The American River’s Effie Yeaw center is saved for now by $300,000 from mystery donors | Opinion
Some of the Carmichael area’s long-time backers of the Effie Yeaw Nature Center on the American River, facing a self-inflicted financial crisis, have anonymously come to its rescue to keep it alive for now. For this unincorporated community, this sudden infusion of $300,000 is arguably the single most important holiday gift in years.
“Our gift is a vote of confidence to everyone in the area,” said a donor who has recently given the nature center $250,000, a figure confirmed by its board chairman. “I think that they will do the right thing with the money and get their feet under them again.”
The backers’ anonymity reflects the tenuous situation at what has been the crown jewel of civic facilities along the Lower American River for nearly half a century.
Long-time supporters that have nurtured this center for years have filled a breach created by a massive financial shortfall and the departure of about half the center’s staff. While the center keeps operating, welcoming school children and nature lovers of all ages, it does not yet have the new staff, leadership and long-term strategy it will need to stay successful for years to come.
Named after a local school teacher with a passion for conservation, Effie Yeaw was a frequent go-to for my children in their formative years. Walking its trails can be a magical walk into nature, particularly watching a youngster thrilled at the first sight of a foraging deer. The nature center beautifully explains all the creatures of the parkways. Its docents are truly experts in the surrounding environment.
But the existence of places like this can never be taken for granted. Effie Yeaw is sadly an example of what can happen when a government abandons something it has long operated on the assumption that citizens will consistently keep things afloat with their own money and management.
The Effie Yeaw Nature Center was once a priority for Sacramento County. It had staffed the center for years and operated it largely with county money. Then in the throes of a short-term financial crisis, the county severed its long-standing ties with the center in 2010, stopped staffing it, and turned things over to a non-profit organization. It has washed its hands of any financial responsibility for a key facility in its parkway ever since.
This speaks to the county’s incapacity to fully sustain its parks, fill its potholes, redevelop its deteriorating retail corridors and provide comprehensive mental health treatment to the hundreds upon hundreds of homeless in this county who desperately need care and housing.
At Effie Yeaw, things worked well for a while after it was left to survive on its own, and then things collapsed.
“We realized we were in a financial crisis pretty much in early fall,” said Greg Dewey president of the American River Natural History Association, the non-profit that runs the center. “Our executive director resigned, and the board president stepped down and I took over. It was kind of a tough situation.”
There are no signs of anything nefarious, just plain old human error. A temporary slug of federal money to keep things alive during COVID went away, and school visits decreased along with public support. The depth of the problem was not fully realized by the association board until it was in a crisis.
In October the association launched an emergency fund-raising campaign, dubbed “200K to Save the Day,” to stabilize finances short-term. Six area residents then stepped forward with their combined contributions of $300,000.
“Very, extremely generous,” said Dewey, a retired former president of the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
Another contribution of historic proportions is happening daily thanks to Betty Cooper, an association board member and former worker at the center. A 70-year-old grandmother of two, Cooper has come out of retirement to be the center’s interim executive director at no charge.
“I put a lot of heart and soul into that place,” Cooper said recently. “I can’t watch that fail.”
Cooper is working with staff to reconnect with all the schools that routinely did field trips with the center, an important source of revenue. She is looking for help with landscaping, habitat restoration and facility care. But Cooper says there is no substitute for the steady support of Sacramento-area residents who love the American River Parkway and want to invest in its future.
Thanks to the recent donations, “we kind of have a much longer runway,” Dewey said. “We have time to really correct the basic model and be able to reinvigorate some programs and perhaps create some new programs that will lead to a much more vibrant community.”
Carmichael can’t expect Betty Cooper to volunteer as the executive director forever. “I’m missing my life pretty badly right now,” she said in an interview from home, while her grandchildren were temporarily distracted as they watched a movie.
Effie Yeaw will need competent management and the money to pay them. It will need an active, vigilant board. It will need that success strategy to earn the public’s support rather than the help of a handful of long-time supporters in acts of desperation.
When that moment of stability arrives, those six donors who have saved this center undoubtedly will come forward and ask others to be as generous as they have been. And it will take that broader civic generosity, from all generations of river lovers, to keep the nature center alive for decades to come.
Said the person who donated $250,000 this Christmas season, “we’re relying on a bit of divine convergence.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2024 at 5:00 AM.