Just a couple of weeks into the school year, Rancho Cielo’s 11th annual Veggie Box & BBQ Fundraiser—one of Monterey County’s largest community-involved fundraising events—once again proved what it has become year after year: a small civic operation running with the momentum of something much larger. Rancho Cielo’s 2026 iteration yielded more than 17,000 boxes of fresh, Salinas Valley-grown produce into the community.
The numbers, as they tend to do, surpassed those of the year before. That was what the event committee chairs Kim and Mike Costa had hoped for after the first fundraiser, over a decade ago, although there is a point at which hope becomes expectation.
This year was no exception.
All proceeds support Rancho Cielo’s programs, but the fundraiser has always been about more than the organization itself. Thousands of boxes went to families in need, distributed through the Food Bank for Monterey County, Boys & Girls Club of Monterey County, Second Harvest Food Bank and the Salvation Army. Nearly all the produce came from the generosity of agriculture companies based in the Monterey region (some from other areas of California), donated to support this incredible cause.
Something on this scale takes more than a village. It takes a small city of well-oiled assembly lines, 125 sponsors, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donated produce, and more than 435 volunteers from dozens of local businesses, nonprofits and community partners, including KSBW, Monterey Bay Football Club, Portola Hotel & Spa, Bernardus Lodge, CASA of Monterey County, West Coast Community Bank, the Arts Council for Monterey County and many more.
There is a particular kind of order to an undertaking like this. Months of planning become tables, trucks, boxes, names on lists, hands moving produce from one place to another. The arrangement is elaborate, almost invisible when it works, which is to say that the work itself is successful when nobody has to think about how much work it took.
That coordination does not happen by accident. It happens because Kim and Mike Costa keep leading the charge, year after year, without fail. They have helped turn what began as a fundraiser into something with its own rhythm, its own expectations, its own place in the calendar.
By the end of the day, the Costas know the Veggie Box & BBQ Fundraiser will be successful. The scale makes that increasingly difficult to doubt. But the reason for it remains remarkably simple.
“Everyone’s on board with why we’re doing this,” Mike says. “It’s about the students. That’s the main thing; always remembering it’s about the students.”
