Expanding Our Impact Investments
It’s hard to believe that we’re more than halfway through 2022. While each month seems to bring a new challenge, from the latest COVID variant to a setback to reproductive rights, we find ourselves even more motivated to create an equitable Bay Area.
Exclusionary policies and practices have resulted in racial inequities that prevent far too many residents in the Bay Area from thriving. For example, white residents are nearly twice as likely to own their homes compared to Black residents and 50 percent more likely than Latinx residents in the Bay Area. And the rate of business ownership is six times higher for white workers in the Bay Area compared with Black workers, and five times higher compared with Latinx workers.
As one of the foundation’s tools to tackle such inequities, our Bay Area Community Impact Fund (BACIF) provides local nonprofits and social enterprises with low-interest loans. We’re excited to share our 2022 Bay Area Community Impact Fund report, to give you a snapshot of the ways in which our impact investing helps us advance our mission.
With the release of this report, we’re announcing an exciting expansion of our impact investments: SFF now allocates a portion of our two long-term investment pools to BACIF. This year, we are allocating over $4 million for additional impact investments into local communities and will increase that amount over time with a targeted allocation of 5% from each pool (~$24 million), subject to demand for additional loans.
In addition, BACIF last month closed a new $1 million impact loan to REAL People’s Fund to provide financing to entrepreneurs of color based in East Oakland, West Oakland, Richmond, and San Pablo. Through this partnership, SFF is helping to remove barriers to capital, build community wealth, and create quality jobs in communities of color.
Advancing racial equity requires bold solutions. In addition to our grantmaking and advocacy, our local impact investments, made in partnership with our donors, are critical to these solutions. I invite you to explore this page — our 2022 Bay Area Community Impact Fund report — to learn more about our new BACIF allocation and the other ways in which SFF’s impact investments are creating a more equitable Bay Area.
Sonja Velez, Chief Financial Officer
Investment Spotlights
Read more
Read more
Read more
Read more
The Impact of Our Investments
The Bay Area Community Impact Fund helps make the Bay Area a better and more inclusive place through investments in community-based organizations that create and preserve jobs, affordable housing, and sustainable communities.
Growing the Pool of Investments for the Bay Area’s Future
We have $24 million in the fund and a strong pipeline of opportunities seeking investment. Our goal is to grow the fund to at least $30 million so we can continue to grow our impact supporting relief, recovery, and renewal across the Bay Area. To date, the fund has made 26 loans, totalling $26 million with zero losses.
The Bay Area Community Impact Fund is a pooled fund with investments from SFF’s endowment and donor advised funds.
The Bay Area Community Impact Fund has grown from $5 million in 2009 to $24 million. We have now lent more than our current fund size, as loans repay and we recycle funds into new investments.
See the list of current investments.
Maximizing the Impact of Your Donor Advised Fund
The Bay Area Community Impact Fund combines San Francisco Foundation unrestricted funds with allocations from donor-advised funds to make program-related investments in organizations and projects that align with our vision of an equitable Bay Area for all residents. By providing nonprofits and social enterprises with access to low-interest, long-term loans, particularly in communities of color, the Bay Area Community Impact Fund enables organizations to expand their activities and to finance high-impact projects.
As loans are repaid, we make new investments from the Fund, recycling capital back into communities. Any capital not used in direct lending is deployed into other mission-aligned investments, such as insured deposits in local community banks and credit unions that support strategies like affordable housing, economic opportunity, and entrepreneurship of women and people of color. Learn more about the Bay Area Community Impact Fund.
Learn more and join the effort
For more information about investing in the Bay Area Community Impact Fund, contact the Philanthropy and Gift Planning team at (415) 733-8590 or donorservices[at]sff.org.