Special Notice / Hearing: None__
Vote Required: Majority
To: Honorable Board of Supervisors
From: Shireen Malekafzali, Chief Equity Officer, County of San Mateo
Subject: Adopt a resolution to authorizing the Chief Equity Officer or designee(s) to accept the grant award from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to advance equity initiatives in the County Office of Racial and Social Justice in the amount of $490,000 for the term July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025
RECOMMENDATION:
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Adopt a resolution authorizing the Chief Equity Officer or designee(s) to accept the grant award from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to advance equity initiatives in the County Office of Racial and Social Justice for the term of July 1, 2024 through June 30, 2025, in the amount of $490,000.
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BACKGROUND:
The Silicon Valley Community Foundation is offering a grant to the County to support the Office of Racial and Social Justice’s capacity to implement the Countywide Racial and Social Equity Action Plan and to implement community- and data-informed decision-making to increase equitable resource allocation, policies, and services with the goal of a more inclusive democracy in San Mateo County.
DISCUSSION:
Specially, the funding is proposed to support the following efforts:
• Build an equity data portal utilizing a shared prosperity framework
• Deepen support for the implementation and development of the 3.0 and 4.0 Countywide Equity Action Plan
• Bring technical expertise to identify improvement opportunities to public grantmaking efforts such as Measure K
• Design a structure to ensure quality community research, analysis, and data stewardship, and
• Retain project management support to achieve the aforementioned projects.
EQUITY IMPACT:
Each of the proposed projects will bring necessary structures to the County system that will strengthen the equity lens with which we conduct County operations.
- The equity data portal will create a one-stop-shop for staff and community interested in understanding how outcomes are distributed across the county by varying factors, such as geography, demographics, and more. The Shared Prosperity Coordinating Council will serve as an advisory body to inform the data analysis and visualization of the portal to ensure utility for community and County leaders to inform decision-making and track changes over time.
- The structure to ensure quality community research and data stewardship is critical as we continue to expand community engagement practices across our multi-departmental system. The aim is to ensure community data is approached with the same rigor as other research efforts and staff are able to mine community data responsibly over time to evaluate new needs and understand trends over time. This will help the County elevate its respect for community data and prevent repeating similar questions and outreach in similar communities and support the data to live on beyond the initial use. An advisory committee will be developed to inform the Countywide and community needs associated with the data and the process for gathering it and storing it.
- The additional support for the Countywide Racial and Social Equity Action Plan will enable a deeper level of engagement from the Office of Racial and Social Equity to support departments in the equity actions and performance tracking, but also to elevate its current structure to reflect two years of learnings. This action should strengthen the County’s ability to implement equity actions and track progress in order to improve at each step.
- The Measure K public grantmaking technical assistance can support identifying best practices for public grantmaking structures from other jurisdictions and identify improvement opportunities for the County. This aims to the enhance the equity-focused, community-driven process the County embarked on in 2023. With the inclusion of community priorities, resident engagement, and transparency, there also came great learnings to build from.
FISCAL IMPACT:
This grant revenue has been included in the Office of Racial and Social Justice’s FY 2024-25 Adopted Budget. There is no additional Net County Cost associated with this action.