Dientes Community Dental Care was notified it would receive a grant of $350,000 from the Monterey Peninsula Foundation for construction of its clinic expansion project and to support ongoing operations to deliver affordable dental care to low-income residents of Santa Cruz County. The grant moves Dientes significantly closer to meeting its $3,000,000 capital fund goal. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the funds will go to construction, and $100,000 will go to ongoing operations at the clinic over the next two years.
Executive Director Laura Marcus commented, “We are so grateful for the Monterey Peninsula Foundation’s gift to our capital campaign and our ongoing dental programs. This will insure that Dientes has a solid foundation going into the future to serve more people who need our services.”
The expanded clinic will accommodate at least 8,800 new visits a year to 3,400 more children and adults each year.
In addition, the non-profit plans on opening a new 4-chair dental center in Watsonville and a permanent dental chair at the Homeless Services Center in Santa Cruz in 2014. Combined with its main clinic expansion, these projects represent a doubling of patient capacity to 40,000 visits a year by 2020.
The clinic expansion project will cost $3 million. Dientes has already raised over $2.5 million, and expects to raise the remaining $487,000 over the course of 2014. Other major contributors include a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), Dignity Health Investment Loan Program, Helen and Will Webster Family Foundation, The California Wellness Foundation and many other individual donors.
Ongoing programs supported by the grant include Dientes’ outreach program, which brings dental care and screenings to children and seniors in the community. The grant will also support dental care for the low-income uninsured patients in Santa Cruz County.