San Francisco, CA – The San Francisco Foundation announced that it has received an unrestricted general support grant for $7.5 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation – the largest grant from a private foundation in the San Francisco Foundation’s history.
In making the grant, Hewlett Foundation president Larry Kramer highlighted the San Francisco Foundation’s commitment to addressing the Bay Area’s housing crisis and its efforts to bring diverse groups together. He noted, “We are delighted to provide this grant to the San Francisco Foundation to enable them to do the important work of building coalitions, bringing communities together, and making progress against the Bay Area’s biggest challenges. That includes working with a diverse range of allies on the housing crisis, which threatens the vitality and future of our region.”
To that end, the San Francisco Foundation has sought to combine the various tools at its disposal – its donor community as well as grantmaking, advocacy, and community organizing – to advance racial equity and economic inclusion in the San Francisco Bay Area. In particular, in the past several years, the foundation has been at the center of a number of efforts to prevent homelessness and provide affordable, stable homes for thousands of families living with the danger that they could lose their homes or be forced from the region.
The San Francisco Foundation helped lead a process that resulted in a series of bills designed to protect tenants and provide affordable housing that were signed by Governor Newsom in October. That process brought together leaders across the housing community, including affordable housing advocates and developers, transportation experts, elected officials, labor and environmental leaders, charitable foundations, and major employers, to create a broad approach to tackle the Bay Area’s housing challenge.
In January, the foundation co-launched one of the largest affordable housing initiatives in the country—seeking commitments of $540 million to advance regional housing solutions to create a prosperous and inclusive Bay Area. The Partnership for the Bay’s Future is led by the San Francisco Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and was also funded by the Ford Foundation, Facebook, Genentech, Kaiser Permanente, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Stupski Foundation, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
San Francisco Foundation CEO Fred Blackwell said, “This grant is an enormous vote of confidence in our work, and we are very excited to put it to good use. This grant will make us a stronger organization better positioned to help us all work together to achieve the kind of Bay Area where we all feel like we belong.”
About the San Francisco Foundation
The San Francisco Foundation is a grantmaking public charity dedicated to improving life in the five counties in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it is one of the nation’s largest community foundations. In addition to its work to prevent homelessness and provide affordable homes for all Bay Area residents who need them, the San Francisco Foundation has worked in a variety of other areas – including supporting the Bay Area Equity Atlas – a robust new data and policy tool to help create a more equitable Bay Area; providing emergency protections to advance racial justice or protect immigrant communities through its Rapid Response Fund; and has supported a targeted set of other initiatives focused on racial equity and economic inclusion. Learn more: www.sff.org.
About the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation is a nonpartisan, private charitable foundation that advances ideas and supports institutions to promote a better world. For more than 50 years, it has supported efforts to advance education for all, preserve the environment, improve lives and livelihoods in developing countries, promote the health and economic well-being of women, support vibrant performing arts and strengthen Bay Area communities. Learn more: www.hewlett.org
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