Civic Leadership to Build an Equitable Bay Area

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for a future where all people have jobs that come with fair wages and benefits, a future where everyone has a safe and affordable home, and a future where we all engage in developing policies that govern our lives. But we won’t get there with just hope. It will take the hard work of organizing, leading, and building this future together. 

We have the opportunity to usher in this future. We can do better than business as usual. We can rebuild a Bay Area that centers equity and inclusion.  

The San Francisco Foundation established the Bay Area Leads Fund to underwrite our leadership activities to create an equitable Bay Area. This past year, the fund supported our efforts to convene cross-sector decision makers to improve working conditions for low-wage workers, keep people in their homes, and harness the vibrancy of our diverse region. It enabled activities to engage people in the democratic process by hosting voter education forums and publishing voter guides. The fund also allowed us to produce valuable research revealing the pandemic’s inequitable impacts on different populations, and made possible our advocacy work to create systems that allow everyone in the Bay Area to thrive. 

This work is made possible by the generous support of Bay Area Leads Fund donors, who in fiscal year 2021 donated nearly $580,000. Thank you for helping us make this work a reality. We invite you to take a look, below, at what we accomplished over the past year – a year that has been, in many ways, unlike any other. We look forward to seeing how we, together, will continue to double down on this work in the year to come. 

With gratitude, 

Ophelia Basgal, Board Chair 

Top photo credit: SFF CEO Fred Blackwell, in front of the Greenlining 360 Center in Oakland. The “AscenDance” mural was created in 2020 by the Community Rejuvenation Project. Photographed by Adriana Oyarzun in 2021.

Bay Area Leads Fund Spotlights

Bay Area Leads Fund – By the Numbers

Join Us

Your contribution to the Bay Area Leads Fund will help us to build a more equitable Bay Area where everyone thrives. Here are some ways that you can give.  

• Make a gift through your Donor Advised Fund at the San Francisco Foundation by entering “Bay Area Leads Fund” as the purpose.  
• Make a gift online.  
• Send a check payable to the San Francisco Foundation and specify “Bay Area Leads Fund” in the memo line of the check. To mail a donation, visit this page for our current P.O. Box address.
• Contact us to discuss contributions of other assets, such as securities.  

For more information, please contact:  

Karolo Aparicio, Annual Giving Officer
kaparicio[at]sff.org | (415) 635–3334
Pronouns: He/Him

Click above to expand the list of our 2021 Bay Area Leads Fund Donors.