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

Dr. Timothy Beatley

Dr. Timothy Beatley
2013 Fellow

Dr. Timothy Beatley is an internationally recognized author, sustainable city researcher and Professor at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. The author of more than fifteen books including Biophilic Cities: Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning, Native to nowhere: sustaining home and community in a global age and Green urbanism: learning from European cities, Beatley's primary subject is that of sustainable communities.

Beatley believes that sustainable and resilient cities represent our best hope for addressing today’s environmental challenges, and he focuses on strategies for reducing the ecological footprints of towns and cities, while simultaneously becoming more livable and equitable places.

One of Beatley’s main concepts is that of Green Urbanism. Cities that exemplify green urbanism strive to live within its ecological limits. They are designed to function in ways analogous to nature and attempt to be locally and regionally self-sufficient. An additional benefit of Green Urbanism is the facilitation of more sustainable lifestyles and its emphasis on a high quality of neighborhood and community life.

tim.greenurbanvision.com

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 Potrero Nursery School

Friends of Potrero Nursery School
2013 - $8,000 Urban Garden
2010 - $5,000 Capital Campaign

The Friends of Potrero Hill Nursery School (FOPHNS) is a much-loved preschool that has served San Francisco families for 12 years. In that time over 200 children have begun school in its caring and delightful atmosphere with an emphasis and a reverance for nature.  Creating environmentalists from the start, children are engaged in a seasonal cycle of activities in their small garden and throughout the neighborhood, drawing the children’s attention to the natural world around them.Capital Campaign
The capital campaign raised funds to build a permanent home for FOPHNS and a new Family Center on the grounds of the oldest public schoolhouse in San Francisco. The San Francisco Unified School District has leased to FOPHNS two outbuildings for a token amount, with the understanding that Friends will reuse them to better the community. This opportunity will not only provide long-term security for the school, but will also transform the I.M. Scott site and its two abandoned buildings into vibrant community assets: a Preschool and a Family Center. This project models a new form of green community center - a place where the nurturing of children is understood to be at the heart of creating a healthy society.

Urban Garden
To complement the completed main building, this second phase of the project creates a garden and play space that will surround a small family center.  The garden is a fascinating place for young children, full of the drama of birds and bugs  and worms as well as the processes of growth and decay. Caring for plants allows children to become closely acquainted with these and other living organisms. This sparks curiosity and empowers children to learn more about their natural surroundings.

fophns.com

Hidden Nature SF

Hidden Nature SF
2014 - $10,000 SFB4
2013 - $15,000 SFB4

Hidden Nature SF  investigates and describes the extraordinary landscape ecology of San Francisco at the time that Gasper de Portolá’s expedition laid their eyes on the bay in 1769. Through a block-by-block understanding of past landscape conditions, one will see the "ecological fundamentals" still shaping the urban landscape.  It's goal is to suffuse the imaginations of San Franciscans with a vision of ecology so rich and compelling that it shifts perspectives for centuries to come and creates a template for sustainability suited to the particular geographic circumstances of San Francisco—using history to reveal, discover, and re-imagine.

On the project is Robin Grossinger, Senior Scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI). He was named an Environmental Hero by Bay Nature Magazine and received the 2014 Carla Bard Bay Education Award from the Bay Institute. He has been featured nationally on NPR for his work on the historical ecology of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and is the author of the Napa Valley Historical Ecology Atlas (University of California Press 2012).

Robin is joined by Eric Sanderson, Ph.D., a Senior Conservation Ecologist at WCS and the author of the bestselling book, Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City (Abrams, 2009). He is internationally known for his work in wildlife and landscape conservation and imagining cities in the past, present, and future. His work has been featured in National Geographic Magazine, The New Yorker, the New York Times, and elsewhere.

Hidden Nature SF

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

Kevin Conger

Kevin Conger 2013 Fellow Kevin Conger is the President and CEO of CMG Landscape Architecture, as well as a founding partner of this San Francisco-based studio. He has developed many projects to benefit the Bay Area’s design community, including Better Market Street, the Yerba Buena Street Life Plan, redevelopment plans for Hunters Point and Treasure Island. These projects seek to create sustainable accessibility, natural vistas and green design elements to benefit the Bay Area community as a whole.

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

Rebar

photo credit: Lucy Goodhart 

Rebar
2013 - $5,000 Adaptive Metropolis Symposium
2009 - $10,000 Hayes Valley Farm

REBAR's work encompasses visual and conceptual public art, landscape design, urban intervention, temporary performance installation, digital media and print design. Together with UC Berkeley Department of Landscape Architecture, The Adaptive Metropolis symposium convenes a global community of thinkers and doers to discuss the future of user-generated urbanism. The participation of leading scholars and critics allows authoritative and thorough analysis. The symposium also provides practitioners and theorists with a platform to discuss and share ideas, experiences, knowledge, and skills, creating an up-to-date battlefield map. Lastly, the symposium explores new ways to look at the subject matter, setting the stage for the next phase of its development. http://laep.ced.berkeley.edu/adaptivemetropolis/site/

Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) is a temporary urban permaculture demonstration site in San Francisco. It is a 2.2-acre non-profit community-run farm, urban agriculture education and research project located in the heart of the city of San Francisco.  After the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, San Francisco's Central Freeway was compromised and in the years to come the ramps bordered by Laguna, Oak, Fell, and Octavia Streets were closed, and the lot locked up. In January 2010, the City activated the site for temporary green space use, allowing for Hayes Valley Farm to create the space for education and reflection.

Rebar was part of the original team that conceived of, planned, and fundraised to create Hayes Valley Farm. They worked closely with the Mayor’s Office of San Francisco, The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, the Public Utilities Commission, and the Department of Public Works to open the gates to the formerly vacant lot and bring in essential infrastructure. Rebar partnered with S12 Architects in the design and construction of the farm’s greenhouse, and worked closely with the HVF team to develop the farm’s current logo.

Rebar is a cross-disciplinary practice for solving the design problems of the commons.

rebargroup.org
hayesvalleyfarm.com

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 Waldorf School

San Francisco Waldorf School
2018 - $34,000 Outdoor Classroom
2016 - $33,000 Outdoor Classroom
2015 - $5,000 Outdoor Classroom
2014 - $7,500 Outdoor Classroom
2013 - $10,000 Outdoor Classroom
2009 - $10,000 Biodynamic Garden Program
2008 - $6,000 Biodynamic Garden Program
2007 - $10,000 High School Capital Campaign

San Francisco Waldorf School is an independent, co-educational, non-sectarian school providing education from Kindergarten through Grade 12. SFWS was founded in 1979 as an independent school within the rich Waldorf tradition whose mission is to educate students using an approach that fosters independent thought and a sense of personal responsibility. The Waldorf curriculum, designed by Austrian philosopher and scientist Rudolf Steiner in 1919, is based on a thorough study of child development, so that the subjects taught meet not only the cognitive developmental needs of the students, but also their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. There are over a thousand Waldorf schools around the world, each operating independently, but held together by a common understanding of human development and a recognition of the value of artistic work and meaningful social interaction.High School capital campaign

San Francisco Waldorf High School’s campus opened in September 2007. As the first school in San Francisco to be awarded the coveted LEED Gold certification, the overall goal of the project was to create an environment that is in harmony with the philosophy of Waldorf Education. Perhaps the greatest reflection of this success is the fact that the building itself will be incorporated into the curriculum as an educational resource for environmental studies. The principals of the Waldorf philosophy and the actual building serve as a teaching tool for students, demonstrating how to become actively involved in today’s social issues.Biodynamic Garden

The Waldorf School Biodynamic Garden was created to grow children's love for the earth, for meaningful labor, and for themselves and their community through infinitely fascinating work as farmers.  Located at the Little Sisters of the Poor’s St. Anne’s home, the garden acts as a teaching tool, a healthy food source for the lunchroom and a social hub for the children as well as the residents of St. Anne’s. The participating students, kindergarten through third grade, are toured through the garden to taste what is in season and observe the garden’s changes before splitting up to participate in the upkeep of the garden.  With tasks like planting apple trees, building compost and harvesting crops, every child is engaged with the garden directly, discovering the benefits of farming for themselves.Nature Program\The Waldorf School Nature Program creates an overarching program that serves as a model for other urban schools who aspire to “bring nature alive” for students, faculty and the entire community. The program brings younger children out into nature and older students the opportunity to learn more about regional biodiversity. This program will offer an ongoing educational series to facilitate community understanding and support. This series brings a wide variety of speakers to address topics that enhance understanding of environmental education, brought via lectures, workshops and events. The program's goal is to create awareness of issues and initiatives that are relevant in the San Francisco Bay Area.

sfwaldorf.org

SF Environment

SF Environment
2014 - $10,000 Biodiversity Program
2013 - $10,000 Biodiversity Program

Under the San Francisco Department of the Environment, a Biodiversity Program, led by biodiversity coordinator Peter Brastow, creates programs, plans and strategies for the management and stewardship of San Francisco wildlands, biodiversity and public biodiversity education.

The Biodiversity Program will create a Strategic Biodiversity Action Plan, with a blueprint for the program and San Francisco. It will also create the infrastructure to act as the hub for biodiversity planning, policy-making, coordination and education city-wide.

sfenvironment.org

Shaping San Francisco

Shaping San Francisco
2019 - $10,000 General Support
2018 - $5,000 General Support 
2017 - $5,000 General Support
2016 - $5,000 General Support
2013 - $5,000 General Support
2012 - $5,000 General Support
2010 - $5,000 Ecology Emerges Project Documentation

Serving the City for 25 years, Shaping San Francisco is an ongoing multimedia project in bottom-up history, offering an online archive at FoundSF.org—a place to document, discover, and shape San Francisco history—and public programming sharing the stories of daily life in the City by the Bay. Shaping San Francisco provides access to the City's lost history, with a long-term goal of facilitating its discovery, presentation, and preservation. The project seeks to create a physical and virtual commons where together we make—and understand our place within—history every day

Shaping San Francisco believes that “History is a Creative Act in the Present,” or in other words, each person is an agent of history, and every moment is historical, even if relatively little makes it on to the “historical record.” Shaping San Francisco’s public engagement promotes the idea that history can—and should—be de-professionalized, made into a popular, participatory process. More than just a website, more than just a lecture series, more than a collection of ongoing walking and bike tours, Shaping San Francisco encourages collective investigation of and creation of new shared social histories about the world we cohabitate together.

Shaping San Francisco's work encourages ordinary citizens to see the urban environment around them having been created in by a combination of social and ecological processes over time, within historic economic and cultural contexts; just as important the urban environment is shaped, too, by a ceaseless effort to challenge the meaning and direction of those processes and contexts. Shaping San Francisco has focused from its origins on San Francisco's ecological history, the relentless leveling of its famous hills and the steady filling of the bay to “make land,” which permanently altered the surrounding bay. Shaping San Francisco’s historical investigations of the changing ecology of the City have led to unique and enduring analyses integrating its tradition of dissent with the dramatic (and often catastrophic) changes that dissenters often sought to prevent.

15 seasons of FREE Public Talks provide an informative, engaging cultural forum inviting presenters and audiences to dialogue about issues covering Art & Politics, Historical and Literary Perspectives, Social Movements, and Ecology, emphasizing the intersections of multiple themes across fluid boundaries of disciplines and paradigms. This in-person discussion space is meant as an antidote to historical amnesia, creating a place to change the climate of public intellectualism in San Francisco, and an unmediated place to meet and talk. Most all of the Public Talks are archived online. Historical walking and bicycle tours—and the recent addition of Urban Forums: Walk & Talks and Bay Cruises—bring people together to learn how the City is shaped through the efforts of engaged citizens and from a perspective rooted in its overlooked and forgotten histories, including those of marginalized populations (and species!) who don’t show up in the history books.

Shaping San Francisco fosters academic and community partnerships, incorporating a service learning element to its public programming, offering historic context for the issues currently faced in the urban setting through tours to students and community members. As seasoned tour guides, editors, and educators, the directors are frequently asked to share their expertise through custom tours and classes; they create customized tours each month as well as collaborative projects year-round including teaching, guest-curating, and co-producing projects. Shaping San Francisco is a fiscally-sponsored affiliate of Independent Arts & Media, with whom successful collaborations have been forged over the course of a decade.

shapingsf.org

SPUR (formerly San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association)

SPUR’s We Are the Bay exhibition

Farmer’s market in San Francisco; photo credit Sergio Ruiz

Rising tides threatening to flood; photo credit Sergio Ruiz

SPUR’s How We Move exhibition

A transit + design workshop held at SPUR’s Urban Center

SPUR (formerly San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association)
2023 - $20,000 Transit Oriented Communities
2021 - $15,000 Transit Priority Program
2019 - $10,000 Operational Landscape Units Project
2018 - $20,000 Regional Plan
2017 - $10,000 Operational Landscape Units Project (with SFEI)
2017 - $10,000 Framework for Sea-Level Rise Adaptation
2016 - $15,000 Framework for Sea-Level Rise Adaptation
2014 - $15,000 Fossil Fuel Reduction Report
2010 - 2014 $38,000 Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program
2007 - $5,000 General Support

Work

Through research, education and advocacy, SPUR works to create an equitable, sustainable and prosperous region. SPUR practices urban policy, developing and advocating for ideas and reforms to bring about systems change. The decisions that shape housing, transportation, land use, economics, food access, sustainability and resilience have significant impacts on people’s lives. SPUR also focuses on governance because it’s how communities organize themselves to achieve collective goals and because SPUR believes in the power of government as a force for good. SPUR works across the nine counties of the Bay Area because the structural systems that shape people’s lives— the housing market, the transportation network, the economy — are regional. SPUR does deep work in San Francisco, San José and Oakland because policies set in the region’s three biggest cities have widespread impact on most Bay Area residents and because local context is critical for effective policy. SPUR believes that community and individual well-being are healthiest when a society achieves equity, sustainability and prosperity. Equity because systemic racism continues to create unjust and unacceptable outcomes for many members of our community. Sustainability because human well-being depends on a healthy and thriving natural environment. And prosperity because meeting individual and collective needs requires resources. SPUR conducts its work through research, education and advocacy because these tools have the power to change minds and shape outcomes. The organization believes that profound systems change requires addressing beliefs, relationships and policies, and SPUR works at all three of these levels. SPUR grounds its work in a spirit of inquiry and a big-tent perspective that engages partners and communities across the region.

Goals

SPUR has many key goals related to each of the organization's major policy areas, including:
Planning: Add new jobs and housing where they will support equity and sustainability, and make neighborhoods safe and welcoming to everyone.
Housing: Make housing affordable for everyone.
Transportation: Make it fast, easy and inexpensive to get around without driving alone.
Sustainability + Resilience: Eliminate carbon emissions and make communities resilient to climate change.
Economic Justice: Enable all people to participate in the region’s thriving economy and attain economic security.
Good Government: Support a high-functioning public sector that serves the collective good.
Food + Agriculture: Create healthy, just and sustainable food systems, and put an end to food insecurity.

Achievements

SPUR has accomplished many things over the course of its 100+ year history. The organization shaped some of the most important planning and urban policy issues in the region, including planning for the BART system, establishing the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, proposing San Francisco’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and more. Recent achievements of the organization in 2020, include:

• Crafting more than 70 policy recommendations on housing, transportation, planning, sustainability and resilience and more
• Welcoming more than 13,000 individuals to public forums covering pressing issues in the Bay Area, such as the housing affordability crisis, economic inequality, how COVID-19 affects small businesses and more
• Co-sponsoring three pieces of legislation passed by California lawmakers, including SB288, which expands CEQA exemptions to speed up the delivery of sustainable transportation projects in the state
• Hosting the organization's first Ideas + Action symposium, which brought together public space experts and more than 1,500 attendees from across North America
• Released numerous reports and white papers, on topics such as the future of transportation, transit project delivery, climate hazards and modeling future places, which envisions a Bay Area that can welcome everyone
• Hosting a forum with Mayors Breed, Liccardo and Schaaf of San Francisco, San José and Oakland to learn how cities of the Bay Area can collectively work toward a more equitable, sustainable and prosperous region
• Leading convening efforts for the new California Home Builders Alliance, an informal advocacy coalition focusing on state legislation and regulatory reforms to build more housing

Impact Report attached; our most recent annual report was online only--it is available here: https://www.spur.org/about/annual-reports/2020

spur.org

Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation

Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation
2013 - $8,000 Tenderloin Vertical Garden

Tenderloin Vertical Garden
The Tenderloin Vertical Garden is a project of the TNDC (Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation) People’s Garden. The garden was established after a 2009 TNDC residents’ summit yielded survey data demonstrating that access to fresh, healthy food was the top concern of Tenderloin residents. On just 2,500 sq ft, our gardeners produced and distributed over 3,000 pounds of produce for the community last year, all given away for free.  The Vertical Garden structure includes a wood structure supporting Woolly Pocket planters for edible plants, a long wood planter with plants to attract pollinators, and an automated drip irrigation system. Community members, horticulturalists, and designers gave input to the structure during two open community design meetings. Signage added will provide information and showcase the gardens.

tndc.org

The High Line

The High Line
2014 - $5,000 Thriving Cities Lecture Series
2013 - $5,000 Beyond the High Line
2010 - $1,000 General Support

Friends of the High Line works to build and maintain the extraordinary public park on the High Line in New York City.  They seek to preserve the entire historic structure, transforming an essential piece of New York’s industrial past and providing over 70 percent of the High Line’s annual operating budget.  Friends of the High Line is responsible for maintenance of the park, pursuant to a license agreement with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. Through stewardship, innovative design and programming, and excellence in operations they cultivate a vibrant community around the High Line.

Beyond the High Line

Beyond the High Line showcases exceptional adaptive urban reuse projects from around the country, featuring projects that have a strong likelihood of being completed, but are still in formative phases. This series will foster discussion about what moves these kinds of projects forward and to raise the profile of other projects that have the potential to transform neighborhoods, cities, or regions—expanding the visibility of the entire field of adaptive reuse. 

Thriving Cities

A forum where participants can explore new ways to make their blocks, neighborhoods and cities better, more livable places.  The day-long program will feature public talks, book presentations, civic participation workshops and children's activities - all exploring recent trends and ideas around contemporary urban design and planning that foster sustainability, equity and creativity.

thehighline.org

Tigers on Market Street

Tigers on Market Street
2014 - $5,000 General Support
2013 - $3,000 Habitat Research

The Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio rutulus) has found a home on San Francisco’s Market Street; it lives a complete life cycle in the London Plane trees that line the busy thoroughfare. The canyon of tall buildings lined with trees resemble the butterfly’s natural habitat – river canyons. This project engages the public in this unique butterfly phenomenon, create methods for creative interactions, and connects people to wildlife in one of the densest urban areas.

The Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly habitat will be incorporated into the new design for Market Street, aligning the San Francisco Department of Public Works, the San Francisco Planning Department and the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to support this vital habitat.

Tigers on Market's will use data gathered in their 2013 fieldwork to produce a graphic poster and field guide as a takeaway for those interested in learning more about wildlife living in the downtown and an educational tool for schools in the greater downtown area.

natureinthecity.org/tigers

Walk San Francisco

Mayor London Breed, State Senator Scott Wiener, Walk SF executive director Jodie Medeiros, and children from El Dorado Elementary School get ready for the 2019 Walk & Roll to School Day. Photo: Greg Zeppa

Walk SF was part of an action on Market Street pushing for permanent removal of private vehicles. 500,000 people walk on Market Street every day, and five of the city’s top ten most dangerous intersections are on Market. Photo by Walk SF.

Walk SF was part of an action on Market Street pushing for permanent removal of private vehicles. 500,000 people walk on Market Street every day, and five of the city’s top ten most dangerous intersections are on Market. Photo by Walk SF.

Walk SF was part of an action on Market Street pushing for permanent removal of private vehicles. 500,000 people walk on Market Street every day, and five of the city’s top ten most dangerous intersections are on Market. Photo by Walk SF.

At a March 2019 action on the steps of City Hall to shine a light on recent traffic fatalities. Photo by Walk SF.

A memorial to the lives lost in traffic crashes in San Francisco since January 2014. From the 2020 World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. Photo by William McLeod with permission from Walk SF.

Walk San Francisco
2023 - $15,000 Climate Justice in the Bayview
2022 - $10,000 General Support
2021 - $10,000 20mph Speed Limit in the Tenderloin: Data Study
2016 - $10,000 Green Connections
2014 - $10,000 Vision Zero
2013 - $10,000 General Support
2012 - $6,000 General Support

San Francisco can and should be the safest, most walkable city in the United States. Yet every day, at least 3 people on average are hit by cars while walking in our city.

Walk San Francisco exists to change this. Walk San Francisco (Walk SF) was founded in 1998 by a small group of volunteers united by the belief that the city’s streets and sidewalks should be safe and welcoming for all.

Today, Walk SF is known as a tireless advocate in pushing for – and winning – life-saving changes across the city. Some defining wins include: 15 MPH speed zones around 181 schools; San Francisco’s second-in-the-nation commitment to Vision Zero; the removal of private vehicles from Market Street; the tax on Uber and Lyft; and groundbreaking changes to some of the city’s most dangerous streets.

Walk SF also founded and supports San Francisco Bay Area Families for Safe Streets, a group of traffic crash survivors and the loved ones of people who have been killed or injured in traffic crashes. Members offer emotional support and work together to win changes to prevent more lives from being destroyed by traffic violence. Each November, Families for Safe Streets and Walk SF hold World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims

In addition, Walk SF works to increase the number of children safely getting to school on foot, bicycle, scooter, and transit as part of the San Francisco Safe Routes to School Partnership. Walk SF also brings together the voices of the 30+ community-based organizations, nonprofits, and civic groups that make up the Vision Zero Coalition, plus leads the Senior and Disability Work Group. And throughout the year, Walk SF offers a variety of walks to both explore the pure joys of exploring the city on foot and the challenges faced due to unsafe streets.

In 2019, Walk SF launched its first-ever three-year strategic plan. The long-term goals outlined in it are to: 1) end pedestrian traffic deaths and severe injuries, and 2) increase the number of trips people take on foot.

As part of the strategic plan, Walk SF prioritized both what it works on and how it will work. Crash data shows that San Francisco’s residents living in communities of concern suffer the most from traffic violence. These are communities with the most low-income people, immigrants, communities of color, seniors, children, and people with disabilities. That is why while Walk SF works in the interest of all pedestrians in San Francisco, Walk SF prioritizes its efforts on communities and/or geographies where issues of equity are most at play.

Walk SF also focuses its outreach and education in communities and populations that have disproportionately been impacted by traffic violence and often not engaged in the community process. Walk SF works hard to ensure a community’s voice is authentically brought forward to guide advocacy efforts, and build coalitions across diverse communities. That’s why Walk SF goes much deeper in its community engagement and advocacy work in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, where traffic violence is a daily reality for the nearly 40,000 people who live there.

Walk SF’s vision is for a San Francisco where everyone – of every age and ability – can get around safely. And the benefits of making this vision a reality ripple far beyond the precious lives that will be saved. When it is safe and inviting for many more people to walk in San Francisco, it also means reducing climate emissions. It means thriving neighborhood businesses and greater health. It means changing the fact that people of color are more likely to live, work, and walk on dangerous streets. It means stronger and more connected communities.

A memorial to the lives lost in traffic crashes in San Francisco since January 2014. From the 2020 World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. Photo by William McLeod with permission from Walk SF.

At a March 2019 action on the steps of City Hall to shine a light on recent traffic fatalities. Photo by Walk SF.

walksf.org

Youth Art Exchange

Youth Art Exchange
2013 - $5,000 Mobile Parklet

Founded in 2000, Youth Art Exchange provides relevant arts education that connects underserved high school-aged youth to the broader community. Based at the intersection of the Oceanview-Merced-Ingleside neighborhood and Excelsior, Youth Art Exchange fills the gap of services for youth in this low-income, multi-lingual neighborhood.

Mobile Parklet
A youth-designed and built parklet in San Francisco’s Oceanview-Merced-Ingleside neighborhood offers a green gathering space in front of the centrally located Fog Lifter Café on Ocean Avenue, improving public life by keeping this commercial corridor accessible and exciting for urban dwellers and visitors.

youthartexchange.org