Initiatives and Collaborative Work
East Bay Foundation on Aging (EBFA)
The East Bay Foundation on Aging (EBFA), a supporting organization at The San Francisco Foundation, is a grantmaking partner committed to serving East Bay seniors through grants to nonprofit organizations in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. Founded with the proceeds from the sale of the historic Matilda Brown Home for Elderly Women in Oakland, the East Bay Foundation on Aging has now completed its third year of grantmaking to East Bay organizations serving seniors in the East Bay with programs that promote aging in place and improve access to healthcare for older adults, as well as supporting caregivers, including nurses, family members, and home health workers. In 2012, EBFA increased its grantmaking to $325,000, funding 11 organizations. To address the increased need brought on by the economic crisis, preference was given to organizations providing key safety net services to vulnerable seniors, including food and crisis services. Read more.
Safety Net Funders Network
The 2008 Great Recession hit Bay Area families and individuals hard in the form of lost jobs, foreclosed homes, and support services overwhelmed with increased need. At the same time, the nonprofit sector experienced massive budget cuts and declining individual donations. In response, Bay Area philanthropy looked for ways to help and in more impactful ways. Foundations and corporate funders not only expanded their grantmaking to social service providers, but also began exploring opportunities to learn from the field and invest in system change efforts to improve safety net policies in the long run.
To that end, The San Francisco Foundation, Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Y&H Soda Foundation, United Way of the Bay Area, and the East Bay Community Foundation launched the Safety Net Funders Network in September 2009. The Network’s goal is to enhance the impact of foundations’ individual and collective safety net grantmaking by sharing funding strategies and lessons learned, as well as best practices gleaned in site visits and conversations with partner organizations on the ground. The short term goals are refined grantmaking priorities. Over the longer term, the Network seeks to identify advocacy and system change strategies to strengthen the safety net system as a whole.
Safety Net Funders Network activities include briefings with key safety net providers, policy advocates, and funders around safety net topics such as food security, housing and homeless prevention, domestic violence services, crisis intervention, and information and referral services, as well as mobile site visits to providers in particularly impacted Bay Area neighborhoods.