Help a family stay whole

Silicon Valley’s wealth is real and so is its inequality. The tech economy has produced extraordinary wealth for a small subset of its residents.Nearly 1 in 3 Silicon Valley households does not earn enough to meet basic needs without public or private assistance even though the region leads the nation in tech salaries and venture capital. More than 130,000 individuals in Santa Clara County currently rely on CalFresh, the federal food assistance program which is nearly double the number who did in 2019. Nearly 475,000 county residents are enrolled in Medi-Cal, California’s low-income health insurance program.

What makes poverty here harder to survive is the eligibility gap. Many families earn too much to qualify for government programs, yet far too little to make ends meet locally, because eligibility thresholds are set by federal poverty limits that don't account for local costs. DAC's clients often fall exactly here: too economically precarious to absorb a legal crisis, too "high-income" by federal standards to access support.

92% of DAC's own clients live in poverty in one of the wealthiest counties in the United States.This matters because poverty is the primary driver of child welfare involvement. Nationally, neglect accounts for 74% of substantiated child maltreatment cases, and neglect is rarely about intent. It is almost always about resources like the inability to afford stable housing, food, childcare, or medical care. Families enter the child welfare system not because they don't love their children, but because they don't have enough money to keep them safe by the system's standards.

When funders and donors assume Silicon Valley doesn't need investment, the consequences are concrete. Nonprofits serving low-income communities here are chronically underfunded relative to the scale of need. Grants flow to regions perceived as higher-need, and local donors assume someone else is handling it. The families who fall through the cracks of the tech economy also fall through the cracks of philanthropy. They are invisible twice over — once to a system that measures poverty against national benchmarks that bear no relationship to what it costs to survive here, and again to a funding community that mistakes zip code for stability.

DAC exists because legal representation changes what happens next for a family in crisis. Without it, parents navigating the child welfare system face one of the most consequential legal processes of their lives with no advocate in their corner. The Silicon Valley misconception puts families at greater risk of permanent separation, with no one resourced to intervene.

Yes. DAC is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Your gift is tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by law. You will receive a donation receipt by email for your records.

Yes. We accept volunteer applications year-round. You can apply here.