This Giving Tuesday, the Santa Barbara Independent is encouraging our readers to participate in Giving Tuesday by highlighting area nonprofits and their great work. Below, you will find a sliver of the nonprofits doing good work in the Santa Barbara community.
We encourage our readers, if able, to contribute this season to a nonprofit listed below or your favorite nonprofit.
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AHA! Attitude. Harmony. Achievement.
AHA!’s mission is to inspire communities to feel safe, seen, and emotionally connected. We equip teenagers with social-emotional intelligence to dismantle apathy, prevent despair, and interrupt hate-based behavior. By cultivating empathetic leadership, AHA! transforms communities into welcoming, nourishing, expressive, and inclusive spaces where youth and adults work together for the highest good.
ARISE Conferences
ARISE Women’s Conferences supports women from domestic violence shelters and drug rehabilitation homes, helping them arise from their past to a new life.
C.A.R.E.4Paws
C.A.R.E.4Paws works to reduce pet overpopulation and improve pet family welfare.
Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute (CIMWI)
Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute (CIMWI) is dedicated to positively impacting conservation through marine mammal rescue, rehabilitation, research, and education to promote ocean and human health. CIMWI’s core work is the rescue and rehabilitation of sick, injured, malnourished, orphaned, entangled, and oiled marine mammals.
Channel Islands Restoration
Channel Islands Restoration protects rare and endangered plants and animals by restoring habitat in sensitive and unique natural areas on the California Channel Islands and adjacent mainland. We educate a variety of groups about the value of native habitat and how to protect it. We recruit volunteers and identify and develop public and private funding sources for habitat restoration programs. We create collaborative relationships within the environmental community.
Community Environmental Council
CEC builds on-the-ground momentum to reverse the threat of the climate crisis. We transform the systems that fuel it. We safeguard the community from its impacts. We lead, we partner, we act. And every day, we inspire people to create a more resilient California Central Coast.
Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (CADA)
The Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse (CADA) is committed to building healthier lives, stronger families, and a safer, more vibrant community. Since 1949, the Council on Alcoholism & Drug Abuse (CADA) has delivered programs and services focused on the education, prevention, and treatment of substance abuse and co-occurring mental health conditions affecting youth, adults, and families throughout Santa Barbara County.
Couture Pattern Museum
As the only fashion museum on the Central Coast, we preserve and catalog rare patterns from the golden age of couture and Hollywood, safeguarding lost fashion histories. We hold the last surviving copies of many iconic designs. Support our Audrey Hepburn exhibit, featuring never-before-seen photos from the Hamilton Millard estate.
Direct Relief
Direct Relief is a humanitarian aid organization, active in all 50 states and more than 80 countries, with a mission to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergencies — without regard to politics, religion, or ability to pay.
Doctors Without Walls – Santa Barbara Street Medicine
DWW-SBSM is dedicated to providing free, volunteer medical care for the most vulnerable of Santa Barbara County, when and where they are in need, including in times of disaster, and to provide education and training for DWW-SBSM volunteers and others, in order to promote the excellent practice of humanitarian medicine in our hometown and elsewhere.
Gateway Educational Services
Creating equity through education and access for all students who lack the resources and support to succeed.
Habitat for Humanity of Southern Santa Barbara County
Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat for Humanity builds homes, communities, and hope.
Heal the Ocean
Heal the Ocean focuses on wastewater infrastructure – sewers and septic systems – as well as ocean dumping practices that have contributed to ocean pollution. We are focused on Santa Barbara County, but our methods now serve as a model for other coastal communities across the country.
Immigrant Hope Santa Barbara
Our mission at Immigrant Hope is building relationships with our immigrant neighbors through immigration and education opportunities trusting the Lord to open doors to share the hope of the gospel.
Juneteenth Santa Barbara
Year-round, in addition to the annual celebration, Juneteenth Santa Barbara utilizes its platform to uplift all Black/African American-led/serving organizations. It also plays a crucial role in coordinating Black History Month events and monthly Santa Barbara County Black Leaders Meetings. We engage with meaningful partnerships and relationships.
League of Women Voters of Santa Barbara
For over a century LWV has been “making democracy work.” Our mission is to empower voters and defend democracy. We register and inform voters about candidates and ballot measures. We don’t endorse candidates or parties, but we take positions on local issues such as housing, criminal justice and the environment.
Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County
The mission of the Legal Aid Foundation of Santa Barbara County is to provide high-quality civil legal services to low-income and other vulnerable residents in order to ensure equal access to justice. We change lives through direct representation, legal advice and information, and community education.
Lights Up! Theatre Company
Lights Up! Theatre Company’s mission is to provide professional training and performance experience in a nurturing environment. We meet actors where they are in their growth and discovery about themselves, while challenging them with professional acting, singing and dance training. We offer a multitude of classes to enrich actors’ experience with different performance disciplines, while producing two fully staged musicals and a straight play per season.
Los Padres ForestWatch
Los Padres ForestWatch protects wildlife, wilderness, water, and sustainable access throughout the Los Padres National Forest and the Carrizo Plain National Monument. We achieve this through education, advocacy, and when necessary, legal action for the benefit of our communities, climate, and future generations.
Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund
To promote social justice and protect the environment, SBCAN — in partnership with the Santa Barbara Independent — supports research and reporting on environmental and social justice issues. Your tax-deductible donations to the SBCAN Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund will help ensure that these issues will continue to be researched and reported on in the Santa Barbara region.
Mindful Heart Programs
We lead and teach mindfulness, deep resilience, awake-awareness, and compassion meditation practices online and in person for the benefit of individuals, our community, future generations, and planet Earth.
Music Academy of the West
To provide classically trained musicians and diverse audiences with transformative educational and performance experiences. We support musicians to expand their talents, inspire each other, and pursue artistic innovation.
New Beginnings
Our mission is to provide quality, affordable counseling, shelter, case management, and education that strengthen our community and provide our clients with the ability to lead healthy and productive lives.
Partners in Housing Solutions
Partners in Housing Solutions helps people who are experiencing homelessness in Santa Barbara County to secure and retain permanent housing through our network of rental property owners.
PFLAG Santa Barbara
PFLAG Santa Barbara: An all volunteer local chapter. We work to create a caring, just, and affirming world for LGBTQ+ people and those who love them. We support families, educate allies and advocate for equality through monthly peer-to-peer support, education gatherings, and presentations to schools, faith communities and businesses.
Planned Parenthood California Central Coast
To improve our communities’ sexual and reproductive health outcomes through health care, education, and advocacy.
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden
Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, the first in the nation to focus on native plants, spans 78 acres with trails, a nursery, and research facilities. For nearly a century, it has worked to conserve native plants and habitats for health and well-being of people and the planet.
Santa Barbara Channelkeeper
Santa Barbara Channelkeeper’s mission is to protect and restore the Santa Barbara Channel and its watersheds through science-based advocacy, education, field work
and enforcement.
Santa Barbara County Action Network
SBCAN is a countywide grassroots organization that works to promote social and economic justice, to preserve our environmental and agricultural resources, and to create sustainable communities. SBCAN advocates a holistic approach to community planning that integrates housing, open space, and transportation to meet the needs of all members of our community and future generations.
Santa Barbara County Trails Council
Our mission is to protect public trail access, build and maintain safe and sustainable trails, and promote public engagement in land stewardship and trail use for all types of outdoor recreation.
Santa Barbara Maritime Museum
Creating excellent exhibits and educational experiences that celebrate the Santa Barbara Channel and illuminate our rich connections with the sea.
Santa Barbara Museum of Art
The mission of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art is to integrate art into the lives of people.
Santa Barbara New House
New House dedicates itself to providing a clean, sober and healthy environment that allows men with alcohol and other drug problems to begin their journey of recovery and to reclaim their dignity, self-esteem, and sense of purpose.
SB ACT
The Santa Barbara Alliance for Community Transformation (SB ACT) exists to equip the community to lovingly engage the marginalized while actively working for the betterment of their physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental needs.
SB Culinary Experience
The Santa Barbara Culinary Experience, in partnership with The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts, organizes annual food and drink events showcasing the local culinary and hospitality industry throughout Santa Barbara County. A portion of the proceeds supports nonprofits making a difference in the area’s food system.
ShelterBox USA
To provide families with life-saving shelter and essential tools and supplies that will enable them to rebuild their homes and transform their lives after disaster and to build awareness of global displacement.
State Street Ballet
Santa Barbara’s State Street Ballet strives to create exceptional art through imaginative programming, quality dance training, and community engagement, ensuring a vibrant future for our organization and the arts community.
Unite to Light
Unite to Light envisions a world where every person has access to clean, affordable light and energy. We provide low cost solar lighting and energy to people living without electricity to improve global health, education, prosperity, and fight climate change.
Unity Shoppe Santa Barbara
Unity Shoppe is dedicated to providing residents impacted by temporary conditions of poverty, natural disaster or health crisis with resources, including groceries, clothing, and other essentials, that reinforce human dignity and encourage self-sufficiency and independence.
VNA Health
Founded in 1908, VNA Health is California’s third oldest Visiting Nurse Association (VNA) and continues to be a leading nonprofit provider of comprehensive in-home healthcare. VNA Health’s mission is to care for our communities with compassion and integrity, towards our vision that every person lives with health and dignity.