The San Francisco Foundation Safety Net Impact Fund

“We’ve interviewed hundreds of nonprofit leaders, and their stories of suffering in this recession have brought me to my knees. It’s our calling at The San Francisco Foundation to lift us all up together.” –Denny Martin, Program Officer for Community Health

“So many new faces,” says a Glide staff member, “it breaks my heart.” In the past few months, the need has multiplied and now the lines snake around the block in the Tenderloin. “We are serving thousands more meals than last year. Thousands,” she says.

Now more than ever, the community needs your support. Please give to the Safety Net Impact Fund to help the most vulnerable in the Bay Area meet their basic survival needs.

Every day more and more Bay Area families are contending with the fallout from the recession and California’s climbing unemployment rate, now at a staggering 12.2%. Alameda County Food Bank reports that 47% of their clients must choose between paying for food or rent, and 25% of parents said their children missed meals because they did not have enough money to buy food. Crisis center hotline calls have increased in volume and intensity. St. Anthony’s Dining Room in San Francisco served 31,000 more meals this year than last year. Everywhere you turn you witness distress and want to help. The question is how to translate your generosity into impact? The answer is the Safety Net Impact Fund.

The San Francisco Foundation works in the heart of the community with our eyes and ears wide open to discern where the needs are greatest and which strategies will make the most impact. Our program officers are in the field daily, listening and learning about the rising needs that are exacerbated by state and local budget cuts and dwindling foundation and individual donor resources. Through this process, we also identify the most effective and powerful nonprofit leaders and organizations that will spark and sustain a turnaround. These are the champions we highlight through the Safety Net Impact Fund.

The Safety Net Impact Fund leverages your dollars alongside The San Francisco Foundation resources, our on-the-ground community expertise, relationships, and our strategies, to make the most impact with your philanthropy.

At the core of the Safety Net Impact Fund is our belief that timing can be everything. Your donation at this moment can literally save a family from homelessness, keep an adolescent in school, alleviate a toddler’s hunger pangs, or provide safe harbor to a bruised and battered woman.

The San Francisco Foundation has granted $2 million this past year to safety net nonprofits that are critical to our community. We invite you to join with us to raise that amount by $500,000. Your donation will support a total $2.5 million investment toward transforming the lives of the most vulnerable in the Bay Area.

The Safety Net Impact Fund focuses on five areas:

• Financial assistance for families in dire, immediate need, to prevent a downward spiral, for rent, mortgage payments, utility bills, car repair, childcare, or food vouchers.
• Crisis support for families and individuals for basic supplies and clothing, transportation vouchers, counseling, and public benefit assistance.
• Emergency temporary housing for families and individuals in danger of becoming homeless.
• Food banks and distribution, including hot meals and groceries.
• Support, including legal services, for families at risk of eviction, foreclosure, and domestic violence.
  

We continue to work diligently in partnership with you, our donors, and nonprofit and public leaders, toward long term solutions to eradicating poverty. We heed this very important and urgent call to address the current crisis.

Join Us

Open a donor advised fund at The San Francisco Foundation today. Now more than ever, please support The San Francisco Foundation Safety Net Impact Fund. For more information, please visit our Impact Fund page. To open your donor advised fund or if you are already a donor, to open your Impact Fund account, please contact Lisa Rose, Donor Relations Officer, at 415.733.8534 or lmr@sff.org.