Alliance for Biking and Walking

Alliance for Biking and Walking 2013 - $8,000 Open Streets 2011 - $5,000 General Support The Alliance for Biking & Walking creates, strengthens, and unites state and local bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations in every state, province, and major city in North America. These sustainable organizations are highly respected by the public, media, and policy makers. Their efforts in communities and their united strength at the national level have transformed cities into places where it is easy, safe, desirable and common for citizens to bike and walk. Open Streets Open Streets develops a curriculum for a comprehensive three-day open streets training for cities interested in starting or growing initiatives. Open streets (commonly called Ciclovías, Saturday Parkways, Sunday Streets, etc.) differentiate themselves from block parties and street fairs by promoting active living, healthy lifestyle choices and connecting neighborhoods. They are typically part of a broader effort to encourage sustained physical activity, redefine public spaces and increase healthy transportation options. By opening the streets to people, residents view and connect with the community in a whole new way. An exercise in community building and social engagement, open streets also provide free recreational opportunities and public space where people can meet, socialize and make new friends. peoplepoweredmovement.org

Amber Hasselbring

Amber Hasselbring 2011 Fellow Amber Hasselbring is a San Francisco artist focused on exploring ecological relationships. Since 2004, she has produced collaborative, project-based works that involve participation by invited and circumstantial audiences. Hasselbring’s Mission Greenbelt Project (2007-present) explores themes of gentrification, education and urban ecology through performances and garden building efforts in San Francisco.  The project is an ongoing urban earthwork of sidewalk gardens, planted with California native and other drought-tolerant plants. The gardens attract wildlife, relieve the city’s overburdened water treatment system and encourage volunteerism and cooperation. The proposed route connects Mission District parks and open spaces.

David Gissen

David Gissen 2011 Fellow David Gissen is an historian and theorist of architecture and urbanism. His recent work focuses on developing a novel concept of nature in architectural thought and developing experimental forms of architectural historical practice. Gissen is the author of the book Subnature: Architecture's Other Environments (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), editor of the “Territory” issue of AD Journal (2010), and editor of the book Big and Green (Princeton Architectural Press, 2003). He recently completed the manuscript "Manhattmospheres" an environmental and architectural history of New York City in the 1970s. htcexperiments.org

Dolores Park Playground

Dolores Park Playground
2011 - $3,000 General Support

In 2011 the renovated Hellen Diller Dolores Park Playground opened to the public. Crucial to the redesign and fundraising efforts was the Friends of Dolores Park Playground, a group of almost a dozen organizers and more than 1,500 supporters who are committed to a safe and clean playground at Dolores Park.

The Friends of Dolores Park Playground sponsors social events at the playground for the enjoyment of parents and children and to bring greater vitality to Dolores Park and the wider community. The long-term mission of the Friends of Dolores Park is to remain stewards of the playground for years to come.

sfrecpark.org

Education Outside (formerly San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance)

Education Outside (formerly San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance)
2014 - $8,000 Corps for Education Outside Program
2011 - $5,000 Conference Support
2009 - $12,000 Matching Grant for Gardening Educators
2008 - $5,000 Conference Support
2007 - $10,000 General Support

Corps for Education Outside program
Corps for Education Outside program is an innovative new program which is transforming San Francisco’s public schools into centers of hands-on environmental science learning and biodiversity.  Corps members transform school gardens into lush, living laboratories, teaching engaging, hands-on lessons that encompass not only science but also sustainability, healthy living, gardening, and cooking. The curriculum used focuses primarily on science as well as English language arts and math.

San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance
The San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance (SFGSA) is a coalition of Bay Area civic organizations whose work supports schoolyard transformations from ordinary asphalt yards into ecologically rich green spaces for learning and play. SFGSA works to ensure that these emerging vibrant landscapes reflect a school’s local ecology and meet the school’s curricular goals. SFGSA members offer a wide variety of resources that can help school communities create and sustain green schoolyards. They advocate for school yard greening at district, city, and state levels; provide professional development for teachers and parents; secure horticultural supplies and other resources for schools; and maintain a website and hotline for advice and troubleshooting needs.

Exploratorium

The Exploratorium is a LEED-Platinum rated building and the institution is working toward energy neutrality through systems like the solar panels on Pier 15. © Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

The Exploratorium’s Pier 15 and 17 is centrally situated on San Francisco’s Embarcadero Waterfront, with access to public transit, and a working dock for visiting ships of all types.© Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

The Exploratorium welcomes over 800,000 visitors every year, from field trip students to adult After Dark audiences to curious individuals from every walk of life. © Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

The Fisher Bay Observatory is home to many of the incredible environmental programs of the Exploratorium. Among its many incredible exhibits and programs, it houses the Wired Pier—an array of sensitive instruments around the Exploratorium campus that measure and record conditions in the environment—the weather, Bay water, pollution, and more © Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

The entire Exploratorium is a hub of environmental programming—our working dock welcomes NOAA research ships and other vessels, our buoy gathers information year-round, and the Fisher Bay Observatory convenes the leading minds in urban resilience and sustainability. © Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

The Exploratorium’s Gallery 4 is dedicated to Living Systems and is one of the only informal learning institutions in the country with a working wet lab on site. © Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu

Exploratorium
2022 - $15,000 Urban Fellows Program
2021 - $15,000 Urban Fellows Program
2019 - $10,000 Coastal Resiliency Collaboration
2019 - $10,000 General Support
2018 - $10,000 Urban Fellowship
2017 - $10,000 Urban Fellowship
2017 - $10,000 Habitat: Bay As It Is Symposium
2016 - $5,000 Habitat: Bay As It Is Symposium
2016 - $10,000 Urban Fellowship
2015 - $10,000 Urban Fellowship
2015 - $10,000 Center for Art and Inquiry
2014 - $10,000 Urban Fellowship
2013 - $10,000 Jane Wolf, Bay Lexicon
2013 - $1,000 Living Innovation Zone
2011 - $10,000 Capital Campaign

Since 1969, the Exploratorium’s museum in San Francisco has been home to a renowned collection of 650+ exhibits that draw together science, art, and human perception, and that have changed the way science is taught. Our award-winning programs inspire visitors, empower teachers through our cutting-edge teacher development program, and influence a global movement where 80% of science centers across the globe contain Exploratorium exhibits. The exhibits on the floor are designed to enable experimentation with physical phenomena while simultaneously strengthening thinking and inquiry skills. This is true not only for our audiences of over 850,000 people a year in San Francisco, but for an estimated 250 million people who experience our exhibits at science centers around the world. As founder Frank Oppenheimer saw it: “A lot of people have given up trying to comprehend things, and when they give up with the physical world they give up with the social and political world as well. If we stop trying to understand things, I think we’re all sunk.” The Exploratorium continues to build on his foundational belief that citizens who are curious and empowered to learn about the world are more likely to take action and tackle problems in their communities.

The Exploratorium’s location on Piers 15 and 17, and in particular our investment in the Fisher Bay Observatory, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to engage the public with a wealth of data about the area’s natural and built environments and dynamic access to the researchers collecting it. Since our relocation from the Palace of Fine Arts in 2013, we have been continually evolving exhibits, programs, and partnerships to engage diverse audiences in understanding the complex ecologies that emerge through the interaction between social, cultural, and natural forces and systems. The facility serves as a new model for a combined research and learning space—an open laboratory for researchers, policy makers, and the public. We are educators who have learned that as we face global climate crises, our strategy must be expansive including the contributions of scientists, educators, artists, designers, historians and cultural workers, as well as practitioners in the realms of policy and advocacy. 

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Exploratorium closed its doors on March 12, 2020. Our museum has always been a playground of discovery and hands-on learning, but as we remain closed, our educators, exhibit developers, scientists and other staff have gotten creative in sparking curiosity online. From helping teachers make science come alive in virtual classrooms, to engaging families all over the globe in tinkering projects, to illuminating timely science through online events like Covid Conversations and After Dark, the Exploratorium’s online content highlights what the Exploratorium does best: creating learning experiences that are engaging, interactive, inspiring, and trustworthy.

The digital programming and resources reach audiences from young kids to adults, and present a full range of topics from nearly all Exploratorium departments, from biology, to the environment, to Cinema Arts. In all, our digital resources are being used more than ever: traffic to our website, which serves 2M people annually, is up by nearly 300%. The Exploratorium is proud to continue sparking curiosity wherever people are, whether the kitchen table laboratory, the virtual classroom, the outdoors, or—eventually—back at Pier 15

Urban Fellowship
The Exploratorium's new Urban Fellow program will address issues related to climate change and rising sea levels.  This program situates an artist or urban practitioner in a residency within the Bay Observatory to explore the human relationship to the urban environment.  Fellows could explore concrete forms: such as architecture and infrastructure: as well as human forms: such as approaches to planning or individual practices within the city.  This investigation is both important and timely as urban areas globally explore the issue of climate change and coastal resiliency.

Jane Wolf, Bay Lexicon
Bay Lexicon is an illustrated field guide to San Francisco’s shoreline. Using methods and tools from landscape scholarship, design, and science education, Bay Lexicon aims to encourage observation and enquiry about the natural world and its relation to culture.

exploratorium.edu

Friends of the Gateway

Friends of the Gateway 2011 - $7,500 General Support Friends of The Gateway (FOG) is a community of artists and innovators championing the creation of a unique public space at the foot of the new Bay Bridge. Using the arts as the organizing principle, the Gateway Park envisioned will integrate engineering, infrastructure, landscape, economic and community development, creating a vibrant regional asset and an international destination.Gateway Park will be located at the touchdown point of eastern span of the Bay Bridge, on the Oakland side, and will encompass at least between 35 and 150 acres. FOG envisions a public space akin to Millennium Park in Chicago or Landschaftspark in Germany, with a comparable economic and social impact, using the arts and the industrial arts movement as the central themes. The East Bay is the international epicenter for a major industrial arts movement, and our hope is that the Gateway will both celebrate this and capitalize upon it. FOG’s vision will seek to integrate human-scaled, social and economic activities into this context using the arts as an engaging vehicle, while creating a vital, vibrant Bay Area arts destination that attracts a local and international audience; explores the relationships between place, structure and creative innovation; and celebrates the remarkable new span of the Bay Bridge.

Headlands Center for the Arts

Headlands Center for the Arts
2015 - $15,000 Climate Change Summit
2012 - $10,000 Architecture/Environment Resident, Mathilde Cassani
2011 - $10,000 Architecture/Environment Resident, Liam Young

Headlands Center for the Arts (HCA) provides intensive residency experiences to an international community of artists working across artistic disciplines. The peer-to-peer learning model made possible by the communal nature of Headlands programs aims to create a dynamic, creative environment that inspires the generation of new ideas, collaboration and new works of art.

HCA supports and invests in individuals at the cutting edge of their fields, whose work will impact the cultural landscape at large. They provide these artists with the support and opportunity to take their work to the next level and to explore and experiment, while bringing artists and thinkers into a dynamic community of local, national, and international artists.

Climate Change Summit
Headlands Center for the Arts is committed to facilitating cross-disciplinary connections in order to seed new projects and collaborations and foster public discourse on a wide range of relevant cultural, social and environmental topics. Over the course of four days in August 2016, fifteen artists, writers, policy makers and scientists were invited to participate in a live/work residency at Headlands where they presented, discussed, and exchanged ideas about many issues pertaining to climate change.  This culminated in a public program summarizing the key ideas, findings and positions local, national and international participants developed during the four day intensive.

headlands.org

Island Press

Rep. Jose Serrano reads from an Island Press op-ed in The Washington Post calling for a return to science-based decisionmaking at the Environmental Protection Agency

Solutions that Inspire Change: Recent Titles from Island Press

Carey Gillam, author of Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science (Island Press, 2017) testifies to the European Parliament about the dangers of glyphosate 

Steven Higashide, author of Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit (Island Press, 2019)

Book launch party for Transit Street Design Guide (Island Press, 2016)

Island Press
2023 - $10,000 Founders’ Pot
2022 - $10,000 Founders’ Pot
2021 - $15,000 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Work 
2021 - $10,000 Founders’ Pot
2020 - $15,000 Online Programming During COVID-19 Pandemic
2020 - $25,000 Founders’ Pot
2019 - $25,000 General Support
2018 - $5,000 Founders’ Pot for General Operating Support
2017 - $5,000 Founders’ Pot for General Operating Support
2017 - $5,000 General Support
2016 - $5,000 General Support
2015 - $5,000 General Support
2014 - $5,000 General Support
2013 - $10,000 Sustainability Knowledge Network
2011 - $5,000 General Support

Island Press supports the environmental community in advancing their knowledge and practice which, ultimately, improves the natural systems on which humankind depends. A non-profit organization, its mission is to provide the best ideas and information to those seeking to understand and protect the environment and create solutions to its complex problems. 

From its growing network, Island Press identifies promising thinkers, inspiring stories, and game-changing ideas to publish some 30 books each year. Island Press’ publishing expertise delivers critical information that enhances the work of thousands of professionals striving to create healthier, more sustainable, and more just communities. Today, Island Press is one of the nation's leading providers of environmental ideas and solutions. 

Island Press’ goal is to spark lasting solutions to environmental problems. Its approach is two-fold: 

Identifying and Developing Ideas 

Island Press identifies and shapes the best ideas, methods, and approaches into accessible content. The most valuable lessons come from those who are doing the work—the scientists, activists, and professionals who are leading change every day. But these problem-solvers often need guidance on how to share their experience with others. Without the editorial and communications support Island Press provides, important new voices would be left unheard, and effective approaches unknown.

Promoting and Distributing Content

The field needs cutting-edge information and practical solutions to a wide range of problems. Island Press taps into a distribution network of environmental movement leaders, researchers, policymakers, professionals, and the public. The organization’s reach extends into many areas, ranging from transportation planning and food systems to affordable housing and green space.

Setting this work apart from for-profit publishers, Island Press is committed to providing reliable, science-based knowledge in digital formats—webinars, articles, opinion pieces, and online courses—most of them free. 

Island Press has developed a body of environmental literature that is considered by many to be the most comprehensive, rigorous, and innovative available. This work is shaping policies, establishing thought leaders, and advancing influential concepts that have had important real-world impacts.

Notable Accomplishments 

Creating Safer Streets for All: Publishing the Urban Street Design Guide guided billions of dollars in infrastructure spending for energy-saving, carbon-reducing public transit and pedestrian-friendly streets across the country. 

Reducing Toxic Chemicals: The award-winning Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science led to limits on the cancer-causing chemical glyphosate (the main ingredient in Roundup) in several countries, as well as on college campuses and public lands across the U.S. 

Regulating Overfishing: The Most Important Fish in the Sea led to the first-ever limits on menhaden fishing, which had reached unsustainable levels. The quota resulted in a 26% reduction in the menhaden catch—a huge victory for fishing communities and conservationists.

Response to COVID-19 Pandemic

As workplaces closed and events were canceled, Island Press moved quickly to create more online offerings for professionals and students who were now working from home. Island Press released a dozen e-books for free and nearly tripled its schedule of free webinars for professionals. As a result, attendance to online trainings more than doubled. This evolving approach helped the organization grow the number of people it serves, and has widened its geographic reach.

islandpress.org

Jeff Mapes

Jeff Mapes 2011 Fellow Jeff Mapes is the author of Pedaling Revolution: How Cyclists are Changing American Cities (Oregon State University Press, 2009) which describes the growing urban bike culture that is changing the look and feel of U.S. cities. Mapes, a seasoned political journalist and long-time bike commuter, explores the growth of bicycle advocacy while covering such issues as the environmental, safety, and health aspects of bicycling for short urban trips. Chapters set in Chicago and Portland show how bicycling has became a political act, with seemingly dozens of subcultures, and how cyclists - with the encouragement of local officials - are seizing streets back from motorists. Bike activists are creating the future of how we travel and live in twenty-first-century cities.

Livable City

Livable City
2013 - $10,000 Play Streets for All
2012 - $5,000 Permanent Sunday Streets Route in the Mission
2011 - $5,000 Permanent Sunday Streets Route in the Mission

Livable City is a sustainable transportation and land use advocacy non-profit in San Francisco that works to create a city of great streets and complete neighborhoods, where walking, bicycling, and transit are the best choices for most trips, and where public spaces are beautiful, well designed and maintained. They use an integrated approach to define livability that includes transportation and land use advocacy, development of policies for public space and best practices with a goal of creating a safer, healthier and more livable San Francisco.In 2008, Livable City partnered with the Mayor’s office and the Department of Public Health to produce San Francisco’s first two Sunday Streets events, which created several miles of car-free space for walking, cycling, jogging and organized recreational activities. Sunday Streets proved to be a huge success, and the program grew to six events in 2009 and nine events in both 2010 and 2011. Sunday Streets has provided recreational opportunities to tens of thousands of San Franciscans and visitors, focusing on neighborhoods that lack these opportunities. Benefits include local economic development, neighborhood commercial vitality, community building and neighborhood engagement, and a catalyst for neighborhood conversations about reclaiming streets on a temporary or permanent basis.Play Streets for All
Play Streets for All (PSFA) trains and supports local organizers to produce smaller open streets events - called Play Streets - in their communities. The idea behind this effort is to build local leadership and increase the number, location and frequency of car-free events in San Francisco.  PSFA program objectives are to (1) simplify the permit application process, (2) identify, contact and train PSFA organizers, (3) provide technical assistance to PSFA organizers during the event organizing process and (4) create a replicable PSFA organizing model that can be shared throughout the Bay Area.

livablecity.org
sundaystreetssf.com

Mission Community Market – Mercado Plaza

Mission Community Market 2011 - $10,000 Mercado Plaza Rebar and the Mission Community Market (MCM) have formed a partnership to create a new car-free plaza and public space on Bartlett Street in the Mission. Building on the place-making efforts of the MCM, the new plaza will provide a beautiful, safe and much needed public space for activities that support family health, promote small businesses and bring diverse communities together.Building on the MCM’s place-making activities, the Mercado Plaza will bring diverse communities together through the civic design process, entrepreneurial opportunity and public space design. The goal for the car-free plaza is to create a true public marketplace and flexible urban space. It will accommodate large gatherings, like MCM, as well as smaller neighborhood activities and play. The concept is a programmable plaza surface with temporary infrastructure such as market stall supports, shading, seating and a stage. Flexible street furniture, vendor stalls and utility hookups can reduce the barriers for diverse entrepreneurs to enter the marketplace as well as an upgrade to the ecological infrastructure of the street by implementing stormwater best management practices - permeable pavers, rain gardens and potentially subsurface infiltration. Unique paving, safer lighting, and a Mission mural arts gallery that has already begun on Bartlett will attract local shoppers, tourists and neighborhood families. missioncommunitymarket.org

Nature in the City

Nature in the City
2021 - $15,000 Climate Resilience Work
2017 - $5,000 Backyard Natives Nursery Program
2017 – $10,000 General Support
2014 - $5,000 General Support
2011 - $5,000 Green Hairstreak Butterfly Project
2010 - $5,000 Green Hairstreak Butterfly Project

As the only non-profit organization dedicated to restoration & stewardship of San Francisco’s natural heritage, Nature in the City plays a critical role in securing the city’s wild lands for future generations. Nature in the City connects with the city at large through the sponsorship of nature walks, events for children and families, eco-literacy training, volunteer opportunities, and resources for community groups wishing to start their own citizen science projects.

Green Hairstreak Butterfly project
Discovered by modern science in the late 1800s from “the hills of San Francisco” the Green Hairstreak (Callophrys dumetorum) is a small, nickel-sized butterfly isolated in three remaining remnant habitats within the city: Hawk Hill and Rocky Outcrop overlooking the Sunset District and the coastal bluffs of the Presidio. The primary goal of the Green Hairstreak Project is to connect two disjunctive butterfly populations in the Sunset District with street level plantings of host and nectar sources. If the two populations can interbreed, their genetic viability and diversity will be more secure.

natureinthecity.org

Nicholas de Monchaux

Nicholas de Monchaux 2011 Fellow Nicholas de Monchaux is an architect and urbanist, whose work examines the intersections between nature, technology and the city.  Currently assistant professor of Architecture and Urban Design at UC Berkeley, he has recently authored Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo (published by the MIT press). His project Local Code: Real Estates used geospatial analysis to identify thousands of publicly owned abandoned sites in major US cities - imagining this distributed, vacant landscape as a new urban system. Using parametric design, a landscape proposal for each site is tailored to local conditions, optimizing thermal and hydrological performance to enhance the whole city’s ecology—and relieving burdens on existing infrastructure. Local Code’s quantifiable effects on energy usage and stormwater remediation eradicate the need for more expensive, yet invisible, sewer and electrical upgrades. In addition, the project uses citizen participation to conceive a new, more public infrastructure as well —a robust network of urban greenways with tangible benefits to the health and safety of every citizen. Local Code was recently exhibited at SPUR and was a finalist in the WPA 2.0 competition sponsored by UCLA Citylab and appeared at the 2010 Biennial of the Americas. nicholas.demonchaux.com

Produce to the People

Produce to the People 2011 - $3,000 General Support Produce to the People (PttP) is a grassroots, community food organization in San Francisco, founded in June 2009.  PttP aims to localize the food system by utilizing and celebrating the unused resources in San Francisco, including fruit trees, vacant lots, and people power. PttP’s work is rooted in outreach to under served communities, providing healthy, organic, local food for people who may not always have access to it, supporting garden projects in communities that may not have the funds to create or sustain them on their own, and providing educational jobs to youth with barriers to employment. They work to link these elements together; the growth, harvest, and dispersal of food, in conjunction with the collaboration of other organizations, neighbors, patrons of food programs, and young people, creates a full circle that links people coming from diverse life experiences and unites them over a common need for healthy food and community based care for one another. producetothepeople.org

Rosten Woo

Rosten Woo 2011 Fellow Rosten Woo is an artist, designer and writer living in Los Angeles. He makes work that helps people understand complex systems and participate in group decision-making. His work has been exhibited at the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, the New Museum, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Netherlands Architectural Institute, the Lower East Side Tenement Museum; and in various public housing developments, tugboats, shopping malls and parks in New York City and Los Angeles. His first book, Street Valuewas published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. He is co-founder and former executive director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit organization that uses design and art to improve civic engagement. CUP projects demystify the urban policy and planning issues that impact communities so that more individuals can better participate in shaping them. wehavenoart.net

San Francisco Art Institute

San Francisco Art Institute
2014 - $5,000 Urban Studies Fellow, to Be Announced in the Fall
2013 - $5,000 Urban Studies Fellow, Pablo Helguera
2012 - $5,000 Urban Studies Fellow, Radhika Subramaniam
2011 - $5,000 Urban Studies Fellow, Geoff Manaugh

Founded in 1871 the San Francisco Art Insitute (SFAI) is one of the nations oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art. Poised at the forefront of socially conscious art movements, SFAI’s Urban Studies program is designed specifically to address the contributions of art, artists, and researchers to the urban domain.The changing dynamics of cities—most notably the problem of rapid worldwide urbanization—have demanded new ways of thinking about geography, citizenship, and community.  Through the two-year MA program, students strive to positively engage, critique, and transform contemporary urban life in multiple ways. The Urban Studies program integrates courses and resources from both the School of Studio Practice and the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, allowing students to chart an individualized path of study. Faculty contribute expertise in such diverse—yet inextricably linked—fields as curatorial studies, visual studies, art history, anthropology, sociology, geography, comparative literature, philosophy, media/technology studies, ethnic studies and American studies. In addition, the Seed Fund Teaching Fellowship in Urban Studies brings distinguished artists, designers, architects, and planners to campus for discussions of urban practices.

Established in 2011, the Seed Fund Teaching Fellowship in Urban Studies was created as a co-curricular research and development initiative in support of SFAI’s Urban Studies program. Emphasizing art and design practices as forms of urban problem-solving, the fellowship program includes public lectures and colloquia by distinguished artists, designers, architects, planners, and artist collectives, and is meant to facilitate sustained on-campus residencies that enable discussions of process, aesthetics, and exemplary urban practices.

sfai.edu

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Education Fund

A recipient of the SF Bicycle Coalition’s Bike Match program.

Car-free space in Golden Gate Park.

People biking and enjoying a car-free Great Highway during the pandemic.

Students during a socially-distant bike education class.

Bay area residents enjoying biking on San Francisco streets.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Education Fund
2019 - $10,000 General Support
2017 - $10,000 Transportation Equity Network
2013 - $5,000 "Kit of Parts" Manual
2012 - $25,000 2nd Street Project
2011 - $10,000 Family Biking Guide and Programs
2010 - $10,000 Connecting the City
2009 - $5,000 Great Streets Program

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is one of the oldest bicycle advocacy organizations in the country and was founded in 1971 by a group of activists representing a coalition of environmental and neighborhood groups. The organization quickly evolved into a powerful alliance of individuals working for a more bicycle-friendly city. The SF Bicycle Coalition has been dominated by a grassroots volunteer ethic ever since, growing into one of the strongest bicycle advocacy organizations in the country. For over 45 years, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has been transforming San Francisco streets and neighborhoods by promoting the bicycle for everyday transportation. Through their day-to-day advocacy, education and working partnerships with city and community agencies, the organization continues to create safe, just, and livable streets for all San Franciscans.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition embodies their core principles: transportation justice, sustainability, people power, and joy in all areas of their work. In their 2018-2022 strategic plan, the SF Francisco Bicycle Coalition incorporated these values to construct and execute a plan that prioritizes quality bicycle infrastructure and increases safety and invites more people to bike. In an effort to adapt to a world that’s changing the way it gets around, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition aims to transform the streets of San Francisco through:

1. The demand of high-quality infrastructure and visionary improvements to connect the city;
2. Building public support and political power to win affordable and sustainable transportation for all San Franciscans; 
3. The growth, engagement, and empowerment of membership in order to strengthen the organization and deepen community support for bicycling and; 
4. Introducing San Franciscans of all ages, identities, and backgrounds to the joy of bicycling and encouraging more San Franciscans to bicycle more often.

To fulfill these objectives, the SF Bicycle Coalition employs both their programmatic and advocacy related work to promote, educate, and reimagine transportation in San Francisco. Nationwide, transportation remains to be the second biggest expense in a household’s budget, and families in San Francisco feel that cost acutely. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition strives to provide affordable transit options to those in need and promote the bicycle for everyday transportation. 

Through the Bike It Forward program, the SF Bicycle Coalition works alongside community groups around the City to organize events structured to provide bikes to neighborhood residents. The organization reclaims unclaimed and abandoned bikes from the SFMTA, BART, and other agencies that are repaired with the help of volunteers. Alternatively, the Bike Match program connects people who have bikes they no longer use with those who need a bike. As a cooperative, community-driven collaborative, neighborhood residents who have expressed a need through partner organizations, complete a bicycle education course, get properly fitted for their new bike, and leave with a new, affordable, fun and healthy way to get around. 

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is considered the leading resource for street safety and education in the city. The organization structures its curriculum to cater toward people who bike and those who share the streets with people who bike. Whether a course is dedicated to youth and family biking, navigating safely through San Francisco, learning how to share the streets with all forms of transit, riding at night and in all weather conditions, or just getting acquainted with the basics, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is proud to offer free online resources and classes that accommodate all age ranges, levels of comfortability, and experience.

Through their advocacy work, the SF Bicycle Coalition continues to push for more car-free spaces, slow streets, and safe, high-quality biking infrastructure. To keep expanding the number of Slow Streets, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition continues to push the City to explore more permanent treatments and prioritize the densest San Francisco neighborhoods, including the Tenderloin and SoMa. In 2020, advocacy for better bike infrastructure pushed forward and construction continued on Lefty O’Doul Bridge, 7th Street from Folsom to Townsend, Howard Street from 3rd to Embarcadero, new protected bike lane segments on the Embarcadero, and improvements to 20th Avenue in the Outer Sunset. 

During the pandemic, the organization has seen six times more people biking in Golden Gate Park. Now, after decades of advocacy, San Franciscans can enjoy a fully car-free route from the Panhandle to Ocean Beach; take a car-free ride through the Panhandle, to the eastern segment of JFK Drive, through Overlook and Middle Drive, and onto the car-free western segment of MLK Drive. While more people are looking to spend more time outdoors amidst the lifting of shelter-in-place orders, the Slow Streets program has also expanded car-free space across San Francisco to help people stay healthy and safe. Thanks to this program, people can maintain social distance as they walk, bike, and roll on over 30 corridors that are closed to vehicle through traffic. 

The Seed Fund have been supporters of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition for over a decade and have partnered with the organization to fund certain campaigns centered around transportation justice, sustainability, people power, and joy. Some of these projects include:

• In 2012, the Seed Fund granted the SF Bicycle Coalition $5,000 toward the 2nd Street redesign in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood to push for and prioritize biking and walking infrastructure. 

• In 2013, $5,000 was granted to the SF Bicycle Coalition’s “Kit of Parts” manual that provided city planners with information on how to quickly transform city streets that included separated bikeways, greening initiatives, and sidewalk expansions. The toolkit was intended to be an open and accessible resource that provided inspirational, practical, and feasible designs not only for San Francisco officials but other cities looking to create more sustainable solutions on both a national and global scale. 

• In 2017, The Seed Fund funded the SF Bicycle Coalition’s Transportation Equity Network proposal that identified the need to come together with other local community partners to establish a collective that ensured an equitable distribution of bikes. The Community Bike Build program (now formally known as the Bike It Forward program) needed to extend beyond simply providing low income residents with a bike, lights, lock and helmet. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition — along with its partners —  determined that additional resources like bicycle safety education, affordable maintenance and culturally competent infrastructure needed to be implemented.

• In 2019, The Seed Fund funded the SF Bicycle Coalition’s Embarcadero campaign which helped hire staff and additional resources to ensure that the vision of a two-way bike lane along the waterfront side of the Embarcadero project advanced toward approvals. The $10,000 grant toward this project gave the SF Bicycle Coalition the flexibility to work with elected officials and City agencies to identify and allocate funding for construction. Additionally, these funds helped ensure that the necessary time and resources to make this project a national and international model for linking climate adaptation and mitigation efforts through the best practices of green infrastructure were met. 

sfbike.org

San Francisco Nature Education

San Francisco Nature Education
2011 - $5,000 General Support

San Francisco Nature Education (SFNE) is now in its eleventh year of providing meaningful environmental education to students from under served schools. SFNE’s school program is focused on k-3rd grade students throughout schools in San Francisco and  introduces students at a very young age to basic concepts: respect for nature, conservation and stewardship.

SFNE’s trained volunteer naturalists visit classrooms and conduct field trips to local parks and also provided much needed mentoring to students in small groups. SFNE prides itself on maintaining a ratio of one to six students in the classroom and field. SFNE received the Jefferson Award for Public Service in 2005 and its’ director was nominated for the 2011 Terwilliger Environmental Award.

sfnature.org

Sandor Katz

Sandor Katz 2011 Fellow Sandor Katz is the author of The Revolution Will Not be Microwaved: Inside America's Underground Food Movements (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006) This book is about food activism and people trying to make better choices – people wanting to create better food alternatives for themselves and the people in the communities around them.Katz urges people to challenge their roles as unquestioning consumers of the American food industry. His message is to use everyday ingredients to be a producer and not just consumer of food – and not just ordinary food – but some of the most vibrantly flavorful and health giving foods imaginable. His critique of mega production and celebration of the alternatives empowers people to feel like they can make and cultivate their own food – whatever their circumstances. His long held belief in community gardens, community supported agriculture and community kitchens has inspired many and been an integral part in the underground food movement. Katz is also the author of The Art of Fermentation: An In-depth Exploration of Essential Concepts and Processes from Around the World (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012) and Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2003). He travels widely teaching people simple fermentation techniques and demystify home fermentation. He has taught hundreds of hands-on fermentation workshops around the US and Australia. wildfermentation.com

Slide Ranch

Slide Ranch
2011 - $10,000 Slide Outside Project
2007 - $10,000 General Support

Slide Ranch has provided experiential education with environmental and sustainable agriculture curricula since 1970.  Slide Ranch staff operate the farm using a turn of the century farmhouse, old creamery and several outbuildings situated along a scenic coastal bluff.  Annually over 8,000 Bay Area residents, many of them children, participate in three primary Slide Ranch programs: Family Programs, Group Programs and Summer Day Camp.  Slide Ranch Programs bring learning to life with hands-on education activities on a working farm.  More than 170,000 visitors have participated in programs and events at this spectacular coastal site perched above the Pacific Ocean in western Marin County.  Slide Ranch inspires visitors to discover the connections between the food we eat and the soil that nourishes the plants and animals. The outdoor classroom ignites ongoing learning and provides a place to reflect on the impact that individual and collective choices have on the environment, food and health.

The Slide Outside Project provides a package of on and off-site services to a targeted set of partners that help low-income students, families and educators access a broader spectrum of services and integrate lessons learned at Slide Ranch into their everyday lives. The program includes a combination of outreach and collaboration, day and overnight programs based at Slide Ranch, Slide Ranch staff visits to program sites, family engagement strategies, and teacher training.

slideranch.org

Story of Stuff Project/Annie Leonard

Story of Stuff Project/Annie Leonard
2011 - $3,000 General Support

The Story of Stuff is a twenty minute animation on the way we make, use and throw away consumer goods.  With over 15 million views and counting, The Story of Stuff,  is one of the most watched environmental-themed online movies of all time.

The Story of Stuff Project was created by Annie Leonard to leverage and extend the film’s impact. It works to amplify public discourse on a series of environmental, social and economic concerns and facilitate the growing Story of Stuff community’s involvement in strategic efforts to build a more sustainable and just world. Their on-line community includes over 150,000 activists and they partner with hundreds of environmental and social justice organizations worldwide to create and distribute their films, curricula and other content.  Their latest movie, The Story of Change, has just been released.

storyofstuff.org

Streetsblog

Streetsblog
2023 - $12,000 General Support
2021 - $12,000 General Support
2019 - $10,000 General Support
2018 - $8,000 General Support
2017 - $8,000 General Support
2017 - $8,000 General Support
2016 - $8,000 General Support
2011 - $8,000 General Support

Streetsblog is a non-profit daily news source, online community and political mobilizer for the Bay Area’s Livable Streets movement. Streetsblog frames the public debate on transportation and planning issues, creating momentum for more sustainable streets. A team of local writers collaborates with writers throughout California and Nationally to provide full coverage of transportation reform, urban planning and the Livable Streets movement locally and nationwide.

Streetsblog began in 2006 as a single local blog covering transportation and land use issues in New York City. The experiment proved a dramatic success, and it showcased the potential for focused advocacy journalism to empower overlooked constituencies and to usher in a reform-minded transportation policy agenda - SF.Streetsblog was launched in January 2009. The blog quickly became an influential voice and a mobilizer for the local transportation reform movement. Today, it reaches nearly 70,000 direct monthly readers, and plays a key role in the Bay Area’s Livable Streets movement. Their work is published on SF Gate and Bay Citizen. Streetsblog’s drumbeat of pedestrian, bicycle and transit stories have helped keep these important issues on the radar of supervisors and policy makers at City Hall and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

sf.streetsblog.org

Suzanne Cockrell, California College of the Arts Engage Class

Suzanne Cockrell, Engage Class at California College of the Arts 2011 - $1,125  Garden at Emerson Elemenary School, Oakland This grant was used to fund the design and building of a small orchard and pollinator garden at Emerson K-5 Public Elementary School located in Oakland’s Temescal District. The orchard and garden are a community project which was part of an undergraduate Community Arts/Diversity Studies course at California College of the Arts (CCA).  The CCA students led by artist, Suzanne Cockrell, mentored thirty five 4th graders to plan and implement a garden for the school community.  Students germinated seeds for the pollinator garden, learned the botanical parts of a fruit tree and how fruit grows, foraged and tasted fruit from neighborhood trees, and helped sheet mulch and plant the orchard in their schoolyard.  The project developed a culture of stewardship for the orchard and through special assemblies, curriculum and harvest celebrations.  The students and school families will nurture and care for their orchard over time.

The Bike Kitchen

The Bike Kitchen
2011 - $3,000 General Support

San Francisco’s Bike Kitchen teaches people of all ages and backgrounds how to repair bicycles. Through bike repair and bicycle related projects, the Bike Kitchen promotes personal development and provides leadership opportunities. Operating as a cooperative shop, they provide affordable ways to acquire and maintain a bike, offer youth programs, encourage re-use and recycling, and work with community groups to get more people on bicycles. The Bike Kitchen is a 501(c)(3) non-profit run by volunteers.

bikekitchen.org

Transportation Alternatives

Transportation Alternatives
2023 - $20,000 20x20 Project
2022 - $10,000 General Support
2011 - $5,000 General Support

Transportation Alternatives (TA) works to reclaim New York City’s streets from the automobile and to advocate for better walking, biking, and public transit for all New Yorkers. Through grassroots organizing and strategic communication campaigns, TA advances infrastructure and policy improvements that prioritize people, create safer streets, and ultimately realize a more accessible, sustainable, and equitable city. TA engages thousands of stakeholders each year through its advocacy work, including community residents, peer nonprofit organizations, civic coalitions, business leaders, elected local and state officials, and government agencies. Their campaigns reshape streetscapes into safe places where people can walk, bike, meet, play, and participate in the variety of activities that make urban living healthy, vibrant, and dynamic.

In the past five decades, TA has made remarkable progress. Today, bike lanes ribbon up and down Manhattan avenues. Hundreds of thousands more ride a bike to work every day. The city is equipped with dedicated bus lanes, public bike share, and car-free park spaces that did not exist five decades ago. In just the last two decades, TA advocacy was responsible for the introduction of America’s first protected bike lanes and the world’s largest speed camera program.  TA lowered the citywide speed limit for the first time in 50 years, and introduced Vision Zero to New York City, an idea which then spread across the U.S. The same story is true of the federal Safe Routes to Schools and Safe Routes for Seniors programs.

The few who founded Transportation Alternatives recruited and multiplied, and now TA’s tent of supporters is packed with New Yorkers who regularly take action, make the case to public officials, and testify to the importance of TA’s mission. Each week, TA organizes local meetings, protests, rallies, petition drives, community gatherings and on-street actions to amplify voices. By the power of these people and a track record of transformative change, TA demands New York City’s most influential decision makers pay attention.

In that time, a remarkable subset of the organization was also born. Families for Safe Streets (FSS) is a coalition of people injured in traffic crashes, and the children, spouses, siblings, and parents whose loved ones have been killed. What began in 2014 as a small group of families in mourning has grown to a citywide force for change, and a national inspiration, with chapter organizations in 14 cities. Together, this powerful group of survivors tell their stories as an unignorable testament to the need for safe streets and refuse to give an inch in defense of the status quo.

From the creation of grand public spaces, like the pedestrianization of Times Square, to the construction of protected bike lanes and pedestrian plazas in all five boroughs, TA and FSS have paved the way for remarkable changes in New York City’s transportation infrastructure and transformed New Yorkers’ understanding of bicycling, walking and public transit.

transalt.org

Van Alen Institute

Van Alen Institute
2018 - $10,000 Climate Council
2011 - $5,000 Life at the Speed of Rail Publication
2009 - $10,000 Manhattan 2409
2008 - $5,000 David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang, Living City

Van Alen Institute is an independent nonprofit architectural organization that promotes inquiry into the processes that shape the design of the public realm.

For over a century, the Van Alen Institute has cultivated a fellowship of design practitioners and scholars, awarded excellence in design, and fostered dialogue about the evolving role of architecture in the public realm. The Institute’s community of fellows, members, participants and public audiences is an integral part of that dialogue, shaping and expanding our definition of ‘public architecture’ and its impact on contemporary civic life.

Living City: A Public Interface to Air Quality in New York
Living City is a full-scale prototype building skin designed to breathe in response to air quality. During their fellowship term, David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang developed one of the first architecture prototypes to link local responses in a building to a distributed network of sensors throughout the city.  With Living City, Benjamin and Yang confront the air as the most public and politicized of spaces in the city—shared by all but invisible, often divisible, and intensely debated and controlled. Using New York City as a research lab, they propose an architecture that functions as a public interface to air quality, creating a platform for an ecology of building skins where individual buildings receive, share and respond to data as part of a collective network. For more information about Living City, visit www.thelivingcity.net.

Eric W. Sanderson, Manhattan 2409
Eric W. Sanderson’s Mannahatta project envisions the long-term future of Manhattan as an ecosystem in the context of its rich ecological and social history. Sanderson uses his extensive research and documentation of the diverse ecological landscapes of Mannahatta to reflect on where New York has come from and speculates on how sustainability can be built into the structure and practice of New York over the next 400 years. During his fellowship term at Van Alen Institute, Sanderson pursued the research and writing of a brief for a design competition on the future sustainability in New York City in stages approximately 50, 150 and 400 years from now, prompted by sustainable characteristics of Mannahatta. As part of this work, Sanderson shared the data resources and ecological concepts of the Mannahatta Project with the design community at large, and he organized  a public roundtable with leading thinkers in urban sustainability and ecology to discuss and debate the ecological themes that Mannahatta raises in contrast to the city today.

Life at the Speed of Rail
How will high-speed rail change American life in the coming decades? This multimedia competition seeks the visions of the architectural design community, planners, graphic designers, artists—anyone who wants to contribute to the discussion surrounding high-speed rail. In this Call for Design Ideas, entrants are asked to produce projects and narratives picturing the wide-ranging impacts that a new transportation network will have on the nation’s communities, whether urban or rural, rail-riding or car-centric, heartland or borderland. By collecting these ideas and images of a transformed America—be they specific, pragmatic, or speculative—we’ll better understand the hopes and fears of our current moment and be better equipped to decide whether and how we build this new infrastructure.

vanalen.org