Ensuring residents have a strong political voice and can shape the decisions that affect their lives and communities.
Making sure that every voice is heard is an essential component of equity. We are committed to a Bay Area in which communities that have long been silenced can shape the decisions that affect their lives. As we push forward recovery efforts to restabilize the Bay Area, voices of the community are critical for a just economic recovery that does not recreate power imbalances and discrimination. In December of 2020, the SFF Board allocated $10 million in funding to support community power-building efforts.
We support neighborhood leaders, grassroots organizations, faith leaders, civic leaders, and others to build a movement that ensures that all members of the community can have a good job, an affordable home, and can live in a place where they feel that they belong. These benefits don’t just happen—they are the result of organizing, electoral strength, and communities standing up for what is right.
We make grants, advocate for policies, provide leadership training, and bring people together to build community power and make community-driven change a reality, focusing on the following:
Strengthening Grassroots Community Organizing
We support local organizing and faith-based groups that recruit, train, and engage their residents in policy campaigns that promote racial equity and economic inclusion. These organizations are working in their communities to help people learn the value of engaging with others, develop the skills they need to negotiate difference, and cultivate the emotional strength necessary to take collective action.
Developing the Next Generation of Leaders
We are partnering with community leaders so they can improve their skills and strengthen a movement that can effectively deliver the rights and resources that communities deserve.
Promoting Voter Engagement
We support community organizations doing the hard work that is essential to developing political power: registering and engaging voters, educating their communities, and mobilizing a constituency for change through grassroots organizing and other efforts. Our partners are building communities that can stand together, learn together, decide together, act together, and succeed together.
Grantmaking from the Power focus area is by invitation only. We will share information about open funding cycles as it is available.