San Francisco Foundation is fulfilling our promise to be more transparent, to publish our grants, and to hold ourselves publicly accountable to our values and aspirations. Grantmaking is one of the main ways we advance our racial equity mission, and we want to be clear about where we are hitting the mark, where we are missing it, and what we are committed to change.
As a community foundation, SFF grantmaking comes in two forms: 1) as donor advised grants recommended by donors who hold funds with our foundation and are committed to improving life in the Bay Area and beyond 2) as equity-focused, or programmatic, grantmaking determined by SFF staff.
To better understand the impact of our equity-focused grantmaking, we regularly collect data and analyze our grantmaking portfolio. While past analyses have been limited, in 2022 we launched a comprehensive grantee perception survey and analysis that allows us to disaggregate data by race/ethnicity, geography, organization size, and strategy. This analysis will inform our internal decision-making about grants and will provide useful context and accountability with our grantees, partners, and funders.
Read more about this and other efforts in Staying True to Our North Star: FY24 Grantmaking Highlights and Opportunities from Raquiba LaBrie, SFF’s Vice President of Programs and Our Ongoing Learning Journey as a community foundation from Sengsouvanh Leshnick, SFF’s Senior Director of Strategic Learning and Evaluation.
Snapshot of FY24 Programmatic Grantmaking
We invite you to review our FY24 grants data (July 1, 2023 – June 30, 2024), which offers a snapshot of the foundation’s program grants from our People, Power, Place, Policy and Innovation, and Strategic Learning and Evaluation teams.
FY24 Programmatic Grantmaking Data Snapshot(July 1, 2023 – June 30, 2024) |
| $40.5 million granted |
| 569 Grants |
| 452 Organizations |
| 15 Individuals |
| $71K Average grant size |
| 82% of Executive Directors identify as BIPOC* |
| 71% of Organizations are BIPOC-led* |
| 97% of Organizations serve majority BIPOC communities |
Data excludes organizations and grants for which information was not available.
*BIPOC-led is defined as 1) the Executive Director identifies as BIPOC, 2) more than 50% of the organizational leadership identifies as BIPOC, and 3) more than 50% of the Board identifies as BIPOC.
We made 569 grants to 452 organizations and 15 individuals. Grants ranged from $100 to $1.5 million. The average grant was $71K.
In the past three fiscal years, our support for BIPOC-led organizations* and organizations that serve BIPOC communities remained constant. This year and last year, 82% of all equity-focused grantees were led by executive directors who identified as BIPOC. Similarly, 97% of our grantee partners reported working to improve outcomes for BIPOC communities.
Click on the sections below to learn more. Download this list to see all funded organizations and individuals.
Grants
We fund a wide range of interconnected strategies that work together to make our region more equitable, healthier, happier, and more prosperous. Grants made from July 2023 to June 2024 that supported tenant protections, homelessness prevention, and affordable housing preservation and production (4Ps) received the most funding at $7.1M, followed by movement building and community development with $6.5 million and policy and systems change at $5.0M
The majority of grants lasted from 6-12 months (72%) with 15% of grants lasting more than a year. In total, 43% of total grantmaking dollars went to grants lasting more than one year.
Organizations
Across organizations with available data, 82% had Executive Directors who identified as BIPOC and 71% were BIPOC-led (defined as the Executive Director identified as BIPOC, greater than 50% of the organization leadership identified as BIPOC, and greater than 50% of the board identified as BIPOC). This includes data for organizations with Co-Executive Directors.
Latinx-led organizations received the most funding ($12.7 million), followed by Black-led organizations ($11.3 million), White-led organizations ($8.2 million), and Asian and Pacific Islander-led organizations ($5.6M).
Just over half of the organizations had annual budgets of up to $1 million (54%) and about a sixth had budgets over $5 million (16%). Larger organizations received, on average, larger amounts of funding than smaller organizations.
Communities
Of organizations with information on communities served, 97% served majority BIPOC communities.
Funding to organizations working with majority Latinx communities was $7.2 million, followed by Black ($4.6 million) and Asian ($2.3 million) communities.
Geography
Organizations working in centrally located Bay Area counties received majority of funding (Alameda, San Francisco, and Contra Costa). For organizations working in multiple counties, funding is allocated equally across all counties in which they work.
Data and Methodology
This analysis reflects our latest completed fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2024. Data is collected from a dataset generated from SFF’s revised grant application and organizational profile, which asks grantees to share information about demographics, organizational characteristics, grant strategies, and more. For this analysis, we draw on available data that is required for a subset of our grants. Across all grants, the completeness of data ranges from 83% (race/ethnicity of communities served) to 88% (race/ethnicity of executive director). We analyzed the data across all of SFF pathways and grantmaking initiatives by examining total funding and grant size by organizational characteristics (grants to BIPOC-led* organizations, including the EDs, organizational size), grant type (grant length, strategies), and populations served. NOTE: Grants portfolio data as of August 22, 2024.