Meet the Joint Venture Team

Kelly Costa

Affiliated Researcher, Nonprofits & Philanthropy, Silicon Valley Institute for Regional Studies

Kelly Costa has been working with the Institute for Regional Studies since 2017, formally joining as an affiliated researcher in 2022 to work on topics related to the region’s nonprofit organizations and local philanthropy.

Throughout her career as a research and communications consultant, Costa has supported high-impact leaders, helped both start-up and scaled nonprofits, and advanced the work of funders — from individual philanthropists to established institutional grant makers.

In 2010, Costa began work with the strategic advisory firm, Open Impact, carrying out all quantitative research and local giving data analysis for the seminal 2016 report The Giving Code: Silicon Valley Nonprofits & Philanthropy, and conducting regional-, sector-, program-, and peer-comparator research to deepen strategy development for several leading foundations and family offices. She also provided years of internal and external communications support for a range of clients.

Costa is a Bay Area native, born in San Jose and long rooted in San Francisco. She holds a bachelor’s in graphic communications from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and a master’s in geography and human-environmental studies from San Francisco State University. The mother of two daughters now in university, she lives in San Francisco with her husband and their pandemic puppy, Penny Lane.