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The San Francisco Foundation Impact Fund
Now more than ever – Your investment makes a difference
- Intro photo for the 2009 Impact Fund
It takes passion and action to transform lives. It also takes knowledge and resources. At The San Francisco Foundation we focus our deep knowledge and resources toward solving the pressing issues of our time, from saving vulnerable families from the brink of homelessness, to bolstering a neighborhood arts center that lifts the spirits and strengthens its surrounding community. We are honored to invite you to join a dynamic collaborative of funders, nonprofit organizations, and community leaders to give hope and opportunity to the vulnerable in our region. The Impact Fund lifts up powerful and effective nonprofit organizations in the Bay Area and leverages our collective investment to enhance your community. Please join us.
The San Francisco Foundation Impact Fund currently has five funds that focus on your most critical concerns:
Read below to learn how you can support The San Francisco Foundation Impact Fund.
Safety Net 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
- Safety Net Impact Fund 2009 photo
“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. Please join us.
Children and Youth Fund
“We not only protect children and youth because they are our most vulnerable, we invest in them because they are our future. Foster youth often must face the world alone without family support. They especially need our nurturing and care. It still takes a village, gosh darn it…” –Lisa Villarreal, Program Officer for Education
- Children and Youth Impact Fund 2009 photo
Children and youth thrive with the education and resources essential to their growth. Data shows that every year completed in high school reduces a student’s chance of going on welfare or going to jail by 25%. The most effective way to support our children’s ability to stay in school and stay focused is to provide an array of services that support the entire family. For foster youth who lack the encouragement and assistance of a family, our community needs to be their family, especially when they age out of the system at 18 and have few resources available.
With this comprehensive strategy in mind, we invite you to leverage your philanthropic dollars alongside the Foundation by investing in the Children and Youth Impact Fund. Your partnership with us will help alleviate the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing our youth and have a real impact on our children’s lives. Our Education Program Officer Lisa Villarreal, a former teacher and school administrator, and a leader in the education movement, works intimately with grantee partners tackling an ambitious agenda that addresses a range of resources our youth need.
Foster youth issues are widespread, with more than 80,000 foster youth across the state.
The Children and Youth Impact Fund aims to support these foster youth living in the Bay Area. Beyond maintaining vital services, this fund seeks to nurture, support, and elevate this vulnerable and valuable population.
Environment Fund
“The environment is as personal as a breath of fresh air and as global as climate change. We must seize the national momentum and accept nothing less than the triple bottom line: green jobs, sustainability, and profit. Together we can save the planet.” –Arlene Rodriguez, Program Officer for the Environment
- Environment Impact Fund 2009 photo
Dramatic droughts, compromised ecosystems, increasing natural disasters. Many global dangers once seen as acts of faith are now suspected to be caused by climate change. An issue of such magnitude can only be addressed on multiple levels, big to small. From landmark federal legislation to inspiring community foundation leadership, we are investing in reversing global warming. But time is short and we must act strategically and fast. Our forward-looking environmental agenda dovetails with the exciting new national environmental agenda and economic stimulus plan championed by President Barack Obama. This moment in time is ours to seize, and we invite you to invest with our nonprofit partners to build on the national momentum, The San Francisco Foundation’s track record, and innovative and courageous advocates to save the planet.
Housing Families Fund
“Keeping families housed can prevent the downward spiral toward a life of poverty. Resources at this crucial moment make all the difference.” –Vanitha Venugopal, Program Officer for Community Development
- Photo for Housing Families Impact Fund 2009
As President Obama noted in March 2009, “The homeless problem was bad even when the economy was good.” Before unemployment rose to 11% in the Bay Area and the foreclosure crisis drove both owners and renters from their homes, an estimated 650,000 adults were homeless on any given night and up to one in 50 children experienced homelessness during the year. In San Francisco, about 40% of homeless people were parents with children.
Now, even more families are facing economic crisis and risk losing their homes, while those people struggling with mental health or other challenges find that resources for assistance are overwhelmed in the wake of budget cuts. Local agencies and public partners are now focusing on prevention and long term solutions, realizing that keeping people housed is the best and least costly way to combat homelessness. When children and families become homeless, they also lose their important community ties and support networks. Protecting their stability and mental and physical health is key. This fund also supports those who do lose their homes with employment, financial, and social services to help them find housing and emerge from poverty permanently.
Arts and Culture Fund
“Arts and cultural organizations will face daunting challenges in the next few years. Their survival is essential. As long as arts exist in community, hope lives.” –John Killacky, Program Officer for Arts and Culture
- Arts and Culture Impact Fund 2009 photo
Where there is art, there is hope. Not an afterthought or an accessory, art is a life force that can make a difference between a community thriving, versus just surviving. In some of the Bay Area’s impoverished and neediest communities, a community arts and culture hub can spark a transition for entire neighborhoods, across generations, across cultures, to create beauty, spirit, and creativity. We believe in the healing power of expression and creativity. The San Francisco Foundation’s Arts and Culture portfolio spans the plethora of the nonprofit arts ecosystems. We highlight four organizations and the Fund for Artists here and invite you to invest alongside us, strengthen these cultural hubs, and spark community spirit.
How to Support The San Francisco Foundation Impact Fund
There are three ways you can make a grant to The San Francisco Foundation Impact Fund:
A. Log in to Donor Center. To recommend a grant to one of our Impact Funds in Donor Center, please follow these steps:
- From the Recommend a Grant tab, click Change/Select. This will take you to the Foundation’s organization search screen.
- Search for and select one of our five Impact Funds by typing Safety Net Impact Fund, Children and Youth Impact Fund, Environment Impact Fund, Housing Families Impact Fund, or Arts and Culture Impact Fund into the Organization Name field.
- Complete the remainder of the online grant recommendation form indicating grant amount, acknowledgment information, and any special instructions.
To grant to an additional Impact Fund, please repeat this process by searching for and selecting a different Impact Fund name.
B. Complete the Grant Recommendation form and return it by mail or fax.
C. If you are not a San Francisco Foundation donor, please contact Lisa Rose at 415.733.8534 or lmr@sff.org.