ABSTRACT
Founded in 1948, the San Francisco Foundation is a community foundation, which serves the Bay Area region of California. The number of community foundations continues to grow. There were 789 community foundations in the United States in 2014 and this number has increased by 14%. Community foundations must balance meeting the specific needs of donors, which have established funds at the foundation with taking leadership around particular concerns within their geographic area of emphasis. The San Francisco Foundation encapsulates their strategy in three words, “People, Place, and Power”. The Foundation has been quite explicit about its commitment to equity. It is one thing to articulate a commitment, it is another to demonstrate it in action. While the foundation has been committed to principles such as equity and inclusion for many years, the nature of how staff operate, how grants are made, and how programs are designed have been shifting.
