(LATimes) - The Napa Valley Community Foundation on Tuesday announced it would invest $1 million over the next three years to help the county's legal immigrants become U.S. citizens.

The initiative comes a year after the release of a comprehensive analysis of Napa County's immigrant community commissioned by the foundation and conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.

Findings from that 83-page analysis were used as a launching point for a series of discussions with community and business groups across the region. Those prompted the foundation's decision to focus resources on a campaign to naturalize the county's 9,000 or so eligible immigrants.

"Only 30% of Napa County's foreign-born population have become citizens versus 37% in California overall," foundation president Terence Mulligan said in a statement, noting that a scarcity of legitimate immigration services in the county contributes to the gap.

When legal residents become citizens, he added, "good things happen for the community at large."