As a photographer and owner of the Morrison Hotel Gallery with locations in New York, West Hollywood and Maui, Peter Blachley understands how powerful the arts can be. So when he heard about Image Nation, a local photography program to help veterans, he wanted to get involved.

A number of the Capital Region’s most prominent family-owned businesses — like the River Cats — have made social responsibility a core tenet of their companies, employing staff and consultants to help make their programs central to who they are and how they operate.

1. Discuss your values and motivations. Explore your family’s motivations behind your giving to better understand what you want to accomplish. By identifying core values, you’ll be able to direct your support to mirror the causes important to you.

Mariann Eitzman has been in the workforce for several decades now, and her resume is long and varied. Currently the Next Steps Director for Bayside Adventure in Roseville, which is the organization’s newest church campus, she’s in charge of connecting new churchgoers to each other and to the new and continuing programs at the 3,000-attendee congregation.

This story starts back in 1922.

That’s the year when a small group of Sacramento-based doctors combined their professional connections and their Rotary Club memberships to form a program that is now the longest-running Rotary fundraiser in the country.

After staging a cattle drive across the Tower Bridge and a tractor parade down Capitol Mall, Mike Testa and his Visit Sacramento staff faced a huge challenge: How could they broaden the impact of Sacramento’s Farm-to-Fork Month kickoff?

In 2004, four years after launching their first farm, the founders of Soil Born Farms Urban Agriculture and Education Project incorporated their group as a nonprofit to help others see the value of growing food within cities, spreading the philosophy of “healthy food for all.”

Ten years into the movement, and urban farming in the Sacramento region has garnered widespread support. Agrihoods now represent the latest development in the movement — but will they strengthen or overshadow it?

Funders may tell you that restricted funding increases nonprofit transparency, but what exactly are funders so afraid nonprofit leaders will do if given the flexibility and implied trust that comes with unrestricted funding?

If Davida Douglas had one word to describe her ideal Sacramento community, she would choose “equitable.”