We mourn the passing of beloved philanthropist and thought partner in The San Francisco Foundation family, Larry Stupski.

Born in Houston, Texas, Larry grew up working-class, earning a football scholarship to Princeton University and later Yale Law School. He was well known in the Bay Area and beyond for his tenacity and his distinguished role in leading The Charles Schwab Corporation for 18 years.

Larry embodied the heart of our mission as an advocate for community investment, original ideas, and passionate leadership. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from his driven spirit, and partner with him and his family to make a real impact.

In 1996, he and his wife, Joyce Stupski, started the Stupski Foundation to focus on transforming our public education system. Their work was based on their shared belief that quality education is the most significant factor in transforming the lives of children and overcoming the barriers of poverty and inequity.

“He was a very philanthropic, generous, and thoughtful man who in his philanthropy focused on the importance of millions of kids who were at large urban schools and how to give them an educational opportunity to achieve what he was able to achieve in his own life,” said CEO Sandra R. Hernández, M.D.

“He never forgot where he came from. He didn’t put his names on buildings. That wasn’t who he was. The wealth he earned in his lifetime he turned into a philanthropic legacy. He was a thought partner and a student throughout his life, and I will miss him deeply.”

Larry has had an immeasurable impact in the region, investing deeply and generously in making the Bay Area the best place it can be. He believed deeply that everyone deserved a fair shot, in systems change – from community clinics to job training, to arts education and community organizing, Larry’s passion to make a greater impact will continue to create meaningful change for years to come.

We extend our condolences to Joyce, Maida, and the entire Stupski family in this time.

Last week, I joined Vanitha Venugopal, Program Director for Community Development and Investment, in Sacramento as she accepted an award for this longstanding work of the Foundation. At that event, the California Housing Consortium inducted The San Francisco Foundation into the California Housing Hall of Fame for our longtime philanthropic support of affordable housing. The event was a virtual “who’s who” in affordable housing, with more than 100 representatives from nonprofit housing developers, affordable housing advocates, researchers, legislators and financial institutions from across California.

In addition to accepting the award on behalf of the Foundation, Vanitha was part of a panel discussing the critical role affordable housing plays in improving quality of life for all Californians. Along with Matt Schwartz of California Housing Partnership Corporation, Doug Shoemaker from Mercy Housing California, and Stuart Cohen of TransForm, the panel highlighted the vital connection of housing to transportation, sustainable energy, education, and health of Californians.

We also heard from University of California Berkeley Professor Carolina Reid, whose research confirmed the severe mismatch between the supply and demand for affordable housing in California, with just 20 units of affordable housing available for every 100 households earning 85% of area median income.

Reid also noted that housing instability is among the key factors driving the majority of negative outcomes for children, with low-income families outside of affordable housing moving on average between four and six times each year. Facing such high instances of family dislocation, it’s not difficult to understand the relationship between housing instability and the academic and health challenges of many low-income youth.

With average incomes dropping across most demographics and skyrocketing rents throughout much of the Bay Area, it’s clear that the need for high-quality affordable housing is greater than ever and will be an ongoing need for decades to come.

This is why The San Francisco Foundation has invested tens of millions of dollars to support this work, and why together with our grantees we will continue our struggle to ensure every Bay Area resident is able to live in the community of their choice.

To read more about this year’s California Housing Hall of Fame awardees, visit the California Housing Consortium website.

Yesterday was a beautiful day in San Francisco. As I looked down Golden Gate Avenue from the corner at Jones Street, I saw a large crowd, white tents, tables and chairs, and lots of people eating a hearty lunch. And true collaboration in action.

In conjunction with the statewide disaster exercise, Golden Guardian 2013, seven nonprofits practiced their joint plan to prepare and serve hot meals to Tenderloin residents. At 2:00 p.m. when it was all over, members of the Tenderloin Hunger Task Force – St. Anthony Foundation, Glide Foundation, Project Open Hand, Meals on Wheels of SF, SF Food Bank, Salvation Army, and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation (TNDC) – had provided thousands of meals in Disaster Feed SF, and had done so outside on Golden Gate Avenue, without electricity – just like they will likely do in a catastrophic earthquake.

Knowing the critical role that nonprofits play in disaster relief and recovery, The San Francisco Foundation has been supporting the preparedness efforts of nearly 50 key organizations in the Bay Area for the past four years.  These agencies have worked hard to develop plans to recover their operations and to provide critical services in the most underserved communities.

Yesterday all of that hard work paid off. In Disaster Feed SF, staff and volunteers from these seven agencies worked side by side to prepare and serve meals, handle crowd control, and manage a public event. The collaboration was visible in the sea of colored T-shirts (each agency donned a different color), the multi-logoed banner, and the various agency trucks parked out front. It was also quite evident from the jointly staffed command post and the way that staff members from different agencies were conferring throughout the event.

In talking with staff from these agencies, it is clear how committed they are to jointly serving the Tenderloin in a disaster.

 Their success yesterday was the culmination of many years of building relationships through joint non-disaster projects, several years of disaster planning at each agency, and months of planning together for yesterday’s event.

I certainly wasn’t surprised to see this level of collaboration; I have known that these agencies have been working together for a long time. Yet I was still quite proud to be their supporter and gratified to see how ready they are to serve in the face of a disaster.

Editor’s note: This guest post is by Tiffany Price, former education program fellow and program coordinator of the Koshland Young Leader Awards. She is also the information strategist for the Kapor Center for Social Impact.

Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of celebrating with ten amazing Koshland Young Leader Award recipients, their families, friends, and other supporters.

The award was established 20 years ago by Dr. Daniel Koshland, Jr. to give additional funds to San Francisco public high school juniors with extraordinary life challenges, yet high academic performance, to help them access college. The recipients are  all great scholars with amazing stories of triumph and resilience.

After five years coordinating this awards program, I recognized two additional common characteristics among all the awardees — from their stories, witnessing them in action, and getting to know them individually.

Hearts of Gratitude
Many of these young people have never won anything in their entire lives. More often than not, they had to do without even the basic necessities. Some have been homeless; some left their families in other countries to come, alone, to the U.S. for a better education. Some have dealt with chronic illness, family crises, or having to work full-time jobs while going to high school.

Despite — or perhaps because of — their struggles, they are the most grateful and humble people I have ever encountered.

Their lives have not soured them. The extra hard work has not embittered them. Many even view these challenges as character-building experiences that they are grateful for.

They have given some of the biggest hugs and most sincere and heartfelt thanks to me, the Koshland family, and others at the Foundation upon receiving this award. Many of them continue to give thanks years after receiving the award. They inspire all of us to do a better job of thanking those who have lifted and blessed me when I have needed it most.

Hearts of Service
Even with all these students have endured, all of them have a commitment to the value of serving others. Their drive to go to college is in service of helping their parents and siblings have a better life: sending money home to family members, building their parents the house they always wanted, or becoming an immigration lawyer so other families don’t have to go through difficult experiences. They help their classmates with their studies, care for their siblings, work to help their family pay for food and rent, and engage in community organizing to better their neighborhoods and schools.

This amazing group of young people has every reason to focus on themselves. But they choose, instead, to use their time, talent, and treasure to help others.

They don’t consider individual success to be success at all — unless they can share it with those who have loved and supported them along the way.

There is much to learn from these young leaders. In the face of adversity, we must remain humble, count our blessings, and be grateful for the contributions and sacrifices of those in our lives who helped us along our journeys.

These young people are the reason I continue to be a part of this work.  And it is why their stories of triumph and dedication touch so many across the Bay Area, the nation, and the world.

Learn more about the Koshland Young Leader Awards and the 2013 awardees.

First Benchmark Study on Bay Area Muslim Community, One of Nation’s Largest, Finds Broad Diversity, Economic Gaps, Institutional Need

(SAN FRANCISCO) — Wednesday, May 15, 2013 — A new study, the first of its kind to provide a broad assessment of the Bay Area Muslim community, finds that Muslims across all walks of life continue to face entrenched Islamophobia more than 11 years after 9/11.

The Bay Area is home to one of the largest, most diverse Muslim populations in the U.S., with nearly 250,000 Muslims living in the six counties surrounding San Francisco.

While the study shows that the regional Muslim community is very diverse, socioeconomically and culturally, one challenge shared by virtually all of its members is a “heightened sense of Islamophobia,” says one of the principal researchers.

“More than a decade after 9/11, we see that Muslims of all ethnicities and backgrounds are still dealing with a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, a lot of bias,” said Dr. Hatem Bazian, a professor at UC Berkeley and one of the study’s principal researchers. “Unfortunately, the tragic events in Boston won’t help the problem.”

The Bay Area Muslim Study: Establishing Community and Identity finds that across the region, Muslims struggle with widespread discrimination, negative portrayals in the media, and a sense of being “double minorities” due to their ethnic and religious backgrounds — despite the fact that many Muslim immigrants settled in the Bay Area because of its reputation for cultural tolerance.

The study, the first to provide a broad look at a community that has experienced “meteoric growth,” finds that Muslims make up some 3.5 percent of the region’s total population.

The study’s key findings also include:

• The Muslim community is incredibly diverse, ranging from new immigrants from various world conflicts, to highly educated and well established professionals, to native-born Muslims and recent converts, among many others.
• As a whole, the Muslim community suffers from a significant socio-economic gap, with median household income below the Bay Area average.
• Huge disparities exist within the community as well. While a highly educated, highly paid segment of the community exists — largely in Silicon Valley — a disproportionate number of Muslims live below the poverty line, particularly in San Francisco and Alameda County.
• South Asian Muslims have the highest incomes in the community, with nearly half having household income above $100,000.
• Among immigrant Muslims, 67 percent speak at least three languages.
• The institutional support — the mosques, nonprofit organizations and government agencies required to serve any community — is still underdeveloped.
• Charitable giving is a core value among a vast majority of Bay Area Muslims, with almost two thirds of those surveyed identifying as civically engaged.
• Poorer Muslims, particularly clusters of refugees living in larger cities, are particularly vulnerable.

“Refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have tremendous needs,” Dr. Bazian said. “They’re often clustered in public housing complexes or dense areas of the inner city, and the resources are just lacking. We need to invest in our communities.”

The Bay Area Muslim Study: Establishing Community and Identity, was commissioned by the One Nation Bay Area project, comprised of four leading Bay Area philanthropic foundations. The research, conducted by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, is a “benchmark study” – the first of its kind to look at the Bay Area’s Muslim Community. This research report was authored by UC Berkeley Professor, Hatem Bazian, Ph.D. and ISPU’s Director of Research, Farid Senzai, Ph.D..

“The findings not only show that there is broad diversity, socioeconomic gaps, and institutional needs — they call out the resiliency and strength of a community. Our commitment to working with Muslim communities in the Bay Area is strong, and we intend to continue our long-term investment in strategies that will empower women and girls, and invest in legal services, capacity building, and promoting civic engagement to deepen cultural and religious understanding, ” said Dr. Sandra R. Hernández, CEO of The San Francisco Foundation.

The One Nation Bay Area project is a collaboration among The San Francisco Foundation, Marin Community Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and AAPIP (Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy).

More than 1,100 Bay Area Muslims were surveyed for the study, which looked at a) identity/religiosity; b) civic engagement; and c) challenges/needs.

Over the past two years, One Nation Bay Area has supported collaborations between American Muslims and non-Muslims working on solutions to community needs. One Nation Bay Area commissioned this report to help create informed, responsive and sustainable action by philanthropic institutions, public agencies, and the private sector.

Download the full report and the executive summary.

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ONE NATION BAY AREA PROJECT partners:

About The San Francisco Foundation
The San Francisco Foundation (TSFF) is the community foundation serving the Bay Area since 1948, granting more than $800 million over the past ten years. Through the generosity and vision of our donors, both past and present, TSFF granted $89 million in fiscal year 2012. TSFF brings together donors and builds on community assets through grantmaking, leveraging, public policy, advocacy, and leadership development to make a greater impact in our community. By focusing on people, organizations, neighborhoods, and policy, advocacy and organizing, the Foundation addresses community needs in the areas of community health, education, arts and culture, community development, and the environment. In response to the economic downturn, TSFF is also focusing funding on safety net partners, job creation and training, and mortgage foreclosure relief and neighborhood preservation. The San Francisco Foundation serves San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Mateo Counties. www.sff.org

About AAPIP
AAPIP (Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy) is a national member-supported philanthropic advocacy organization dedicated to advancing philanthropy and Asian American/Pacific Islander communities. AAPIP members include foundations, staff and trustees of grantmaking institutions, and nonprofit organizations in ten regional chapters in the United States. AAPIP engages communities and philanthropy to address unmet needs; serves as a resource for and about AAPI communities; supports and facilitates giving by and to our communities; and incubates new ideas and approaches for social justice philanthropy. AAPIP is committed to Building Democratic Philanthropy – a framework to support the development of institutions and philanthropic practices that begin with the vision of communities first, and that draws on the assets of those communities as the starting place for any blueprint to maximize their potential. www.aapip.org

About the Marin Community Foundation
The Marin Community Foundation is the primary center for philanthropy in Marin County, CA and is one of the largest community foundations in the U.S.  It manages the assets of the Leonard and Beryl H. Buck Trust and over 400 funds established by individuals, families, and businesses.  The Foundation makes significant improvements in communities around the world in two ways: by spearheading initiatives for long-term, sustainable change in Marin, and by distributing grants from donor-advised funds locally, across the U.S., and around the world. Now in its 25th year, the Marin Community Foundation has assets of approximately $1 billion, with annual grant distributions of approximately $50 million. www.marincf.org

About Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation makes all forms of philanthropy more powerful. We serve as a catalyst and leader for innovative solutions to our region’s most challenging problems. The community foundation has $2.9 billion in assets under management and more than 1,650 philanthropic funds. As Silicon Valley’s center of philanthropy, we provide individuals, families and corporations with simple and effective ways to give locally and around the world. www.siliconvalleycf.org

Growing up in the heart of Illinois farmland during the Great Depression, Kay Riddell was raised with a love of the land, and values of giving to those in need. When she and her husband Bob Riddell, a theoretical physicist, moved across the country to Berkeley, their joint appreciation of the land only grew.

“Land is the most important thing,” Kay explained, “You can never replace it.” The Riddells’ dedication to caring for the earth and preserving open spaces was a part of their professional and family lives. Bob Riddell led the revitalization of the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens, and the family made camping trips to hike the Sierras nearly every year. Their children grew up with the same love of the outdoors and dutiful, hard-working values of their parents.

“There came a point when we wanted to do more,” Kay explained. Kay and Bob were considering opening a private foundation, when they were introduced to The San Francisco Foundation. The Riddells were drawn to the ease of the Foundation managing the administrative details and the access to the deep expertise in community that the Foundation offered, and decided to open a fund.

Kay and her children, Jim and Cindy who also advise on the fund, worked closely with Shona Carter, their donor relations officer, to understand what Kay wanted to achieve with her giving, and to help her make a meaningful investment. “It’s very rewarding to work closely with Kay and her family,” said Shona, “Her humility coupled with her desire to make a difference within her lifetime is reflected in her children who are equally passionate about environmental programs.”

Shona introduced Kay to Environment Program Officer Francesca Vietor to learn about which groups are doing the best work in environmental education and preservation, and how to make the biggest impact with their dollars. Francesca went in-depth with Kay, providing insights in the field, and coordinating site visits at organizations that matched her passion.

The Riddells raised their children with an appreciation of the land, and over the years their giving has focused on ensuring that all youth get the opportunity to develop a deep connection with the outdoors through parks, trails, and oceans. Today, Kay, her children and grandchildren travel back to the Bay Area from across the country to visit organizations that the family is funding.

“You have to leave the earth a better place than you arrived.” This simple adage is a thread that runs through the Riddell family, and continues on with Kay’s children, and grandchildren.