Multi-Agency Projects and Funding Collaboratives
Through special projects and partnerships, we collaborate with community-based organizations, government, other foundations, and donors to create new approaches to meeting the Bay Area’s ever-changing needs.
As a catalyst for change, The San Francisco Foundation’s mission extends beyond grantmaking. We harness our broad knowledge, local expertise, and extensive relationships to address complex issues facing the region.
Arts Loan Fund
Bay Area Workforce Funding Collaborative
The Campaign for Hope SF
City Fields Fund
Civic Engagement Fund
Community Connect Grants
Community Leadership Project
Creative Capacity Fund
Great Communities Collaborative
Healthy Food for All
Strength from Within
Arts Loan Fund (ALF)
A collaborative program of the members of Northern California Grantmakers, ALF provides quick-turnaround, low-cost financial assistance to arts organizations located in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, San Mateo, Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Sonoma counties, and individual artists located in the cities of Oakland and San Francisco. For more details, visit the ALF website here.
Bay Area Workforce Funding Collaborative
The Bay Area Workforce Funding Collaborative (BAWFC) is a partnership of 11 philanthropic foundations which leverages public and private investments to strengthen and expand the Bay Area’s workforce training system. The BAWFC has made over $10 million in grants to programs which provide job training to low income job seekers, while meeting the workforce needs of key industry sectors in the region. The BAWFC invests in efforts that promote the development and sustainability of career ladder initiatives which prepare individuals with barriers to employment for entry level positions in occupational sectors offering career advancement opportunities and family-sustaining wages. To date, the BAWFC has supported over 40 job training programs which have trained 2,000 jobseekers.
Funding partners include: The California Endowment, East Bay Community Foundation, Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, Grove Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, Kaiser Permanente, National Fund for Workforce Solutions, The San Francisco Foundation, Thomson Family Foundation, Walter & Elise Haas Fund, Y & H Soda Foundation.
The Campaign for Hope SF
Through The Campaign for HOPE SF, an initiative of The San Francisco Foundation, San Franciscans are coming together to transform distressed neighborhoods surrounding public housing into thriving mixed-income communities. Unlike previous public housing efforts around the country, HOPE SF ensures that long-term residents are not displaced from the communities they call home. With current residents at the center of the community revitalization, San Francisco will be a city where all neighborhoods are culturally diverse and every San Franciscan lives in a quality, healthy home in a safe neighborhood with access to comprehensive public services.
The Campaign is an ambitious public-private effort that focuses on the health and stability of the entire community at eight public housing sites in San Francisco by converting dilapidated housing into high-quality apartments and homes, and simultaneously supporting residents with job training, childcare, healthcare, and improved public schools. HOPE SF is a community-driven effort started in 2006. It includes eight public housing developments, representing 40% of all public housing in San Francisco. In December 2012, 107 families began moving into new units at the first development, Hunters View, which also included building out community space and a park. The second site, Alice Griffith, which will break ground at the end of 2013, was awarded a federal HUD Choice Neighborhoods grant of $30.5 million.
The Campaign for HOPE SF invests in innovative opportunities which improve educational success, jobs and economic mobility, and community health and safety. Partners include the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, leading city agencies and Enterprise Community Partners. In addition to the investment that The San Francisco Foundation is making in the initiative, other investment partners include Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase Foundation, The Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Living Cities, Salesforce.com Foundation, Wells Fargo, and individual investors.
City Fields Fund
Bob, Bill, and John Fisher grew up playing sports in San Francisco parks and want to make sure that city kids today have the same opportunities. But many of San Francisco’s athletic fields are in poor condition and, worse, there aren’t nearly enough of them. The brothers established the City Fields Foundation in 2005 to meet this challenge. In 2006, City Fields and the City of San Francisco teamed up on a pilot project to fix up dilapidated sports fields in two parks – Garfield Square in the Mission, and Silver Terrace just outside the Bayview. With $4.5 million from the City Fields Foundation and $1 million from the City, the public/private partnership finished both projects in less than six months. The San Francisco Foundation was asked to join the effort because of its extensive philanthropic network and strong track record of investment in local neighborhoods. Through our City Fields Fund, The San Francisco Foundation receives and acknowledges tax deductible contributions from donors, and grants these funds directly to the City Fields Foundation. To encourage broad community support, City Fields and the City of San Francisco will each match every private dollar raised.
Civic Engagement Fund
Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities are among the fastest growing ethnic groups in California and in the Bay Area. The Civic Engagement Fund (CEF), initiated in 2006, is a capacity building initiative designed to support organizations, and to strengthen the civic participation, of Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities within the Bay Area.
Through capacity building, civic engagement, and leadership development, CEF is based on a learning model that creates avenues for shared learning and understanding on the part of our philanthropic partners and community partners. Through these partnerships, leaders and civic organizations work together to tackle issues of discrimination in schools and the workplace, racial profiling, selective immigration enforcement, detention and deportation and media stereotyping, to advance social change, and build toward a common and collective good.
The Fund was developed through a strategic partnership between Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP), an affinity group of the Council of Foundations, and The San Francisco Foundation, and has brought on a range of additional San Francisco Bay Area philanthropic institutions. Read more about the history of CEF and learn more about current CEF grantee partners and organizations. The Fund is administered by AAPIP. For more information, please contact Laila Mehta at AAPIP at 415.273.2760.
Funding partners include Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, Y&H Soda Foundation, Whitman Institute, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation collaborating through the Community Leadership Project.
Community Connect Grants
An important component of the 702-acre project to redevelop the Hunter’s Point Naval Shipyard and Candlestick Point is the landmark Core Community Benefits Agreement negotiated between local community groups and the project’s developer. It provides over $37.5 million in funds for workforce development and affordable housing for San Francisco’s District 10. The San Francisco Foundation has been partnering with the Implementation Committee, made up of community groups and leaders who are responsible for the funds, so that they may achieve maximum grantmaking impact in the areas of workforce development and affordable housing.
Community Leadership Project
The Community Leadership Project is a collaboration between foundations and communities of color to strengthen grassroots organizations. The David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have committed $10 million to the Bay Area, Central Coast, and San Joaquin Valley over the next three years. The San Francisco Foundation is honored to join eight other grantmaking organizations in this ongoing commitment to organizations supporting low-income and communities of color.
In addition to the funds granted by the Hewlett, Irvine, and Packard Foundations, The San Francisco Foundation has committed an additional $375,000, bringing the total funding for our portion of this project to just under $1.5 million. In consultation with a pool of community partners, The San Francisco Foundation selected ten nonprofits for core support and technical assistance grants. The grantees are Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Causa Justa :: Just Cause, Chinese Progressive Association, Filipino Community Center, La Raza Centro Legal, Leadership Excellence, Marin County Grassroots Leadership Network, Multicultural Institute, Omega Boys Club, and South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN).
As part of the Community Leadership Project, the San Francisco Bay Area Capacity Builders of Color Directory launched in April 2010 to help community-based organizations, nonprofits, and foundations identify prospective capacity builders of color; and capacity builders of color working with the nonprofit sector in the San Francisco Bay Area get the word out about the services they offer.
Creative Capacity Fund (CCF)
Administered by the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI), CCF is a field-building initiative designed to support a broad range of training and peer learning opportunities for arts professionals. Under TSFF, current grantees of the Arts & Culture Program or individual artists living in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, or San Mateo counties are eligible to receive up to $1,000 for staff of arts organizations and $500 for individuals to subsidize the cost of professional development opportunities.
Great Communities Collaborative
The Great Communities Collaborative (GCC) works toward a future where mixed-income transit-oriented communities are central to a thriving Bay Area. The Great Communities Collaborative was instrumental in catalyzing an initial $10 million grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the launch of the Bay Area Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing (TOAH) Fund. We’ve leveraged our impact, and today, the TOAH Fund is fund capitalized at $50 million. The Fund will loan money to developers to build affordable housing near Bay Area rail and bus stops, strengthening our entire region by creating more walkable and bikable neighborhoods with jobs, fresh food markets, and public transportation all close to home.
Funding partners include Ford Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Gerbode Foundation, East Bay Community Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Kresge Foundation, and Oram Foundation.
Healthy Food for All
Healthy Food for All (HFA) is a three-year initiative funded by The San Francisco Foundation (TSFF), Convergence Partnership, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and American Farmland Trust. The goal of is to expand healthy food access in the Bayview and Excelsior neighborhoods in San Francisco through community leadership development, activating public land for food cultivation, implementing food policy directives, and leveraging public-private partnerships. HFA aims to improve food access in underserved neighborhoods, encourage economic opportunity, and serve as a replicable model.
Strength from Within
Strength from Within is a three-year initiative funded by The San Francisco Foundation (TSFF) and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This initiative was launched as an outgrowth of TSFF’s Environmental Health and Justice Initiative (EHJI), which provided critical funding to many organizations launching projects devoted to grassroots organizing and addressing health disparities and environmental injustices. Stronger organizations are needed to address the multitude of equity and social justice concerns raised by poorly regulated environmental decisions and management. Strength from Within was established to support the development of financially strong and organizationally effective grassroots environmental health and justice organizations in the Bay Area region.