The Foundation for Santa Barbara City College recently received upwards of $400,000 in grants from various community organizations and residents, as part of its Campaign for Student Success.

The six-week long fundraising campaign is wholly volunteer-driven and aims to raise $1 million to support SBCC students and programs. The fundraising effort began on March 15 and will run through April 30.. Every donation up to the $408,000 mark will be matched with 50 cents on each dollar, so for every dollar pledged to the foundation, the result will be $1.50 of funds for the foundation.

This year’s campaign theme is “Show Us Your Love”, and it is seeking to reach the million-dollar mark by combining the contributions of 5,000 individual donors, which will match the donations of a few major contributors.

Individual donors can also band together to create teams through schools, civic organizations, neighborhoods, families and friends and companies can become corporate sponsors to the event.

The American Riviera Bank, Diane and Mike Giles, Scott Pollard, Maryan and Richard Schall, Lila and Joe Scher, Bui and Herb Simon and the Winslow Maxwell Charitable Trust are amongst those providing matching grants for SBCC’s Campaign for Student Success.

The campaign is the biggest initiative the foundation undertakes each year, raising money to provide college students with funds for scholarships, textbooks, extra tutoring and child care for single parent-students. The grant money will also be used to improve library facilities and other learning resources, such as continuing education classes.

The campaign is also utilizing social media to reach its goal of $1 million by the end of the month, with their Friends Asking Friends program. Friends Asking Friends uses email, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to raise money by creating participant pages and other online networking tools.

SBCC has roughly 20,000 students and receives 80 percent of its budget from state funds. The college also relies on local and federal funding, for 16 percent and four percent of their annual budget, respectively.

A version of this article appeared on page 3 of April  9th, 2013′s print edition of the Nexus.