Rebuild NorthBay Foundation is committed to the long-term rebuilding of Sonoma, Napa, Lake, and Mendocino counties. This is achieved through a focus on Advocacy, Coordination, and Economic and Workforce Development to create a more sustainable and resilient community.
About Us
Rebuilding North Bay better, safer, greener, faster.
Who We Are
We are a team of experienced community and business leaders committed to being here for the long term recovery and rebuilding of our community.
Our Board of Directors is comprised of leaders from multiple sectors: business, healthcare, education, nonprofit, technology, energy, agriculture, labor, environment.
Our Honorary Board is chaired by Congressman Mike Thompson and California Governor Gavin Newsom, and populated by state and local elected officials across the region.
Our Advisory Council is sectored into six (6) committees with leadership from 50 organizations: Regional Public Sector; Economic & Workforce Development; Housing; Environment & Sustainability; Philanthropy; Non-Profit; Agriculture.
What We Do
Our work is driven by the central question: “What do you need and how can we help?”
We can leap forward as a region while addressing ongoing issues including a severe shortage of affordable housing and workforce.
We can be a model region for rebuilding and know this is possible as we collaborate with our public officials, private sector, nonprofit community, and most importantly, our friends and neighbors who have lost everything but possess a resilient community spirit.
How We Do It
Collaboration
Rebuilding the North Bay better, safer, greener, and faster will depend upon building coalitions, fostering stronger connections across sectors, and ensuring we use data that is vetted and reliable.
Currently, we are engaging in Advocacy with our public sector partners, providing our website as a digital platform for rebuilding, convening public, private and non-profit leaders from across the region to solve collective challenges, and addressing post disaster gap needs through partnerships to address needs in disaster preparedness as well as Coffey Park, Larkfield and Mark West neighborhoods to replace their common fencing and walls destroyed along with more than 1300 homes.
Rebuild is proud to lead collaborative efforts of the public, private and nonprofit sectors to fill immense unmet needs that otherwise would fall on the backs of our most affected and financially vulnerable residents: those who have already lost everything. We strongly believe the fire affected communities need and deserve our full attention until every family is home.
Communication, Connection & Data
On October 8, 2018, we launched a digital portal that will enable the fire-affected region to access all rebuild information in one platform. “Rebuild NorthBay Connect” will connect all the resources into one engagement platform.
From listening, the Board of Directors determined Rebuild could fill this need through a digital portal offering one comprehensive site for resources, information, personal stories, and updates. We built this site from scratch over a period of 10 months and with an investment of ~$150,000. From the Board’s perspective, the investment is entirely worth the cost and staff time if it makes this process easier.
This website is intended to be dynamic, expansive, and we depend upon users to offer feedback, suggestions for content, and event submissions. We view this site as a collaborative effort.
Additionally, we collaborated with Bay Area Council and North Bay Leadership Council to provide the first survey asking what the workforce of the North Bay wants and needs in next generation workforce housing. We will publish this result on our website in the coming weeks.
Advocacy
We support our region in partnership with elected and non-government officials at the state and federal level to ensure our economically vital region receives the necessary government funding for our region to recover and rebuild. Our first delegation to Washington DC last January was pivotal in securing 90% reimbursement from FEMA for debris removal costs that totaled $1.3 billion. Without the added 15%, affected jurisdictions would have been responsible for millions more in shared cost, thus bankrupting the City of Santa Rosa and likely the County of Sonoma.
In September of 2018, we again traveled to Washington, D.C. with the City of Santa Rosa, County of Sonoma, and County of Napa. The delegation was a mix of public and private sector leaders working in lockstep to ensure the challenges of rebuilding our region are foremost on the minds of elected and agency decision makers. Our delegation met with FEMA, HUD, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, and Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Modesto, as well as staff members for California Sen. Kamala Harris and Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pennsylvania, who chairs a House subcommittee on economic development and emergency management.
