Give a Gift of Opportunity This Holiday Season

People with developmental disabilities – and the programs that serve them – are struggling to survive in Silicon Valley. Generous support from donors like you is critical to meeting the needs of our consumers.

• Our consumers’ average SSI payment is a mere $830 per month – for food, clothing, and shelter. The local average rental cost for a one bedroom apartment is over $2,000. Not surprisingly, many of our consumers run out of money for food. So in partnership with a local food bank, every week we distribute a bag of groceries to our consumers. We help them find affordable housing – an increasing challenge as government housing subsidies continually decline.
• State funding rates for disability services like ours have been frozen for over a decade, while the cost of living has increased over 37%. Closing this ever-growing funding gap means we must step up our fundraising efforts.

Everybody knows someone who has a developmental disability like autism, cerebral palsy, mental retardation. Many times that someone is a member of our immediate or extended family, a friend’s or neighbor’s family. Like all of us, people with disabilities want to live in their own homes as active, productive and included members of the community, with dignity and independence.

The stories about Ernie, Jin and Alysun exemplify the hopes and dreams of all the individuals we serve at Greater Opportunities. You can help make their hope for dignity and independence a reality, by supporting our services. Make a significant gift of opportunity – $50, $100, or more – whatever you can afford to share during this holiday season.

Ernie

Jin

Alysun

We invite you to join our family at Greater Opportunities as together every day, we make a huge difference in the quality of life for people with disabilities.

• We train folks in skills of independent living, like cooking, shopping and money management, communication skills, sexuality, health and safety
• We provide direct support to consumers in their homes
• We provide affordable housing and onsite classroom training to residents at our Cortez apartments (charging only $400 per month rent)
• Our Day Services bring participants into the community every day for paid and volunteer work and to cultural and recreational sites, while also providing a wide array of fun and enriching skill-building activities at the Adult Development and Activity Center.

Just like in your family, we work hard to stretch our limited resources. Fully 88% of our budget goes directly to program services – only 12% of our budget is spent on administration and fundraising. Yet it costs ever more to do what we do – while the gap between State funding and the actual costs of service continue to grow wider.

That’s why we need your help, by making a generous donation to Greater Opportunities – to maintain and to grow our services … the kind of caring, quality services that you would wish for your own family member.

To create the best quality services possible, we are constantly innovating and investing. We upgraded program services over the past year, including moving our Day Program from an old warehouse space to a beautiful new, state-of-the-art facility that includes an art studio, music room, respite room, kitchen, and a fully equipped computer lab for the digital generation. With volunteer help from Rebuilding Together Peninsula, we renovated the Cortez apartment building with a new classroom and fully-equipped kitchen to train consumers in cooking and other independent living skills. We added two additional, lightly-used wheelchair lift-equipped buses to our Day Program transportation fleet to promote community integration with daily outings. And lots more!

Make an investment in our services at Greater Opportunities. Help us create new opportunities for people with disabilities to live with dignity and independence. Here are some ways you can help:

• $50 fills a day with skill-building activities for a consumer in our Adult Development and Activity Center
• $100 pays for cooking class and learning how to make healthy, low-cost meals
• $200 trains seven consumers in Independent Living Skills through a 3-hour class at our Cortez program
• $500 covers seven nights of in-home support services to keep a consumer healthy and safe in their home
• $1,000 pays our monthly transportation and program supplies costs at the Adult Development and Activity Center
• $2,500 enables twenty consumers to attend summer camp for a week at Del Valle Regional Park
• $5,000 sponsors our annual Holiday Party with awards, dinner and dancing enjoyed by all our consumers, staff and families

We invite you to make a donation to Greater Opportunities. Your transaction is secure and appreciated.

Happy Holidays to you and your family!
We appreciate our donors and volunteers!