#CollectiveImpactDay Partnering with Cadence to Support our Community

At 8:00 a.m., the Mayfair Community Gardens looked like any other Thursday morning. By lunchtime, volunteers were assembling picnic benches, paint rollers were flying across hundreds of feet of fencing, wheelbarrows full of mulch crisscrossed the pathways, and strangers had become teammates.

On June 25, Cadence Giving Foundation partnered with City Year Bay Area to host Collective Impact Day, bringing together more than 100 volunteers from ten Bay Area companies to support the Mayfair Community Gardens in East San José.

The goal was simple: create a space where neighbors can gather, garden and enjoy the outdoors together.

Over the course of the day, volunteers built 12 picnic benches, spread nearly 15,000 square feet of fresh mulch, refreshed community garden beds, constructed new planter boxes, painted more than 660 feet of fencing, and built beautiful circular benches around several of the garden's trees. Every project added something lasting to a place that already means so much to the Mayfair community.

The day began with an opening ceremony featuring San José Mayor Matt Mahan, who spoke about the importance of people and organizations coming together to invest in their communities. His message reflected exactly what was unfolding throughout the gardens. Volunteers from different companies, backgrounds, and professions joined forces to work toward a shared goal. That spirit is what Collective Impact Day is all about.

Of course, none of that work happens by accident. City Year's Care Force team is designed to support organizations like Cadence Giving Foundation in delivering large-scale community service projects like this one. One of our favorite parts? The giant shipping container that travels the country—and the phenomenal project team that comes with it! Inside was City Year's mobile workshop, packed with power tools, paint brushes, rakes, safety goggles, and just about everything you'd need to support a project like this. It's an incredible reminder that meaningful service takes planning long before the first volunteer arrives.

For City Year Bay Area, service has always been about more than completing a project. It's about creating opportunities for people to connect with one another and with the communities they call home. Whether our AmeriCorps members are supporting students in classrooms every day or corporate volunteers are spending a day improving a neighborhood gathering place, the heart of the work is the same.

We're deeply grateful to Cadence for their partnership and vision, to every company that joined us in service, to Mayor Matt Mahan and the City of San José for celebrating the power of civic engagement, and to every volunteer who gave their time, energy, and enthusiasm to the Mayfair Community Gardens.

A special thank you to the partner companies that showed up in support of this project: AMD, Arm, Cadence Giving Foundation , Cisco, EverPure Foundation, Fortinet, KLA Foundation, Palo Alto Networks, the San Francisco 49ers, and ServiceNow.

Days like this remind us that community isn't something we inherit—it's something we build together.

We hope you'll take a few minutes to browse the photo gallery and watch the highlight video. We think you'll see what we saw: people working hard, having fun, and proving that a single day of service can leave a lasting mark on a community.