold and say that mold is old. This is the new way of working.
Erin Borla 6:53
You and I have sort of come together. It’s an alliance. I’m going to say we have an alliance when it comes to natural disasters and and rural places, and you all have stepped up in a variety of different ways, whether it was relating to floods or recently an earthquake or or wildfire. Talk a little bit about the work that you do in in your region, and what you’re trying to do to bring other funders and other donors along as we talk about natural disaster and how it impacts these places.
Gina Zottola 7:27
Yeah, as we know, in a rural region versus other areas that are have much more population than urban areas, oftentimes we are, you know, we are requiring, not requiring, but we have things in rural areas that necessarily don’t even exist in urban areas. We have our rural fire departments, who are volunteer fire departments, who are the ones who are showing up for accidents. They’re the ones who are showing up for medical calls or showing up for fires, disasters, earthquakes. That’s a lot different than in an urban area where there’s tons more resources and arm stretch thin for us as an organization, when disaster, we really call it a disaster, it could be, you know, the beginning might have been COVID, and what the impacts that were happening to COVID and businesses shutting down, or a fire or an earthquake, our first response as an organization is we have something called the Community Response Team, and we all come together. And we come together very rapidly, like within hours, we come together to discuss what we’re going to do, and then we are out. We are calling all of our grantees and organizations within the region, including our receptionist, our CEO, anybody. We are all calling them and reaching out and asking what they need. How can we be? How can we support them? We know what, what can we do right now, and what are they seeing? That’s first and foremost, most recent fires and earthquakes, we came together. We did just that, and then later in the day, we all came back with the information we had, and we actually started making grants. We were making decisions. Grants were going out the door. Checks were being cut, oftentimes in one day. So for us, response looks like that. Response also looks like me filling up propane tanks, driving them to Humboldt County after the earthquake in my truck. Response looks like driving water up to the upper Yurok reservation, whatever it is we needed to do that’s a response looks like most times. It comes in lots of other forms. Like I said, it’s not just about the money, it’s about the listening. It’s about in the moment. It’s about basic necessities, food, water, shelter, all those different things. And then it slowly evolves into, you know, from response to, there’s that middle part. I always say there’s a middle part from response to, you know, resilience. There’s like, there’s a little there’s a little park in between there that’s equally as important. But I think showing up and actually putting all the work on ourselves. People should not be reaching out to the foundations. People should not be having to call us for help in times of a disaster, they have their hands full. We need to show up and call them, answer them, go to meet them where they’re at, and see what we can do and what resource we can be. We are not first responders. We’re not going to be able to, you know, perform CPR and do those things, but we have a role in philanthropy, and we have the ability to move money and to do it quickly. It’s a choice, and if there’s policies within folks as organizations that make it hard them to do that, then they need to really evaluate that. And so really, I think, as a community foundation for us, it’s about who are the organizations best suited on the ground that we need to ensure we steward resources to who can do the work like those are the professionals that already are doing that work. Those professionals oftentimes may have even deeper or larger, better relationships than we have with the residents or people that are, that are, walking in that particular pain, in that, in that, neighborhood, or in that, that community or region. And so I think that’s that’s sort of the at the forefront of it. And then beyond that, it’s staying it’s a long game. It’s not a short game. And people want it to be it. People want it to be a short game. The fires out. Whoo, let’s move on to the next thing. And it’s not what it looks like, not if you want to see true resilience and true healing. I mean healing in the response area sometimes comes in lots of different forms and and that’s not also sometimes it’s not in the traditional looking grant it might be in, as I mentioned, we’ll probably talk about, as I mentioned in Lahaina that that may be a hula for people or for here during the fires, it might have been afterwards, making sure that brush dances were, were not only celebrated, but they were funded. There was resources to support those things which start to provide healing for communities. And so it’s oftentimes it doesn’t, maybe fit in some mold.
Erin Borla 12:07
Yeah, no, yeah. And it’s interesting, you know, after the 2020 fires here in Oregon, we worked closely with some organizations in Southern Oregon, and one of the projects that that an organization did was bring students together to build picnic tables, so folks had a place to sit and share a meal. Yeah, and can you know if they were in a in where trailers were or things like that, they still had a place to gather as community? And I think those are the pieces that get missed of you know, there is that moment of collective well being.
Gina Zottola 12:40
Exactly collective well being, I like that.
Erin Borla 12:45
So you were a presenter with Center for Disaster philanthropy, which I work with a lot, after the Lahaina fire. You don’t fund in Lahaina in Hawaii, but part of that is because of this rapid response work that you do in your region. So you talk, one of the quotes that you use, which I love, is that our job as funders is to listen and lift restrictions during a disaster. Talk about that.
Gina Zottola 13:13
Well, oftentimes, again, it goes back to people have internal policies within their organizations that restrict them from doing things even in the disaster. My response to that is, then work on it now. Create a policy that says, during a disaster, all of these restrictions are lifted. Grant reports, no grant reports. Call the call the grantees. Call the people yourselves, no reporting. All those types of things. Again, it goes back to people may say, during you know, a disaster, we can’t fund in that way. Again, lift the restrictions. You need to have flexibility. And during a disaster, you need to be able to be nimble. Right? The people on the ground here are being affected from the disaster happen to be very nimble. So why don’t we also be nimble and make sure that those those restrictions are lifted, and so, you know, they’re really for each organization can come in so many different ways. For us, it was in the form of creating a policy. And it may be that policy could be something around that we don’t need grant reproval from the board to do less than $50,000 during a disaster, to get the money out the same day, or something like it can be something as simple as that, and then also can be something as simple as someone. You’re listening to someone after a disaster or during a disaster, and they’re telling you they need x. My example to you is that, again, hula for Hawaii is a form of healing, and so I already knew, living in Hawaii, that one of the things they would want to do is to be able to practice their their cultural practices. And hula is, is life. It’s breath, as it may be brush dance here, whatever that is that’s culturally appropriate, or people are telling us to, well, we can’t fund that. Well, yeah, you can, you can fund food and you can fund this. It’s a matter of choice, so making the choice before a disaster hits, and lifting restrictions and creating a policy that’s open enough to be able to be nimble as the people on the ground who are being affected from the disaster, that’s what we need philanthropy to do.
Erin Borla 15:21
Yeah, it’s interesting. They work through Center for Disaster philanthropy. You know, their their tagline is, everybody’s a disaster funder. Every funder is a disaster funder, because philanthropy is really good at sort of siloing themselves. I’m an art funder, I’m an environment funder, I’m an education funder, but the reality is, when things go sideways. Everything comes together. Everything’s impacted.
Gina Zottola 15:46
Yep, everything’s impacted. And, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, I was, I told you, boy, you knew this. I was then I was evacuated three weeks, three or four weeks last year from the Gasquet Smith River Complex Fire, and experienced it for myself in a real, real way, not knowing if my my home was going to be gone, not being able to go home, not not knowing, you know what it was going to look like, and the amount of stress that people are under during evacuations, that people are under when they have lost their home. I mean, it’s just, it’s remarkable, and so it’s, it’s for me to be able to experience that firsthand. I think was was a, it was a gift in that way, as a funder and a person that’s in philanthropy, to be able to talk about it and to be able to show that the true side of what it’s like, it’s, it’s such an it’s such an incredibly stressful situation for families and single people, everybody. It’s just, it’s, it’s crazy during those times.
Erin Borla 16:54
Switching gears a little bit, indigenous community work is an important issue with the work that we do here at Roundhouse. I know it’s incredibly important to the work you’re doing. It at Humboldt and Wild Rivers, talk a little bit about some of the great work that you’re already doing. I know you’ve done some incredible work around cultural learning, around other other indigenous organizations and community support, sovereign nation, relationship building. I mean, that’s a huge topic, but I’d love just to hear a little bit about some things that you’re working on in that space.
Gina Zottola 17:28
Yeah, I think we have a several programs that we’re working on that space. We have, we have staff who have lived experience. They’re a part of many of those programs. We have the native cultures Fund, which I talked about earlier, which is really around cultural revitalization, arts ceremonies, burial sites. That’s a statewide program that we have that’s led by one of our staff members that who’s who’s absolutely amazing. We also have the Klamath River fund, where we have two of our Native leaders who are leading that effort around the revitalization, really, of the Klamath River after the precedent and dam removals that just took place. That’s a 10 year initiative that was originally funded by the Hewlett Foundation. And then since again, we talk about this collaboration when you have long, sustained efforts such as this, but it takes a lot of folks to come together to be able to not only steward the resources to but be in the long haul. And so that program itself, which is up and down the Klamath River, is going to let support tribal nations, tribal led folks, community members, scientists, agriculture, all of them coming together around the health and well being of the river which we we feel the rivers is directly tied to the people up and down the river. And that health is is together. You know, we can be healthy. The people can be healthy without a healthy river. So those are two of the efforts that are really focused and led by our tribal staff members, part of the community. You know, I think there’s one thing to to note that I think has been missed for so so long in our tribal nations, or at least in philanthropy in the world, is understanding really, that the generational knowledge that indigenous people have around land, environment and ecosystems is their perspectives are very rich, and their lived experience helps us to deepen our connection to place and the ecosystems around us. And with that, I think that helps to heal, to heal all people. That connection and that understanding, like when we talk about cultural burns, that is one of the things that I think when we funded that, probably 12 years ago, when we went up to we were listening to community, I think it was a Yurok, and we were listening to, like, what do you need to be healthy? Like, what does it look like for you? And they said, We need to bring fire back to the land. Fire back to the land. Yeah, we need to bring fire back to the land so that we were able to, you know, the lands not necessarily managed. You know, it’s, it’s very dense. There’s not, you know, deer and animals are not able to move through the forest. We’re not either to gather our traditional ceremonial grasses and beads and seeds and this and that. And so for us, what that means is we need to have a deep, deeper connection to our culture, and we need to be able to gather in order to do that. And that starts with cultural burns. We need to bring fire back to the land. And you know, that was so unheard of in that time, and that required us to say, okay, and how do we support that? With community organizers. And then also, like that means you bring federal, state agencies and all these people together to agree and create MOUs, to be able to make it happen. That was a very magical, very magical thing, and continues today, and now that’s really a larger thing that’s really, I think, spreading across the country, as far as like bringing those practices back, and what does it mean for the health of the forest?
Erin Boral 21:21
I know that this isn’t in your portfolio, but I do think it’s important to talk about the next phase of work, especially on the Southern Oregon, Northern California coast, around offshore wind, and convening folks to have those conversations. I know this isn’t your portfolio, but it is something that Humboldt Area Foundation and Wild Rivers Community Foundation are convening folks. So just a brief touch on some of that work, if possible.
Gina Zottola 21:43
Yeah, sure. I mean, we know that offshore wind, the leases were coming to our area, in our region, and early on in that moment, as an organization, you’re asked by the community to basically come and help us, you know, make sure that the community benefits agreement is going to center the community in the center of this. And we often times learn during things like this that, especially in this region of boom and bust, that we have a deep, rich history of extraction. And this can be seen as another form of extraction. Right coming in, here’s the community benefits agreement. We’re going to take all the benefit and we’re going to leave you with nothing. Oh, and by the way, we forgot there may not be voices at the table. It should be so our role on that again, is around elevating leadership, getting voices to the table, or us going to their table and bringing people to their table, but making sure that people had a voice in it. And in the beginning, I believe people didn’t have a voice in that didn’t voice and didn’t have a voice in what was going to happen the community benefits agreement we have, you know, with the boom and bust and the history of extraction or region from timber and fishing and goes on and on, that also means that we have a high number of murdered and missing indigenous people and women and so, again, trying to understand The potential for harm and safety for our people in this region was at the center of who we are. And I think as a community foundation for us, that’s always at the center of who we are, is that health and well being of our people. So again, that could be not like Community Foundation trying to, you know, help facilitate those conversations and be a participate in that, and we deal along with the love of the people to create the poor resilience hub network, if you will. And so we participate in that. We are the sort of the hub or the backbone for that work, again, playing that role and also ensuring that there’s support for the tribal resilience network, so that those voices are heard, and so that they can better understand the impacts and the opportunities offshore wind can can have while using their generational knowledge, ancestral knowledge from beginning to time and how to care for the land and what It could mean or not mean for the region?
Erin Borla 24:23
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s, it’s so it is an interesting role that philanthropy has, not just in in issues like offshore wind or other other Clean Energy type things, but how do we, how do we sit at the middle of that, right? We’re able to work with folks on the ground that are doing direct service, that have strong understanding of community and understanding of place, but oftentimes get overlooked because they don’t know how to get into the right room. They don’t know which table to be at. So that opportunity to pull those voices together, I think, is such a brilliant one in the philanthropic landscape. What do you think philanthropy on a national scale is missing when it comes to connecting with rural places. I was part of the reason that I started making this show, right? It’s like, there’s it’s easy to connect. You just pick up the phone, or you show up and you ask these questions, what? What are we missing?
Gina Zottola 25:14
Well, I think it’s harder for national philanthropy to connect because, again, it’s we oftentimes, there can be rigidness to an organization’s either funding or understanding of rural and it truly starts like for me when I’m trying to build a new relationship with the National funder, or just a partner or someone that’s not in our region. Oftentimes, most of the time, it’s really not about money, and that’s what they need to understand. It’s not always about money. For rural region, it’s about it’s about listening. But for me, it’s when I focus on the relationship, and I focus on inviting them, inviting you to come on a journey with me. Are you? Do you want to come on this journey? Do you truly want to learn what it means to be rural? Because I’m inviting you on this journey, and that’s really the first step is say, yeah, I really want to, I want to learn what it’s what truly, what it’s like to, you know, to live in a rural place, to support a rural area, and then, you know, I think there’s a missed opportunity to actually, just physically showing up, showing up in spaces in rural areas that are often feel very forgotten, like physicalness, and coming in, not just with money, but coming into to walk, to listen to sit share a meal, those things are really important, and oftentimes they get missed because, you know, we’re in far away place. It might be really hard to get to us. It might take a couple planes and then, you know, drive and different things like that. I think, I think that’s one of them. The other thing is, I said earlier in the podcast was that I truly feel this in my heart, because I’ve witnessed it, and I’ve seen it, right? I I lived in the Bay Area. I was a stockbroker for Morgan Stanley for many, many years. So I was on both sides of a different side of like supporting foundations and organizations, and on this side and growing up for generations in a very rural community. And in a rural community, you truly can see, feel and touch the change, sometimes in an urban area that has hundreds and tons and 1000s of people, that magic gets lost. Magic is not lost. Here. I see magic in rural areas every single day. I see them the way that that families show up as philanthropists by doing bake sales. I see how moms show up in Smith River, Hispanic moms show up. Non English speaking mothers show up to say that their kids, they feel like their kids aren’t safe because there’s no street lights, and to fight for those street lights and then us to help them have a voice and create a community action where we can get those people that are in power to say, yes, we will fund that. We will make sure there’s lights like little things like that. That’s the magic, and I think we need more magic, and I think national philanthropy needs to pause and needs to get out of their norms, come to rural, come break bread. Truly understand you know what it means to be rural, and then listen to some of those people talk about the solutions and the magic of knowing your neighbors, of the history that rural has of coming together to solve complex problems with little or no resources, like, come on, come on that journey with me. I invite you.
Erin Borla 28:50
It’s been when we first connected. It feels like 1000 years ago now. I was like, Oh, I found my people Hooray, and my people in philanthropy. And so it’s always, I mean, it’s just such a gift to be able to chat with you and continue to work together. So I just wanted to say thank you, and thanks for spending time talking about the great work that you’re doing. I just it’s such a such a gift to the region, and really, truly a pleasure to chat. So thank you.
Gina Zottola 29:16
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure, too.
Erin Borla 29:28
I really think Gina said it all, but it helped me to reflect on a few things that help my daily practice. When I get hung up in the work or get stuck on some complex issue or feel like we’re not making the difference that I want to make through the foundation, I volunteer, I work at the local food pantry and distribute food boxes or drive different product to different places to make sure that it gets there, and volunteer. And I think Gina touched on that about being a part of the community, and it’s so much more than just sitting behind the desk and writing the check, which is really an important piece, but it’s not the only piece. I love her idea about a community response team really just being available, being available beyond what our organization normally does, showing up before a disaster happens, to build those relationships, and touching on recovery is more than just building the new home or building rebuilding the community. It’s cultural recovery. It’s that mental health support, behavioral health support, things like the hula and Lahaina and brush dances here in the Pacific Northwest. As a philanthropist, if there’s policies in place in your organization that prevent you from rapidly responding to disaster, how can we re examine those policies in blue sky time, check out more information, Links, discussion points and other resources at FundingRural.com.
Transcribed by AI.
