California Bicycle Coalition

California Bicycle Coalition
2023 - $15,000 Climate Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure
2021 - $10,000 Engaging with California Action Plan for Transportation Infrastructure (CAPTI)
2020 - $15,000 Toolkit for Temporary Road Closures/ Biking During COVID-19 Pandemic
2019 - $15,000 General Support
2019 - $10,000 General Support

The California Bicycle Coalition Education Fund (CalBike) advocates for equitable, inclusive, and prosperous communities where bicycling helps to enable all Californians to lead healthy and joyful lives. 

CalBike is guided by a vision of California where:

• Public spaces, especially our streets, are safe, appealing, and accessible for Californians of every economic status, race, gender, immigration status, or ability.
• Communities are prosperous, whether rural, urban, or suburban, and all Californians enjoy a high quality of life and freedom from poverty, violence, and oppression.
• California's communities are able to invest in affordable housing safely connected on foot or by bike to the places we learn, work, play, and access healthcare.
• Our cities build convenient and affordable public transit networks.
• Decisions about transportation in California are made by those who are most impacted and burdened by our current system. Low-income communities and communities of color no longer bear the greatest burdens of the environmental and public health and safety impacts of transportation.
• Bicycling is loved and appreciated by everyone for its role in supporting prosperity, health, safety, and joy that all Californians benefit from.

Since 1999, CalBike has promoted sustainable transportation and healthy communities. They have organized trainings, conferences, workshops and direct support for bicycle and equity advocates, sharing best practices with local and state-level leaders. They have created toolkits and how-to guides to give local leaders the information they need to implement great bicycle infrastructure. They have succeeded in pressing Caltrans to greatly increase bike/walk infrastructure funding. They have shaped state-level guidelines to encourage protected bike lanes and intersections, making California a leader in the kind of people-friendly street design that encourages bicycling among people of all ages, cultures, genders, and income levels.

CalBike's focus is on the intersection of social justice and sustainable transportation, and their policy team works to redress the discriminatory transportation policies that have divided and polluted California's disadvantaged communities, especially where those policies have disadvantaged people who ride or want to ride bicycles. To that end, CalBike has succeeded in shaping grant guidelines and priorities to ensure that a majority of state bike/walk funds go to disadvantaged communities. They have pushed Caltrans to use highway maintenance funds to build Complete Streets, streets that serve all users, and pressed them to devote more safety funds to biking and walking, along the state highways that often serve as main streets in disadvantaged communities. They work with local community advocates in disadvantaged communities, offering training to help them access bike/walk infrastructure funding. They have worked to connect BIPOC transportation advocacy leaders with the skills and knowledge to effectively promote sustainable transportation policy, and to bring representation of BIPOC communities to the halls of power, including the California Transportation Commission. 

CalBike works closely with advocates across the state and in Sacramento, collaborating with them on intersecting issues such as pedestrian access, transit and housing.

CalBike projects the Seed Fund is supporting in 2020-2021.

Complete Streets
All roads in California should be safe and inviting for people of all ages and abilities to bike, walk, or ride public transit. That’s the vision for CalBike’s Complete Streets Campaign. After significant pressure, Governor Newsom and Caltrans leadership have stated support for Complete Streets, and promised to implement them where appropriate. However, Caltrans has in the past instituted but failed to implement good Complete Streets policies. CalBike is acting as a watchdog, holding Caltrans and the governor accountable to their stated promise to prioritize Complete Streets. 

Changing the Conversation Around Climate and Transportation
Currently, the state-level conversation about reducing transportation sector carbon emissions focuses on the transition from gas cars to electric ones. While this transition is necessary, it is insufficient to address the climate crisis, and ignores as well the hopeful possibilities for a just climate transition that includes and lifts up low-income people and people of color. CalBike works to influence policymakers and environmental organizations to ensure that bicycling, walking, transit, and in-fill housing are part of the conversation.

Shared Micromobility for Everyone 
CalBike is working to save bike and scooter share from the unsustainable profit-centered model. They work to integrate public shared mobility into public transit systems so that users may access bikes and scooters on the same terms and in the same manner as public transit. Whether through a purely public service or a public-private partnership, this kind of support and integration is essential to accomplishing our goal of affordable and healthy mobility for all Calfornians, including those who live in low-income neighborhoods. 

Quick-Build Toolkit and "Slow Streets" How-To
CalBike created two guides to respond to the increase in bicycling under the pandemic. The Slow Streets How-To Guide offers communities best practices on how to implement Slow Streets—streets closed to through traffic, where people walking and biking can have plenty of room to have fun, get exercise, and get where they need to go safely. CalBike's Quick-Build Toolkit, created in partnership with Alta Planning + Design, is a comprehensive guide to quick-build bicycling infrastructure. Quick-build is a method of building bike and pedestrian safety improvements—protected bike lanes, pedestrian crossings, slow streets, parklets, and more—now, within a tight budget. In challenging times, quick-build projects are crucial to building trust in the government’s ability to deliver public benefit. And quick-build infrastructure can engage the public better than ever, and be more inclusive and equitable than traditional infrastructure. With support from the Seed Fund and in collaboration with Alta, CalBike created a 4-page brochure to convince policymakers to push for quick-build. The full 77-page Toolkit tells city planning departments step by step how to implement quick-build projects.

Emergency COVID Bicycling Resources
CalBike quickly responded to the pandemic and the resulting surge in bicycling with a host of online resources for those new to bicycling, as well as people who were already biking but had questions about how to ride safely under COVID.

calbike.org

Canopy

Canopy
2019 - $15,000 Tree Inventory Project in East Palo Alto

For over two decades, Canopy has been the leading voice for trees in San Francisco Midpeninsula communities, using trees as change agents to mitigate climate change, advance environmental justice, and transform neighborhoods. Each year Canopy engages thousands of local families, volunteers, and students in planting trees and stewardship at parks, school campuses, and neighborhoods. Canopy carefully selects the “right tree for the right place” to ensure long-lived trees that deliver maximum community benefit. The trees provide shade for streets and buildings, reduce urban heat island effect, store and sequester carbon long-term, beautify neighborhoods, and support local ecosystem functions and a diverse web of native wildlife.

Canopy also equips hundreds of K-12th grade students with hands-on environmental science lessons and urban forestry internships, sparking their curiosity about nature and empowering youth to make a difference in their community. The growing scale and complexity of the environmental issues we face, from climate change to pollution to loss of biological diversity, demands an environmentally literate public that is inspired to act as stewards of the earth and apply practical environmental know-how to support an improved quality of life. That is why Canopy starts with youth environmental education as an entry point to develop the next generation of environmental stewards who will contribute to the growth of urban tree canopy and our future of climate resiliency.

Creating a healthy urban forest takes much more than planting trees. Without smart policies and long-term investment, urban trees and green spaces are vulnerable to drought, development, poor planning, and inadequate care. Canopy has successfully made the case for investing in community trees, with far-reaching impact in local communities and beyond.

Founded in 1996, Canopy was created to support the City of Palo Alto’s urban forestry programs and educate residents about the value of trees and their care. In 2006, Canopy began partnering with the community of East Palo Alto to address environmental equity and public health issues in their city, particularly those associated with unequal canopy cover and lack of access to urban nature.

In 2017, Canopy further expanded to meet growing demand for programs in Belle Haven, Mountain View, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City. Today, Canopy is a regional and sector-leading organization with active programs in five Midpeninsula cities and counting.

Canopy’s mission to grow urban tree canopy in Midpeninsula communities is accomplished through three interconnected core programs:

Trees: Canopy takes direct action to grow tree canopy cover and enhance green spaces by engaging volunteers and partners to plant hundreds of trees and steward thousands of trees every year in their communities.

Education: Through K-12 programs, High School Internships, and Adult Education programs, Canopy leads communities to the knowledge, attitude, skills, and actions that support the urban forest.

Advocacy: Through advocacy at various jurisdiction levels, Canopy steps up to help partners adopt tree-friendly policies and practices, and ensure adequate funding for tree programs in the Midpeninsula.

By growing local urban forests, Canopy creates urban environments that restore community health and invigorate natural ecosystems. And by empowering youth and residents, Canopy plants the seeds of community connection and long-lasting change.

Canopy’s The Great Oak Count Project Report
The Great Oak Count is a citizen science survey of native oaks in Palo Alto using state-of-the-art online digital mapping technology. Twenty years ago, Canopy engaged volunteers in the “Oakwell Survey” of 9,000 native oaks on public and private property in Palo Alto, the only known comprehensive oak dataset. The city was losing its iconic mature oaks at an alarming rate and the City Council had just adopted its first tree protection ordinance. In 2017, Canopy launched The Great Oak Count to engage volunteers in a new survey of the native oaks to create an updated geolocated inventory and map.

Native oaks play a unique role in improving critical urban functions, and as the state of our environment becomes more precarious these trees will enhance the capacity of cities to adapt to a changing climate.

The Great Oak Count is the first program that implements San Francisco Estuary Institute’s Landscape Resilience and Re-Oaking principles. The Great Oak Count fills a key gap in urban forestry research by providing information about tree population dynamics on private lands, which comprise the majority of urban forest canopy. The Great Oak Count data is unique, and can help researchers understand regional urban oak population changes, assess the effectiveness of tree protection ordinances, and make informed resource management decisions.

Funding from the Seed Fund helped Canopy assemble a nimble team of Palo Alto volunteers to survey and map the native oaks throughout the city. Canopy’s project lead is an oak expert and has guided the volunteer team to survey over 2,000 native oaks in nine neighborhoods. The project lead is responsible for recruiting and conducting training sessions with volunteers, organizing volunteer teams to survey, and tracking progress with the Tree Plotter mapping tool. Funding from the Seed Fund also helped Canopy to create materials to promote the survey project, and purchase tablets and data plans to bring the training into the field.

canopy.org

Climate One

Climate One
2022 - $15,000 General Support
2021 - $18,000 General Support
2019 - $15,000 General Support
2018 - $15,000 Resilience Program
2017 - $15,000 General Support
2017 - $15,000 General Support
2015 - $15,000 Resilience Program

When Greg Dalton set off for the Russian Arctic in 2007, he didn't know how profoundly his life was about to change. Upon returning home, Greg worked with Commonwealth Club CEO Gloria Duffy to launch Climate One. 

Climate One is rooted in the belief that climate disruption is the single greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. A  sustainable, just, and equitable path forward starts when we come together to talk about our concerns, share expertise, and put forth bold ideas. 

Since its founding, Climate One has provided a unique and respectful space for influential, inclusive discussions. Dalton and his team have prioritized a broad, evidence-based conversation about climate disruption and its consequences by bringing leaders and experts on different sides of issues together in pursuit of empathy, common ground, and cross-sector solutions.

Now in their second decade, Climate One is doubling down on their mission to be the premier platform for the conversation about the climate emergency. Through their podcast, national radio show, and live convenings for thought leaders and concerned members of the public, Climate One creates opportunities for dialogue that inspire a more complete understanding of the current crisis. 

A pioneer in the podcast arena, Climate One has seized on the opportunity to become an influential voice in a previously untapped media segment, exceeding 100,000 downloads each month. In parallel, radio stations across the country have taken notice and Climate One now airs on more than 50 public radio stations in red and blue states from Texas, Georgia and Florida, to Pennsylvania, California and more. By building credibility and a broad community, every conversation they publish reaches more than 50,000 people, and that audience is growing rapidly. 

In addition to their weekly climate show, they support leading science communicators through the Stephen H. Schneider Award for Outstanding Science Communication. Created in 2010, the Schneider Award has honored a variety of natural and social scientists such as Dr. Robert Bullard, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Katharine Hayhoe and more. In a world so littered with disinformation, Climate One is committed to recognizing the scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding the climate crisis and informing the public. 

Imperative to a constructive conversation is diversity and representation. Across the nation, in all aspects of life and governance, the BIPOC community has been marginalized. Climate One recognizes that the climate conversation has been no exception. While black and brown communities are affected first and worst by the pollution, severe weather, sea level rise, and economic upheaval brought on by climate change, their voices have not been heard. In 2020, Climate One renewed their commitment to amplifying the voices of BIPOC speakers and perspectives on their program. Climate change is a racial justice problem, and needs to be covered as such. 

Climate One envisions a world where a clear-eyed awareness of the climate crisis shapes decisions ranging from personal behavior to public policy and where the full spectrum of humanity’s wisdom, talent, and expertise is marshaled toward the wellbeing of all life on Earth. That is why they are going beyond simply raising awareness to catalyzing action with a conversation that can expose the web of interrelated issues and the impact on the global ecosystems, economies and communities. They set the stage for one-time adversaries to develop empathy and perhaps become partners who develop solutions that inspire us all.

climateone.org

Climate Ride

Climate Ride
2023 - $8,000 General Support
2022 - $8,000 General Support
2021 - $6,000 General Support
2020 - $6,000 General Support
2019 - $6,000 General Support
2018 - $3,000 General Support
2017 - $3,000 General Support
2016 - $3,000 General Support
2015 - $3,000 General Support

Mission

Climate Ride is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that organizes life-changing charitable biking, running, and hiking events to raise awareness and support sustainability, active transportation, and environmental causes. 

The Cause

Climate Ride, founded in 2008, inspires and empowers people to work toward a sustainable future. Climate Ride unites advocacy and philanthropy. We use sport as a means to change lives and build an effective, citizen-based sustainability movement.

You have the right to a healthy environment, yet the environment is one of the least funded sectors in American philanthropy. Climate Ride aims to change that. Climate Ride creates opportunities for people to engage in a way that is uniquely positive, life-affirming, and transformational while providing grants to environmentally-focused non-profits. Climate Ride participants take on a challenge much bigger than themselves and share their journey with their personal networks helping to amplify support for the cause. Our organization endeavors to foster environmental giving as a priority for new and seasoned donors. Climate Ride is the only organization taking this approach in the environmental sector. Our goal is to bring people and nonprofits together to inspire action and make protecting the planet a philanthropic priority for everyone.

We create and organize multi-day bike rides, runs, and hikes, as well as virtual and independent events. These challenges serve as a catalyst for participants to engage new stakeholders and strengthen advocacy for the environment while creating a substantial grants program for environmental and active transportation non-profits. Climate Ride supports participants with strategies to help reach out to thousands of people as they raise funds for our grants program. This creates unique opportunities to push for environmental justice and climate advocacy. Participants get to select the projects and organizations they fund from a list of groups working on climate change, environmental justice, clean energy, active transportation, sustainable infrastructure, and public health.

We are all feeling concerned, anxious, or overwhelmed by climate change. The threats to our world are numerous and growing more complex each day. While so many people care deeply and want to help address the problem, the enormity of the challenge and the political tone around climate change can feel dispiriting and disempowering. Climate Ride offers a way to make a difference while building new friendships and connections with a global network of outdoor advocates. 

The Movement

Our mission is to inspire and empower citizens to work toward a sustainable future. By using personal challenges as a means to change lives, Climate Ride is building an effective, citizen-based sustainability movement. Climate Ride empowers participants to actively engage in the fight against climate change by completing multi-day outdoor adventure events to fundraise for the organizations they value most and take action together for the planet. Our community proves that immersive outdoor experiences and personal challenges are powerful tools for generating the behavioral change to help ignite activism on climate policy, raise critical funds, and influence public opinion. 

Take Dave for example. Dave is a retired firefighter in California who Dave heard about Climate Ride from a local bike coalition he donated to annually. He decided to take on the challenge and along the way raised several thousand dollars. On the ride, he was inspired by speakers and found a movement he could believe in. Since that first ride, he’s raised over $50,000 for Climate Ride grants program and become a huge advocate in his community. Climate Ride is a growing movement of people like Dave who are joining together to take positive action to help our planet.

At a Glance:

• Climate Ride has raised over $6.2 million for climate, clean energy, and bicycle/pedestrian advocacy grantees
• Over 3,600 people have participated in Climate Ride events since 2008
• On average, a participant reaches out to more than 200 people about climate and sustainability
• 30% of Climate Ride participants are 30 years old or younger
• Climate Ride participants are a diverse group from 47 states and 12 countries

Recent Accomplishments

Because of the extraordinary efforts of the record 600 Climate Riders, Runners, and Hikers in 2019, Climate Ride awarded over $800,000 in grants. These powerful grants have resulted in direct support to help fight legal battles for public lands and clean air. Climate Ride amplified diverse voices in sustainable transportation and provided funds for organizations building safer options for bicyclists and walkers. These grants have led to renewable energy projects in national parks, relieving pollution in critically impacted ecosystems. Climate Ride helped brace an environmental movement that needs new voices and an active citizenry willing to walk the walk and bike the bike.

We expanded our Community Leaders awards program, which provided unparalleled opportunities for young sustainability leaders to experience the enrichment and inspiration of a Climate Ride. Our inaugural Green Fondo Weekend event engaged a record 250 cyclists – 70% of whom were new to the Climate Ride cause. Overall, we delivered 107 grants to beneficiaries working in sustainability, renewable energy, climate action, conservation, and public health. In 2020, Climate Ride needed to postpone several events due to challenge of the COVID-19 Pandemic. We launched a new virtual event, Climate Rise, which brought together over 400 people for the cause, and generated more than $100,000 in grants.

climateride.org

Earth Law Center

Earth Law Center
2019 - $10,000 General Support
2017 - $10,000 Biodiversity Rights Ordinance

Mission: Earth Law Center (ELC) works to pass a new generation of Earth-centered laws in the United States and worldwide, including by seeking legal rights for Nature. California and the San Francisco Bay Area has long been a focal point of our work.

Introduction to Earth Law: Traditional environmental law has failed. Despite the passage of thousands of environmental laws and policies in the U.S. and globally, Nature's health continues to decline. We must awaken from the misguided belief that exploiting and destroying Nature leads to prosperity. Earth law, or ecocentric law, is an effort to remake the legal system in ways that promote a better balance between human needs and the needs of those ecosystems that we inhabit. 

Goal: ELC's long-term goal is to build a system of law that aligns human activities with biological constraints on a livable, thriving planet. In the U.S., our strategy to this end is to empower local movements and help them pursue regulatory and legal changes that are more protective of Nature. 

Strategy: ELC works throughout the USA and globally using the following strategies:: 

1. Write model laws that are “ecocentric”—i.e., ecosystem well-being is the primary concern;
2. Work to put ecocentric laws into practice in order to restore ecosystems to health; and

3. Train the next generation of legal professionals to help save the planet; and

Grassroots Campaigns: Much of ELC's work operates at the local level. ELC provides pro bono legal support to communities wishing to apply new, cutting-edge legal frameworks that are more protective of Nature.  With legal movements growing to give legal rights to Nature and recognize the human right to a healthy environment, amongst others, communities and governments need help drafting strong new laws. Not only does ELC draft these laws, but we also teach other lawyers to do similar work.

History: After being founded in Florida in 2009, ELC spent its formative years operating out of the San Francisco Bay Area, where it hired its first Executive Director and co-founded the Bay Area Rights of Nature Alliance. Since then, ELC has engaged in law and policy campaigns throughout the Bay Area and California, protecting rivers under the Clean Water Act, advancing new “Earth-centered” laws and policies, and building a movement of legal professionals who work to transform the legal system to better protect Nature. Over the years, ELC has also established a national and global presence with team members in Washington State, New York, and Mexico City, amongst other places. 

Seed Fund Projects: ELC is a proud recipient of two grants from Seed Fund advancing our work. The first project involved advancing the Rights of Nature in San Francisco with an emphasis on Nature’s inherent right to thriving biodiversity. The second project involved new policies that promote native, low water usage, drought-resistant tree species in San Francisco. For both projects, ELC wrote in-depth policy reports, met with a broad range of stakeholders and governmental officials, and submitted formal proposals for new laws/policies that are under consideration in 2021. Through this work, we hope to create a blueprint for a future in which humans and Nature thrive together in harmony in the San Francisco Bay Area. We also hope that new laws will not only protect Nature, but also restore it to health. 

Other Recent Wins: In addition to our work with Seed Fund, here are some of ELC's wins from the last year or so:

1. ELC won a major Clean Water Act lawsuit against the State of California, helping to ensure that river pollution is fully addressed by state agencies.
2. ELC assisted the Nez Perce tribe to write a declaration establishing the rights of the Snake River (Idaho), including its right to flow, based on Native American rights.
3. ELC successfully secured the promotion of the Rights of Nature within the Convention on Biological Diversity, which was unprecedented for an environmental treaty. 
4. ELC submitted 8 amicus briefs on the Rights of Nature and human environmental rights in Latin America over the last year. Some have resulted in victories, including a ruling in Oaxaca, Mexico, to restore the health of two rivers, the Atoyac and Salado. 
5. ELC assisted the State of Colima in Mexico to pass a groundbreaking state constitutional amendment recognizing the Rights of Nature. 
6. ELC released a law school coursebook entitled “Earth Law: Emerging Ecocentric Law” with Wolters Kluwer as the publisher (September 2020). Numerous law schools and university programs will teach from the book beginning Spring 2021.
7. ELC drafted a Declaration on the Rights of the Southern Resident Orcas that received 15 organizational endorsements and support from several Washington State legislators.
8. ELC secured a proclamation by the El Salvadoran Legislative Assembly recognizing that “forests are living entities” with human duties to care for, preserve, and respect forests.
9. ELC is co-hosting a summit with the federal government of Nigeria to explore a new national law on the rights of rivers, which would be unprecedented in Africa.
10. ELC earned 35+ media mentions in the last year, including in the Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, NBC News, and numerous environmental magazines.

Learn More: Visit www.earthlawcenter.org. You can also sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

YouTube Videos About Our Work:

General https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lubNvaTigAU
Ocean Rights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH31biWQgt0 
River Rights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2p7EfOKaFA

earthlawcenter.org

Environmental Action Committee of West Marin

Environmental Action Committee of West Marin
2019 - $10,000 Coastal Resiliency
2018 - $20,000 Regional Strategy
2016 - $9,000 General Support

In response to impending threats of climate change and sea-level rise, several municipalities along the California coast are preparing comprehensive planning documents to provide public guidance on the consequences of rising seas.  Strong public standards and guidelines are needed to address how changing environmental conditions, like flooding, runoff, erosion, salinity changes, temperature changes, and ocean acidification will affect habitats in tidal zones, coastal dunes, estuaries, and riparian corridors.  In addition, planning documents need to provide comprehensive and realistic solutions for property owners and municipalities that are located within flood plains and include options to utilize new technology and green infrastructure that are balanced in the best available science.

The Environmental Action Committee (EAC) is uniquely positioned to review Marin County’s proposed guidelines in their amended Local Coastal Plan's environmental hazards chapter.  The EAC will provide comments and public information to the community based on a comprehensive review of the County’s proposals.

eacmarin.org

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 Urban Forest

Friends of the Urban Forest
2023 - $5,000 General Support
2019 - $15,000 General Support
2007 - $10,000 General Support

Friends of the Urban Forest (FUF) promotes a larger, healthier urban forest as part of San Francisco’s green infrastructure through community planting, tree care, education, and advocacy. Each year, FUF helps communities plant nearly 1,000 trees. Neighbors organize the plantings, while FUF obtains permits, removes sidewalk concrete, supplies tools and materials and selects, purchases and delivers the trees. On planting day, FUF volunteers work side-by-side with residents. After the work is done, everyone celebrates over a community lunch.In 1995, FUF formally instituted Tree Care to improve tree health and to increase survival rates - certified arborists, assisted by volunteers and trainees, prune and re-stake existing street trees. Tree Care aims to provide essential maintenance services and to educate neighbors, through mailings and hands-on assistance, on how to care for their trees.  FUF is committed to increasing its resources for Tree Care, which is essential to maintain and enhance the community’s investment in San Francisco’s urban forest.

fuf.net

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

Literacy for Environmental Justice

Literacy for Environmental Justice
2021 - $15,000 General Support
2019 - $10,000 Interpretative Signage
2019 - $10,000 General Support 
2018 - $10,000 Nursery expansion
2017 - $10,000 Justice Installations and Educational Outreach Materials at Candlestick Point Recreation Area
2017 - $10,000 Nursery Expansion and Capacity Building
2016 - $10,000 Candlestick Point State Recreation Area Rehabilitation
2015 - $10,000 Candlestick Point State Recreation Area Rehabilitation

Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ) is a non-profit youth development organization in Bayview Hunters Point that works to address environmental justice issues in San Francisco with two native plant nurseries, ecological restoration projects, youth outdoor education, and green job training.

Their neighborhood's mix of industrial and residential zoning and geographic location result in poor air quality & high particulate matter concentrations, exposure to radiation and hazardous waste, difficulty accessing open space, and flooding issues amplified by climate change and sea level rise.

LEJ’s priority is to empower young environmental leaders and to care for open spaces. They do this by 1) providing free environmental education programs for low-income youth that focus on hands-on environmental stewardship and recreation, such as kayaking, hiking and camping; 2) operating two native plant nurseries that grow thousands of native plants per year used for habitat restoration; and 3) running a multi-track, year-round internship program designed to get young, diverse leaders into ‘green’ careers. The 2018 San Francisco Biodiversity Initiative named LEJ a leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion in the environmental field.

Since the onset of COVID, LEJ has still held to its mission of serving local, San Francisco youth. The Eco-Apprentice program was deemed an essential service by the City, for work in ecosystem restoration. Our eight (8) Eco-Apprentices are local, low-income young adults (approximately 18-25 years old). In normal years, Eco-Apprentices run ecological restoration activities and youth programs. This year, they have focused entirely on restoration work, as youth programs were not safe to operate.

Eco-Apprentices normally facilitate over 2,000 youth and volunteers in stewardship and environmental education programs each year, which contributes greatly to our ability to grow native plants and perform park stewardship. This year, Eco-Apprentices have completed 100% of the native plant nursery and park stewardship work, achieving the same targets that were in place last year with the help of youth and volunteers. Eco-Apprentices are scheduled to begin facilitating Covid-safe youth community kayaking events beginning in March 2021. They are planning to host 1-2 kayaking events per month, as long as it is Covid-safe, until the pandemic subsides.

In two decades of work in the Bayview community, LEJ has restored over 100 acres of public, urban open space with over 250,000 newly planted native plants. Currently, there are about 450 San Francisco native species still intact, of which LEJ grows about 200 species. LEJ’s community-based restoration has led to the resurgence of several rare, threatened, & endangered species, including: the Clapper Rail, Burrowing Owl, Western Meadowlark, Western Pigmy Butterfly, Pacific Ring-Neck Snake, Chorus Frog, Long-Tailed Jack Rabbit, and more. As California and San Francisco have rolled out their biodiversity initiatives, LEJ is poised to lead even larger-scale restoration and green-infrastructure installation in these urban areas.

This winter 2021, LEJ is breaking ground to double the size of their native plant nursery and community garden. This will allow LEJ to hire and train more young environmental leaders and to amplify the ecological restoration work they do in Bayview Hunters Point and Southeast San Francisco.They've already raised over $1 million dollars and only need $150 thousand more to bring this project to completion by the summer of 2021. You can help them get there by donating here: https://lejyouth.networkforgood.com/

Check out LEJ’s website for volunteer opportunities and other ways to connect with the organization.

To learn more about LEJ's Eco-Apprentices, check out “Literacy for Environmental Justice: Cultivating Youth Leaders in Southeast San Francisco” from Kristin Tieche on Vimeo (8 min): https://vimeo.com/324521956

lejyouth.org

Marin Carbon Project

MALT staff conducts a baseline assessment to determine the composition of grassland species at a ranch.

MALT staff digs a soil pit to analyze soil characteristics at different depths.

Soil scientists collect soil samples that will measure changes in organic carbon through time (carbon sequestration); soil texture and bulk density (structure and compaction); soil pH (acidity); and soil fertility (nutrient availability).

A soil scientist takes a sample which will be analyzed for bulk density, a measurement of compaction.

Compost is applied to a grazed rangeland at Stemple Creek Ranch. 

Marin RCD staff maps the location of compost application onto different pastures.

A profile of native grass and its root system.  photo credit: PRathmann

Marin Carbon Project
2019 - $20,000 Carbon Cycle Institute
2018 - $20,000 Point Reyes Carbon Farming
2017 - $20,000 Point Reyes National Seashore Carbon Farm Plan

As much as one-third of the surplus CO2 in the atmosphere driving climate change has resulted from land management practices, including agriculture. Carbon farming, a whole-farm approach to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and promote long-term carbon sequestration in agricultural ecosystems, holds the potential to significantly reduce GHG by increasing the rate of transfer of atmospheric carbon dioxide to plant material and the soil organic carbon pool, leading to enhanced soil health and increased farm productivity. 

Years of rigorous research undertaken by the Marin Carbon Project (MCP), under the leadership of UC Berkeley Professor Dr. Whendee Silver, has culminated in robust confirmation of the GHG-mitigating efficacy of organic matter amendment on rangeland soils. Dr. Silver’s research demonstrated that agricultural land management practices can measurably increase rates of carbon sequestration, resulting in enhanced soil quality and soil water holding capacity and increased soil carbon and forage production (Ryals and Silver 2013). 

With this research and field validation, MCP integrates carbon farm planning into the existing conservation planning program that help land managers meet their natural resource management goals while supporting productive lands, thriving streams, and on-farm wildlife habitat. The program is applicable to a diversity of land uses and enables MCP partners to identify and quantify practices to increase carbon sequestration and reduce GHG emissions on farm in a whole-farm planning context. These practices support climate change resiliency by reducing atmospheric CO₂ levels, improving soil health, water holding capacity, and crop and forage production. By increasing soil water holding capacity, carbon farm practices promote water conservation, reduce overland flow and sediment and nutrient transport, reduce irrigation needs and reduce stream withdrawals, thereby enhancing water quality and instream habitat. Agroforestry practices, such as hedgerows, silvopastures and windbreaks, sequester CO₂ while enhancing on-farm microclimate and wildlife and pollinator habitat.

MCP prescribes these climate-beneficial practices by completing Carbon Farm Plans for farmers. MCP partners have completed 19 CFPs across 8,000 acres for dairy and grazing operations in Marin County. The plans have been used to inform Drawdown Marin and the new (2020-2030) Marin County Climate Action Plan. Carbon farm plan data has been used to scale up and estimate agriculture’s potential to meet the goal of reducing GHG emissions and enhancing carbon sequestration on the working lands of the county. An average of eight practices are prescribed in each plan which, if implemented, would collectively sequester 11,585 MTCO2e annually. Over twenty years, this is 258,237 MTCO2e sequestered. The Marin County Climate Action Plan establishes an annual target of 55,752 MT CO2e reduced or sequestered on county working lands, with a target date of 2030.

MCP has already begun the work of helping farmers with practice implementation. In partnership with farmers, public agencies and the Seed Fund, MCP has kicked off the implementation of climate-beneficial practices as prescribed in plans. These practices are improving water quality and quantity for farms and fisheries on coastal agricultural lands. Practices are collectively sequestering 136.2 MTCO2e annually (108 cars driven per year), as calculated using COMET-Planner, an on-farm GHG model developed by Colorado State University, USDA-NRCS and the Marin Carbon Project. Cumulatively, the completed carbon farm practices total: 3,088 linear feet of hedgerow; 1,315 linear feet of 2-3 row windbreak; 2 acres of silvopasture; 518 linear feet of riparian planting; 0.34 AC of critical area planting, and 23.5 acres of compost application.  A total of 2,542 trees and shrubs were planted in conjunction with implementation of these plans. 

The Seed Fund has supported the following MCP endeavors:

• Carbon Farm Plan Development and Implementation
• Soil Sampling
• Assessment of carbon farming potential in the Point Reyes National Seashore
• Programmatic environmental review of carbon farming practices for streamlined permitting

marincarbonproject.org

Marin County Bicycle Coalition

Marin County Bicycle Coalition

2020 - $10,000 Funding for More Emergency Bike Lanes During COVID-19  Pandemic
2019 - $15,000 General Support
2018 - $20,000 The Alto Tunnel Project

MCBC General

Marin County Bicycle Coalition’s mission is to promote safe bicycling for everyday transportation and recreation. MCBC sees the bicycle as a vehicle for change capable of making Marin’s communities happier and healthier by improving air quality and public health, and reducing traffic congestion.

MCBC has been a leader in bicycle advocacy at the local, state, and national levels since 1998. Using a two-pronged approach to promote bicycling, MCBC teaches children and adults how to ride responsibly and safely, while also advocating for the infrastructure improvements needed to make bicycling a safe and convenient option in all of Marin County.

As part of a new 5-year Strategic Plan, MCBC’s goal is to create a bicycle-centric Marin and build the power and influence of MCBC across all of this county’s communities. In order to make bicycling a viable option for the thousands of Marin residents who are able to bike but experience hurdles, MCBC is exploring how to promote and overcome obstacles to bicycling for transportation through outreach and engagement strategies. This work will focus on addressing the transportation needs and barriers in communities of concern that will be most impacted by severely reduced transit service, including Marin City, San Rafael, and Novato.

MCBC is advocating to make bicycling safe and convenient for people of all ages and abilities. With a goal to share the joy and benefits of bicycling for transportation and recreation with new and emerging riders, MCBC is adding several exciting programs targeting women, children, BIPOC, and underserved communities over the next five years.

Program/Funding Updates

Several programs that have benefited from Seed Fund’s support include advocating for Slow Streets during Shelter-in-Place in 2020, supporting community ambassadors in “Communities of Concern” in Marin, and spearheading the advocacy effort to complete the North-South Greenway with the Alto Tunnel Project.

During Shelter-in-Place in early 2020, MCBC promoted and suggested ways in which each jurisdiction in Marin might repurpose streets, and provided technical assistance to those that were interested in opening streets to pedestrians and people on bicycles. MCBC also took this opportunity to promote the quick-build approach to creating bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, as well as the simplicity and effectiveness of “open streets.”

Many downtowns around Marin went car-free to create space for people to dine outdoors. Nearly all of Marin’s cities and towns approved ordinances allowing businesses to expand operations into adjacent public spaces, including on and off-street parking. As a result, families arriving to town centers by bike experienced a heightened quality of life, especially important during the Shelter-in-Place. Several towns including Novato, San Rafael, San Anselmo, Tiburon, and Sausalito went a step further and completely closed portions of their main streets to cars weekly for the entire summer.

Alto Tunnel Project

Since its founding in 1998, MCBC has been instrumental in building the political will and securing the funding needed to close several gaps along the North-South Greenway. Alto Tunnel is now the highest priority project within the Greenway.

Alto Tunnel is the lynchpin of the North-South Greenway, a regional connection that will make bicycling a safe and convenient option for people who live, work, and visit Marin and Sonoma Counties. When reopened, it will greatly enhance the ease with which people can bike between Central and Southern Marin, and by extension, San Francisco.

MCBC continues to work with and guide community-based group Friends of Alto Tunnel (FOAT) to champion this effort. MCBC is committed to providing FOAT with support through technical assistance, strategic guidance, and community outreach assistance en route to building the remaining political support needed to pursue federal, state, and regional funds for the project.

MCBC has always known that reopening the tunnel would require a sustained and resolute effort. With no studies remaining, the advancement of the project is at a critical juncture. MCBC is now looking to win political support--thereby moving toward implementation--by catalyzing neighborhood-level discussions aimed at 1) demonstrating the tunnel’s value, 2) answering financial questions, and 3) addressing neighborhood concerns.

The Seed Fund’s support is enabling MCBC's community outreach coordination and strategic guidance by 1) aiding in the recruitment, training, and mobilization of neighborhood representatives, and 2) assisting with the facilitation of community workshops, walking tours, and listening sessions aimed at addressing and mitigating concerns related to neighborhood impacts.

Perhaps more importantly, though, the community engagement work enabled by the Seed Fund is helping this project to serve as a national model in building grassroots support for visionary bicycle and pedestrian projects that face local resistance due to high capital costs and perceived neighborhood impacts.

marinbike.org

People for Bikes

Better Bike Share Partnership – Philadelphia Indego System; credit Joshua Mallory

People for Bikes
2019 - $12,000 Biking Toolkit for Scoring Cities

The PeopleForBikes Foundation is a national, 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission of putting more people on bicycles more often and making bicycling better for everyone. PeopleForBikes Foundation programs include PlacesForBikes, helping to build connected networks of bicycle infrastructure in U.S. cities through initiatives including the Final Mile, City Ratings and Advocacy Academy; the Better Bike Share Partnership, a grant-funded collaborative to improve access to and use of shared micromobility systems in low income and communities of color; the PeopleForBikes campaign, a powerful national movement of people who ride bikes and want riding to be safer, more comfortable and more accessible; and Ride Spot, a platform to help people find and share great places to ride. 

Since its beginning, PeopleForBikes has been dedicated to helping cities, regions and advocacy organizations at the local and state levels advance, promote and build safe places to ride a bike. In recent years, this focus on infrastructure has been reflected through three integrated initiatives: Final Mile, City Ratings and Advocacy Academy. 

Final Mile is accelerating the installation of complete mobility networks in five U.S. cities: Austin, Denver, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and Providence. By combining proven advocacy strategies with public communication tools, this effort builds broad support for new, cost-effective mobility networks. In each city network will increase bike riding and reduce single occupancy motorized vehicle trips. The Final Mile matches investments in mobility infrastructure made by its partner cities with support for specific needs identified by those cities. The program also provides a suite of additional resources including public opinion research, paid communications outreach through digital, broadcast and print media, and support for outreach and engagement activities through local non-profit organizations. The Final Mile cities will complete increases to their mobility networks of between 50 and 150 miles by the end of 2022. 

City Ratings is a data-driven approach to evaluating more than 600 U.S. cities based on the connectivity of their bicycle networks and the experience of riding for those who live there. Using feedback from everyday bike riders, city staff, open-source maps and publicly available data, each city receives a score from 1-100. Detailed maps from the Bicycle Network Analysis tool helps leaders and staff pinpoint areas for improvement so that investments in infrastructure are leveraged for maximum benefit to the people who use it. 

Advocacy Academy is an online video and resource library for city leaders, decision makers and advocates. It provides the necessary tools and information to understand how cities are evaluated through the City Ratings program and how to make cities better for bikes. The first series, Lessons from the Best Biking Cities, includes interviews with key staff and critical takeaways for how and why building a comprehensive bicycling network contributes to a stronger community. 

The Better Bike Share Partnership (BBSP) is a grant-funded collaborative focused on increasing access to and use of shared micromobility in low-income and communities of color. Together with partners at the City of Philadelphia and the National Association of City Transportation Officials, PeopleForBikes launched new programs in 2020 aimed at increasing the diversity of the micromobility workforce, piloting new strategies for addressing barriers to access in BIPOC communities, and providing technical assistance, resources and stories of challenge and success for those working to make bike and scooter share an accessible mode of transportation for all. 

Finally, the PeopleForBikes campaign and Ride Spot ensure that the voices of millions of Americans who ride bikes are heard and amplified, and that more are welcomed to bicycling with rides curated for them. The Ride Spot app helps bike shops, advocacy organizations and individual riders map and share local routes while making it easier for other riders to find and follow them. With the ability to add images, captions and anecdotes, Ride Spot Stories turn rides into experiences. 

In 2019, the Seed Fund invested in a PeopleForBikes initiative to develop user-friendly templates to help communities measure the economic benefits of street improvements. These templates are an extension of a study conducted in partnership with Bennett Midland consulting and Portland State University to examine the economic benefits to businesses located along corridors where bicycle infrastructure was installed. The study looked at four U.S. cities and used sales tax and employment data to compare improvement corridors to comparable corridors without improvements. PeopleForBikes published study results from the four cities, along with a summary report and study guide with the template to help other cities conduct their own assessments. Across all four cities, improvements in bicycle infrastructure either improved economic indicators or did not change them, results that the partners publicized widely in 2020.

peopleforbikes.org

Pie Ranch

Pie Ranch
2019 - $15,000 General Support
2018 - $15,000 Climate Beneficial Farming at Año Nuevo
2016 - $10,000 General Support
2015 - $10,000 General Support
2010 - $10,000 Capital Campaign
2009 - $10,000 Capital Campaign
2008 - $10,000 Capital Campaign
2007 - $15,000 General Support

PIE RANCH'S MISSION IS TO CULTIVATE A HEALTHY AND JUST FOOD SYSTEM FROM SEED TO TABLE THROUGH FOOD EDUCATION, FARMER TRAINING, AND REGIONAL PARTNERSHIPS.

Pie Ranch works with Bay Area youth and the public via hands-on programming to foster awareness about where food originates, to gain insight into the issues farmworkers face and to understand the benefits of climate-smart farming. Apprentices train to prepare for their own careers in local agriculture by living on site and participating in every aspect of a working farm. Pie Ranch works with partners like the Amah Mutsun, the San Mateo Food Systems Alliance, Puente and others where interests intersect to advocate for a more equitable food system and a healthier planet.

In March of 2020, programming at the farm halted due to COVID-19. Seeking a way to be of use to the Greater Bay Area while regular programming was in abeyance, the Directors crafted a Farm Fresh Food Relief Program that utilized Pie Ranch’s program staff to aggregate, pack and distribute fresh produce to already marginalized communities suffering additional hardship from the virus’ economic impact. To date, this ongoing weekly program has served over 20,000 families with healthy, nutritious food.

August brought the CZU fire to Pie Ranch and to southern San Mateo county. Several Pie team members lost their homes while the farm’s historic house (the heart of Pie Ranch, home to its apprentices for over a decade and site of the Pie admin offices), its greenhouse, and countless trees fell to the blaze.

The extended Pie Family, including the Seed Fund rallied to support Pie Ranch’s ongoing efforts to recover from the twin catastrophes of the fire and assist with the organization’s effort to ameliorate the effects COVID-19. Seed Fund assistance ensures Pie’s program team has the resources to reach and teach youth and the public with online videos, creating socially-distanced curriculum at school gardens and implementing these same types of activities for small pods from partner schools and organizations at the farm.

The Emerging Farmers’ program lives on in a different iteration at neighboring Cascade Ranch , a climate - resilient regenerator farm that seeks to create wealth and equitable building opportunities for early stage farmers that have traditionally been excluded from land ownership. Land, mentorship, equipment access, and business planning are just some of the resources Pie Ranch funnels towards participants in this innovative program with the help of donors like the Seed Fund.

Pie’s Farmstand was able to stay open as an essential business providing this isolated community with farm fresh produce and in addition, a source of revenue for the farm during a time when other income streams have dried up.

Pie Ranch’s continued efforts in regional advocacy work took on a new significance this year with COVID exacerbating the fissures in the ailing food system and then climate change, drought and fires threatening the local Bay Area agri-system like never before. Pie’s advocacy efforts, partially supported by the Seed Fund, towards crafting a more sustainable Coastside is integral to the viability of our agriculture: Pie puts forth the vision of a more localized food infrastructure as described in the Local Food and Farm Bill, and this will help create a more just and planet-friendly food system.

pieranch.org

Point Blue Conservation Science

Native grass no-till seeding at sunset. This regenerative practice that promotes water and carbon storage was implemented on a ranch in Yolo County. (Photo credit: Corey Shake/Point Blue)

Ranchers and biologists survey the land together in Bohler Canyon (Mono County, CA).  (Photo credit: Alissa Fogg/Point Blue).

Working Lands Group Director Dr. Libby Porzig in the middle of a soil and vegetation survey on the California coast. (Photo credit: Point Blue)

A Ridgway’s Rail observed in the Corte Madera marsh during field monitoring. Birds and other wildlife rely on wetlands and coastal habitat that is threatened by development and rising sea levels. (Photo credit: Megan Elrod/Point Blue)

A Point Blue biologist in the middle of a field survey in the Black John Slough off the Petaluma River. Marshes like this can help prevent or reduce flooding for coastal communities while also conserving wildlife habitat. (Photo credit: Megan Elrod/Point Blue)

Fourth grade students from Live Oak School in Northern California plant native plants in a marsh as part of a project to help restore the marsh’s basic ecosystem functions, including creating wildlife habitat, storing carbon, and buffering the adjacent lands in storms and high tide events. (Photo Credit: Lishka Arata, Point Blue) 

Point Blue Conservation Science
2022 - $15,000 Natural Infrastructure
2019 - $15,000 Coastal Resiliency
2018 - $15,000 Rangeland Watershed Initiative

Point Blue Conservation Science is an internationally recognized leader conserving birds, other wildlife, and ecosystems through science, partnerships, and outreach. Point Blue develops nature-based solutions to climate change, habitat loss, and other environmental threats on land and at sea to benefit wildlife and people. Based in California, where the organization was founded in 1965, Point Blue works from the Sierra to the Pacific and has international programs spanning 13 countries from Alaska to Antarctica. Its hundreds of organizational partners range from Native American tribes to K-12 schools, from farmers and ranchers to government agencies. With a foundation of collaborative climate-smart conservation actions today, natural and human communities will thrive well into the future.

Point Blue shares its scientific findings widely to facilitate the adoption of best practices. Through collecting data over decades, the organization identifies trends that provide guidance for government managers. Findings are shared through workshops, digital tools, and publications in scientific journals.

The Seed Fund’s support has facilitated success for the Sustaining Working Lands Initiative, operated in a unique partnership with the US Department of Agriculture. In counties across California, 12 Point Blue partner biologists live in local communities and help their ranching neighbors implement sustainable conservation on their land while simultaneously increasing production of food for livestock. Practices contributing to soil health and minimizing greenhouse gases include planned grazing, soil amendments, and wildlife habitat restoration. These practices increase the ability of soil to hold water, improve fish and wildlife habitat and water reliability downstream, and protect open space. In addition to addressing climate change, Point Blue’s working lands conservation work on tens of thousands of acres each year contributes to improved human health through reduced air and water pollution.

Point Blue also helps farmers and ranchers manage their lands for fire resilience, providing guidance for prescribed burns on private lands across five California counties. These planned burns can help minimize the risk of wildfire while also improving habitat for wildlife.

Point Blue biologists are using drones and associated novel technologies that make mapping rangeland at large spatial scales and fine resolutions efficient. This development can help support improved stewardship of these ecologically valuable landscapes.

To help coastal communities respond to climate change, Point Blue’s Protecting Our Shorelines Initiative improves the ability of wildlife and people to adapt to flooding and erosion caused by rising seas using nature-based solutions. Restoring beaches can reduce wave energy, conserving and restoring wetlands will increase buffer zones and creating elevated spots in marshes provides spaces for wildlife to retreat to. Point Blue created the Sea Level Rise Adaptation Framework, a handbook for coastal decision makers to help determine which nature-based measures and outcomes are suitable for their location (produced with the San Francisco Bay Estuary Institute and Marin County). This guidance is in demand by municipal planners throughout California. With a grant from the Seed Fund, Point Blue is adapting the handbook to create curriculum and pilot a new training for local government planners, which offers the opportunity to apply what they have learned. From this pilot project, the training can be scaled for coastal government planners to learn best practices for adapting to rising seas with a focus on nature-based solutions, throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

Point Blue partners with the U.S. Geological Survey, California government agencies, and others to deliver the state-of-the-art projections for sea level rise and storm induced flooding through our web tool, Our Coast Our Future. The tool has been used by more than 70 local, state, and federal agencies to plan for impacts from sea level rise and we will be adding a new user interface this year to make it even easier for diverse audiences with various levels of technical expertise to use this tool. Point Blue continues to work with coastal stakeholders across CA to apply the best available science and tools, such as Our Coast Our Future, to ensure resilience of our coastal communities and ecosystems from the potential impacts of sea level rise and climate change.

pointblue.org

San Francisco Baykeeper

San Francisco Baykeeper
2022 - $15.000 Rewilding Coasts
2019 - $15,000 Coastal Resiliency
2018 - $15,000 Sediment Removal Prevention

San Francisco Baykeeper is the only organization that regularly patrols the Bay for polluters, by both sea and air, and uses environmental laws and the latest science to hold them accountable.  

Baykeeper is a fierce champion for the Bay, monitoring the biggest threats to the Bay’s health. This can include municipal sewage outfalls, as well as government agencies and industrial operations that are out of compliance with the anti-pollution laws that keep the Bay and Bay Area communities healthy. In many cases, the polluters can be convinced to fix what isn’t working, but Baykeeper's team of scientists and attorneys is always ready to fight for the Bay in court. 

The organization was founded in 1989, and got off to a start worthy of Barbary Coast legend. A tipster called the Baykeeper hotline—which still takes calls to this day—and alerted Baykeeper about a renegade shipyard that was illegally scooping tons of toxic mud off the Bay floor and dumping it onshore. Patrolling by kayak in the dark of night, Baykeeper caught the culprits red-handed—and in the end the Bay won: The company paid stiff fines, and its officers went to jail.   

Baykeeper's recent wins for the Bay Area include securing a ban on the handling and storage of toxic coal in Richmond, which will keep more than 1 million tons of toxic coal out of the East Bay community every year. Also, Baykeeper took legal action against the US Coast Guard that secured changes in how the Coast Guard cleans its buoys, which will keep toxic heavy metals out of the Bay—and out of all the waters where the Coast Guard operates.   

Baykeeper defeated the Trump administration in 2020 when a federal judge ruled in the organization's favor in Baykeeper vs EPA to protect 1,400 acres of potential wetlands, which would also buffer South Bay communities from the destructive effects of sea level rise.

Baykeeper recognizes climate change as the greatest threat facing the San Francisco Bay today, along with consequent sea level rise. The Bay Area has a dense waterfront population, with people living next door to over 1,000 toxic industrial sites along its shore. This includes Superfund sites in Hunters Point, Alameda, Oakland, Richmond, and San Jose. These toxic sites pose eminent danger to Bay Area residents.

There is a very real possibility that during a storm, the already elevated waters of the Bay would flood toxic sites, flushing pollutants into the surrounding neighborhoods. Bay Area homes, schools, and businesses would be flooded with poison. Critical infrastructure would be under water too, including SFO and Oakland Airport, roads and freeways throughout the Bay Area, wastewater treatment facilities, and more. 

The Bay Area needs to institute a region-wide climate adaptation plan with teeth and a timeline—a plan that also identifies and prioritizes contaminated shoreline areas and industrial sites for cleanup. 

Baykeeper's scientists and attorneys are there to help bring that plan together, and to keep an active eye out for polluters. Bayeeper fills a singular role in protecting the San Francisco Bay, the geographic feature that makes the Bay Area unique in the world. The wave that breaks against the shoreline in Tiburon is made of the same water that nourishes the wetlands of Redwood City.

Fighting for Healthy Sediment in San Francisco Bay (2018)

In order to make the Bay more resilient to climate-driven sea level rise, which could devastate San Francisco Bay shorelines and communities, the layers of sand and mud on the Bay's floor need to stay healthy. When healthy, this sediment replenishes shorelines and wetlands, providing natural protection against rising tides. But private companies, as well as federal and state agencies, have mismanaged and exploited this resource. Baykeeper, with support from the Seed Fund, uses environmental law and science to advocate for safer, state-of-the-art dredging practices, and won a landmark legal victory when the California Court of Appeal ruled that state agencies may not consider sand mining and other mining in waterways to be in the public good.

Preparing San Francisco Bay for Sea Level Rise (2019)

San Francisco Bay is uniquely vulnerable to the ravages of climate change. There are well over 1,000 toxic sites along the Bay, active or no longer in use, that could flood the Bay and adjoining neighborhoods with industrial poisons if the sea level rises—as science predicts it will. With support from the Seed Fund, Baykeeper investigates potentially polluting sites along the Bay that should be prioritized for cleanup, protects wetlands and potential wetlands from development—including prevailing against the Trump administration in Baykeeper vs EPA, which saved South Bay salt ponds from being paved over—and educates decisionmakers about the critical need for regional planning to guard against the effects of climate-driven sea level rise. 

baykeeper.org

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 Estuary Institute

San Francisco Estuary Institute
2021 - $15,000 Urban Nature Lab Website
2019 - $10,000 Operational Landscape Units Project (with SPUR)
2018 - $10,000 General Support
2018 - $10,000 Biodiversity Integration into the SPUR Regional Plan
2017 - $10,000 Catalyzing Urban Biodiversity Book Project by Robin Grossinger
2017 - $10,000 Operational Landscape Units Project (with SPUR)
2017 - $10,000 Framework for Sea-Level Rise Adaptation
2016 - $15,000 Framework for Sea-Level Rise Adaptation
2014 - $10,000 Center for Resilient Landscapes

The San Francisco Estuary Institute (SFEI) delivers visionary science that empowers people to revitalize nature in their communities. Created by the region for the region, we are a unique local science think-tank supporting diverse organizations to improve the environmental health of the Bay Area and beyond. We provide independent science on water quality, urban sustainability, and ecological resilience to public agencies, NGOs, communities, and business leaders. These organizations collaborate with our team of 70 dedicated scientists and technologists for the innovative solutions needed to make our region, and the people who live here, healthy and resilient.

For more than a quarter century, SFEI has served as a trusted science advisor to local and state agencies charged with implementing natural resource mandates. Our pioneering historical ecology research has established an ecological foundation for large landscape restoration efforts in watersheds throughout California, prompting paradigm shifts in management. In the Bay, SFEI staff have provided science leadership to the California Coastal Conservancy’s 2015 Baylands Goals—a blueprint to accelerate the restoration of tidal marsh in San Francisco Bay toward a goal of 100,000 acres. In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, our landmark studies have supported a partnership between state agencies and major water users by creating science-based options and a vision to restore up to 30,000 acres of Delta wetlands habitat. In cities, our Urban Nature Lab uses the quantitative science of nature in cities to help advance innovative, ecologically based urban planning and design.

SFEI develops nature-based solutions to improve conditions across the landscape -- along shorelines, in cities, and in rural areas. We use science-based planning to create multi-benefit approaches to improve ecosystem functions for people, like reducing flooding and sequestering carbon, and for nature, like creating habitat for native wildlife. These interventions are cost-effective, resilient, and can be implemented across the land-use spectrum from high in watersheds, through the valleys that hold our cities and agriculture, down to the edge of the Bay and Delta, with the intention of ensuring equitable outcomes for all communities. Our approach takes advantage of natural processes by restoring wetlands, floodplains, and riparian areas; creating high-performance networks of nature throughout; realigning creeks to reduce flooding and improve sediment delivery to protect the shoreline; and managing landscapes to sequester carbon rather than emitting greenhouse gases. 

Our vision of the Bay Area, as a model for other urbanized regions facing similar challenges, encompasses:

• Healthy ecosystems supporting people and nature across the landscape: along the shoreline, in cities, in agricultural areas, and in open space,
• Natural infrastructure helping urban areas and their surrounding landscapes manage sea-level rise, water supply challenges, higher temperatures, water pollution, more severe drought and flooding, and other climate-related threats, and
• Green space in developed areas improving the health and quality of life for all residents and for native wildlife.

For more information about SFEI and the Resilient Landscapes Program, please see our Strategic Plan.

Seed Fund Specific Projects

• The SF Bay Shoreline Adaptation Atlas is guiding local and regional strategies to adapt to sea level rise.
• Hidden Nature SF reveals the San Francisco landscape before the city.
• SFEI’s Urban Nature Lab uses the quantitative science of nature in cities to help advance innovative, ecologically based urban planning and design.

Our novel research on cities, published in The Biological Deserts Fallacy (BioScience 2021), identifies the different pathways by which cities can benefit regional ecosystems 

sfei.org

San Francisco Urban Film Festival

Folks enjoy City Is Alive, socially distant on Egbert Avenue, a night of musical performances and interactive murals to celebrate the legacy of everyday heroes that brought joy and life to the Bayview. Photo: Lucas Bradley

Felipe Riley dances in front of an interactive mural projection of his mother, Lenora LeVon, during City is Alive. .Photo: Shantré Pinkney

Folks gather in an unfinished ground-level unit in the East Cut district of San Francisco for a film screening and panel discussion.

A film screening and panel discussion in Fern Alley, San Francisco, where audience members sit in chairs or on blankets.

Participants drafting stories at a Storytelling Workshop at the SFUFF’s 6th annual film festival in 2020.

Audience members gather in the Bayanihan Center for a SFUFF film screening and panel discussion, co-presented by SOMAP Pilipinas, on how different grass-roots organizations use arts and culture to promote community preservation and self-determination. Photo: Emma Marie Chiang

Participants work in small groups during a Storytelling Workshop in partnership with Young Community Developers aimed at building Black intergenerational wealth in the Bayview. Photo: Austin Blackwell

San Francisco Urban Film Festival
2019 - $5,000 General Support 
2018 - $5,000 General Operating Support
2017 - $5,000 Climate Change Programming

WHAT WE DO

The SF Urban Film Fest (SFUFF) gathers a diverse, engaged audience and uses the power of storytelling to spark discussion and civic engagement around urban issues. They ask what it means to live together and create just and equitable cities.

SFUFF is an interdisciplinary storytelling organization that produces an annual film festival, year-round film-based discussion events, and long-term community storytelling projects.

They collaborate with cultural, academic, grass-roots, and civic organizations including the Roxie Theater, SPUR, Imprint City, Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), and many others. Projects are often jointly initiated to combine film and community planning, most recently with Young Community Developers (YCD) in the Bayview Hunters Point and SOMA Pilipinas Cultural Heritage District in the SOMA district of San Francisco. In recognition of their impact on empowering communities using storytelling and film, the SFUFF are Artists in Residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA).

IMPACT

Film Festival
Since its founding in 2014, SFUFF has produced an annual film festival for 7 seasons and year round programming encompassing 115 events reaching over 8,000 people. They expect to reach many more through their virtual film festival in February 2021.

Based on their festival surveys, year after year, SFUFF attracts diverse audiences and reaches across demographic divides. Its 6th annual film festival audience was 53% people of color. Their audience was also remarkably intergenerational: 18% are aged under 25, 69% are between 26-55 years old, and 13% are aged 55+.

SFUFF engages with diverse filmmakers and panelists. 63% of our 2020 Festival filmmakers are people of color; most notably, 44% of our 2020 Festival filmmakers are women of color. Additionally, 74% of our 2020 Festival panelists are people of color.

Community Storytelling
SFUFF’s community storytelling projects create opportunities for unique cross disciplinary partnerships between community organizations, businesses, cultural institutions and public agencies.

In partnership with YCD, they organized storytelling workshops and produced a short video to kick off the Black Owner’s Campaign. The goal was to build a strong narrative aimed at galvanizing a coalition of Black property owners to support more affordable housing. The resulting video features prominently on the YCD homepage and has resulted in a local developer expressing interest in building housing for Black teachers.

The storytelling and community planning with YCD led to the production of a multi-media one-night socially distant event featuring a live streamed hip hop concert and interactive film projections depicting historic murals. The event, City is Alive, was centered on the theme of everyday heroes who fight for resources and bring joy to the Bayview Hunters Point and was produced in collaboration with Imprint City and YBCA.

SFUFF is working with the SOMA Pilipinas Cultural Heritage District on a short documentary film that chronicles the displacement of Pilipinx community by the force of redevelopment in the Yerba Buena district of SOMA during the 1970's, and the community’s resistance and struggle for self-determination that grew out of it and in face of ongoing gentrification and displacement. They are currently in community-driven pre-production with a team of Pilipinx filmmakers and archival researchers, and in late 2021, will organize work in progress screenings and community discussions centering the stories and people of the film. The process of making this film is designed to dovetail with the community planning around the creation of the cultural heritage district that already includes the famous UNDISCOVERED SF night market and Kapawa Gardens.

WHO WE ARE

The SFUFF Core Team brings rich backgrounds in civic innovation, urban planning, housing finance, media, filmmaking, and the humanities. They work year-round planning events and curating programming. During the festival season, a small army of volunteers help them with photography, marketing, ticket sales, audience surveys, and more.

Our Core Team plays artistic roles as Program Producers. They also guide organizational growth and fill administrative and technical roles. The following are brief detailed bios of SFUFF’s Core Team:

Fay Darmawi, Founder and Executive Director
Fay is an urban planner, cultural producer, and community development banker. She belongs to a persecuted Chinese minority group and immigrated to the U.S. from Jakarta, Indonesia as a child.

Kristal Celik, Festival Manager
Kristal has a background in energy and mechanical engineering and identifies with her Turkish immigrant roots.

Robin Abad Ocubillo, Program Producer
Robin is an urban designer and urban planner at the City of San Francisco Planning Department and identifies as an LGBTQ Filipino-American.

Omeed Manocheri, Program Producer
Omeed is a first generation Iranian-American multimedia producer and entrepreneur with a fine arts degree. His media projects include Daily Kabob, a new digital platform to unify the MENA and DESI communities.

Susannah Smith, Program Producer
Susannah is a documentary filmmaker interested in ways race and sexuality interact with the politics of urban development. Susannah is assistant editor on the documentary “Homeroom” premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2021. She identifies as an LGBTQ Jewish-American.

Ronald Sundstrom, Humanities Advisor
Ronald is a Professor of Philosophy and a member of the African American Studies, Critical Diversity Studies programs at the University of San Francisco (USF). He identifies as mixed-race Filipino-American and Black, and LGBTQ.

sfurbanfilmfest.com

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

South Bay Salt Ponds

The gravel beach would help provide nature-based protection at Eden Landing. Photo by Dave Halsing

Scouting gravel beach and berm pilot location at Eden Landing. Photo by Dave Halsing

Gravel Beach and Berm Location. Photo credit: Cris Benton

Eden Landing Kayak Launch – under construction. Cris Benton.

Completed viewing platform at historical site of Alvarado Salt Works. Photo: Cris Benton.

South Bay Salt Ponds
2019 - $15,000 Wetlands Restoration

The South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project encompasses 15,100 acres of former salt ponds around the edge of South San Francisco Bay. It is the largest wetlands restoration project on the West Coast of the United States. The Project began in 2003, when the properties were acquired from Cargill Inc. Funds for the acquisition were provided by federal and state agencies and several private foundations. Those ponds are now part of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) Eden Landing Ecological Reserve near Hayward, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (USFWS) Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge at the Bay’s south end. A third agency, the State Coastal Conservancy, plans and administers the Project.

This acquisition was the initial step in a larger campaign to restore 40,000 acres of lost tidal wetlands to San Francisco Bay – important because about 85% of its historic wetland have been lost to fill or alteration. The 50-year Project will be conducted in multiple phases at the Eden Landing, Ravenswood, and Alviso pond complexes.

The Project has three main goals:

• Restoration: Restore and enhance a mix of wetland habitats 
• Recreation: Provide wildlife-oriented public access
• Flood Risk Management: Provide flood risk management in the South Bay

Restoration

The Project is providing critical new habitat for fish, birds and other wildlife, transforming a landscape the size of Manhattan into a thriving wetland ecosystem. The two main types of habitat restoration are:
Tidal marsh - Salt marsh, mud flats and sloughs provide shelter for endangered wildlife such as the salt marsh harvest mouse and Ridgway’s rail; rich feeding grounds for shorebirds; and nursery areas for young.

Tidal marshes are important for human communities too, as they absorb waves and high tides from storms and rising sea levels, protection the infrastructure behind them.

Enhanced managed ponds - The Bay Area serves as a critical stop along the Pacific Flyway for migratory birds, and many bird species became dependent on ponds in SF Bay during the 150 years in which salt has been made here. Enhancing and managing former salt ponds carefully provides appropriate feeding, resting and nesting habitats for shorebirds and waterfowl, both resident and migratory, including the threatened western snowy plover.

Recreation

The Project adds recreational opportunities along the Bay’s shoreline for millions of people. Our wildlife-compatible public access features include these:

• New trails, including Bay Trail segments and spurs, and connections to existing trail networks
• Viewing platforms and interpretive stations;
• Access to cultural resources such as historic salt-making sites;
• A kayak launch into waterways and the San Francisco Bay Water Trail
• Maintaining access to fishing and waterfowl hunting, where allowed

Flood Risk Management

The Restoration Project keeps a careful eye to the risks of flooding from tides, storms, and sea level rise.

• Flood Risk Management: The Project adds, raises, or improves inboard levees to maintain or increase existing levels of flood protection so that flood hazards do not increase. 
• Sea Level Rise: The Project includes features to adapt to sea-level rise over time. Modeling indicates that tidal wetlands restored soon could keep pace with sea-level rise and buffer sea-level rise. Marshes are biologically productive habitats that capture large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Carbon storage benefits of tidal salt marshes may exceed those of freshwater marshes.

Accomplishments and Next Steps

With the completion of Phase 1 in April 2016, the Project has

• Restored 3,000 acres of tidal marsh and muted tidal habitat with endangered species returning
• Enhanced 710 acres of ponds for a variety of birds
• Created 7 miles of new public trails and added overlooks, historical exhibits, and a kayak launch

The Phase 2 actions are underway at two of the five planned locations, with others ramping up for construction in 2021. In all, the Phase 2 actions will address another 4,000 acres of habitat restoration, 5 miles of trails, and partnered with up to three external agencies to integrate their flood management needs into the work. 

Eden Landing Ecological Reserve

The Phase 2 actions being planned for the Eden Landing Ecological Reserve in Alameda County, include over 2,200 acres of 11 former salt ponds. A mix of fully tidal and muted tidal marsh restoration and managed pond enhancements will be linked to several improved levees and 3 miles of new Bay Trail. 

This planned work also includes an innovative pilot project for a Gravel Beach and Berm feature that would be built on the outer, bay-facing side of the Project’s edge. This feature would simultaneously provide roosting and foraging habitat for a mix of shorebirds and protect the existing levee from erosion. This is nature-based shoreline management in action. If the 300-foot pilot project is successful, a 2-mile long version of it would be installed there, returning a large stretch of shoreline to a habitat type that has been lost.

With funding from several sources, including the Seed Fund, this novel feature is midway through its design and environmental permitting phase and could enter into construction late in 2022.

southbayrestoration.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

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

TransForm

TransForm
2023 - $15,000 Survive and Thrive Transit
2019 - $15,000 General Support
2016 - $10,000 General Support
2015 - $10,000 General Support 

For nearly eighteen years TransForm has helped envision and advocate for affordable, walkable neighborhoods with a wide variety of transportation choices to connect residents to health care, schools, shopping and work. The Innovative Cities project plans to integrate new mobility options, such as car-sharing and bike sharing, into community development, with special consideration given to Oakland and San Jose. The GreenTRIP Connect program is developing a web-based interactive map that documents the economic, health and environmental benefits of on-site car sharing and bike sharing with free memberships, and free transit passes for residents.  

transformca.org

Turtle Island Restoration Network

Turtle Island Restoration Network’s research expeditions in Cocos Island National Park have revealed highly migratory species, like this whale shark, use “swimways” to move between protected marine reserves in the Eastern Tropical Pacific.

Staff, interns, and volunteers of Turtle Island Restoration Network working together to grow, tend and care for native plants used to restore critical habitat for Coho salmon in Lagunitas Creek.

Turtle Island Restoration Network’s Gulf Program Director Joanie Steinhaus evaluates a water sample that a group of elementary school students helped collect for microplastics, an increasingly urgent threat to both humans and marine environments.

Turtle Island Restoration Network’s nesting beach protection program in Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica protects a secondary nesting beaches for endangered Pacific leatherback sea turtles, to ensure leatherback hatchlings like this one have an increased rate at survival.  

An intern at Turtle Island Restoration Network plants native plants and trees at a restoration site in the Lagunitas Creek Watershed, the most important habitat for the recovery of endangered coho salmon.

Turtle Island Restoration Network’s salmon-saving program in Northern California, known as SPAWN, recently removed a 100-year-old dam that was blocking the migration of endangered coho salmon and creating poor habitat conditions for coho and other at-risk species.

Turtle Island Restoration Network
2019 - $10,000 10,000 Redwoods Project 

Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN) has been a leading advocate for the world’s ocean and marine wildlife for more than 30 years. Over decades, TIRN has worked tirelessly to create long-lasting positive change based on science to help protect numerous marine species including sea turtles, whale sharks, and coho salmon.

With humble beginnings as an all-volunteer grassroots effort, TIRN has continued to grow and help affect change throughout the world. Today, TIRN responds rapidly to environmental threats to the ocean, inland watersheds, and marine wildlife.

Programs span across the globe, including the coastal waters of the Galapagos Islands, the sandy beaches of Galveston, Texas and the redwood forests of California, to protect sharks, coho salmon, marine mammals, and seabirds from a myriad of threats including industrial overfishing, destruction of coastal and riverine habitat, and the threat of climate change from fossil fuel projects. With TIRN’s Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN) initiative, the organization engages in on-the-ground protection and restoration of endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead in the Bay Area and the environment on which we all depend. SPAWN uses a multi-faceted approach to accomplish its mission, including habitat restoration, conservation research and monitoring, science-based advocacy, grassroots empowerment, public and environmental education, media campaigns and collaboration with other organizations and agencies who share our vision.

Through its work, hundreds of thousands of sea turtles and other marine species have been saved through grassroots empowerment, consumer action, strategic litigation, hands-on restoration, environmental education, and by promoting sustainable local, national and international marine policies.

The critical work TIRN has influenced is witnessed across the globe and has contributed substantial and measurable change for the environment, wildlife and people.

To save 50,000 sea turtles annually, TIRN helped shut down a Mexican sea turtle slaughterhouse and convinced Mexico to stop all legal turtle slaughter and join the Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Convention on Foreign Trade (CITES). 

TIRN’s role in reforming regulations and policies helped close 250,000 square miles of the Pacific Ocean to protect sea turtles and marine mammals from harmful fishery practices. 

The organization’s work restored over 100,000 square feet of crucial creekside habitat for wild coho salmon, an issue close to the organization’s headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area.

These are just a few examples of the significant changes TIRN has affected in its commitment to acting as wise, willing, and able stewards of life in the earth’s oceans and on its lands. 

A network of thousands of supporters, volunteers, and pro bono professionals help TIRN accomplish its mission of protecting marine wildlife and the ocean and inland watersheds that sustain them. 

With an extensive history of caring for the state and health of the planet, TIRN has had an influential effect for over three decades. Today, it remains true to its original vision and is able to respond rapidly to environmental threats to our ocean, streams and marine wildlife. 

TIRN will not be slowing down and will continue to work for the planet and look forward to a bright future for our blue-green planet.

10,000 Redwoods

The 10,000 Redwoods Project is a science-based, multi-faceted program to plant thousands of redwood trees and other native forest and riparian vegetation to address (1) climate change by sequestering carbon; (2) critically endangered salmon recovery through habitat restoration; and (3) improved water quality through creek bank stabilization and filtering run-off. The 10,000 Redwoods Project provides a textbook demonstration of how we simultaneously improve the ecosystem services that are vital to both wildlife and humans by protecting and enhancing critical habitat.

The 10,000 Redwoods Project addresses the global issue of climate change by creating a carbon sink to fight climate change through local, hands-on action and education by: 

• Protecting and expanding creekside redwood forests in the Lagunitas Creek Watershed and elsewhere that shelter endangered species including wild endangered coho salmon, Northern spotted owls and California freshwater shrimp. 
• Sequestering carbon, a cause of climate change, through planting native redwood trees, riparian plants, and other redwood forest trees and understory plants in crucial watersheds.
• Planting trees, which provide creekside food and shelter to salmon and other wildlife. Eventually, branches and trunks fall in the creek to create “large woody debris,” an essential component of healthy streams and salmon habitat. 
• Improving water quality by creating self-sustaining riparian and floodplain plant communities that keep water cool and clean through natural filtration. 
• Engaging volunteers in the satisfying work of collecting native seeds, raising trees and other plants, and “out-planting” them at restoration sites. 
• Reaching beyond the Lagunitas Creek Watershed to engage students and volunteers of all ages to raise and plant native redwood trees throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. TIRN provide seeds, supplies and support to classrooms and individuals to raise trees for planting in both the Lagunitas Creek Watershed and other areas where redwoods have historically grown. 
• Building a climate change movement that motivates the public with a simple way to reduce their carbon footprint. 
• Providing the public with a mechanism to help accelerate carbon sequestration from the atmosphere to mitigate for the release of greenhouse gasses.

seaturtles.org

World Wildlife Foundation

Australia and the Amazon recently experienced unprecedented fire seasons. In response, WWF raised money for on-the-ground response efforts and provided guidance to governments on necessary wildlife survival interventions. Going forward, WWF will work to ensure unburned habitat is protected while restoring species and habitats with a strong focus on climate resilience and connectivity. Credit: Marizilda Cruppe / WWF-UK

Sunda pangolin. Zoonotic diseases like COVID-19—ones that jump from animals to humans—occur when human activities encroach on wild places and species. WWF is working to reduce the harmful practices that lead to zoonotic diseases and mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 on communities and conservation programs. Credit: Suzi Eszterhas / Wild Wonders of China / WWF

Aerial photo of Orinoco River and tepui of Colombia. Through their Earth for Life initiative, WWF works with partners to create and expand proper management of conservation areas using a novel financial approach. WWF has helped create programs in Brazil, Bhutan, Peru, and Colombia. Credit: Day’s Edge Productions

Community members digging for Devil's Claw in Bwabwata National Park, Namibia. In countries around the world, WWF strives to balance the needs of people and wildlife through community-driven initiatives. Credit: Gareth Bently / WWF-US

Bison released into newly expanded range at Badlands National Park. WWF helped raise funds to make the expansion possible. This is the first time since 1877 that bison have set foot on this part of the prairie. WWF leads innovative work with public agencies, tribal nations, ranchers, and other partners to create a sustainable future for North America’s Northern Great Plains. Credit: Clay Bolt / WWF-US

Tiger mother and cub age four months, Ranthambhore, Rajhasthan, India. India is home to approximately two-thirds of the world’s wild tigers. In 2019, a WWF-supported tiger survey found an estimated 2,967 tigers—an indicator of growing or stable populations. WWF is dedicated to stabilize and increase populations of many of the world’s most iconic and threatened species. Credit: naturepl.com / Andy Rouse / WWF

World Wildlife Foundation
2019 - $5,000 Amazon Rainforest Relief

In 1961, a small group of ardent naturalists and conservationists created the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to “conserve the world’s fauna, flora, forests, landscape, water, soils, and other natural resources.” Until that time, conservation had been largely the domain of scientists. The group launched a public appeal to save the black rhino, whose numbers had dwindled to less than 2,500 animals. Thanks to persistent conservation actions across Africa, black rhino numbers have doubled from their historic low 20 years ago.

With a 60-year history of results, a foundation grounded in science, and a global network, WWF is dedicated to addressing conservation challenges on a grand scale. WWF works in partnership with others across multiple sectors and industries to protect the world’s most important ecosystems and their species and habitats; strengthen local communities’ ability to conserve natural resources; transform markets and policies; and mobilize millions of people to support conservation. WWF is organized around six goals—Climate, Forests, Freshwater, Oceans, Sustainable Food, and Wildlife—that support its mission and foster innovation.

Headquartered in Washington, DC, WWF-US is an independent affiliate of the international WWF
Network and plays an important role in WWF’s conservation programs all over the world. WWF
works in 100 countries and has 1.2 million members in the United States and more than five million supporters globally.

WWF partners with a wide range of groups and individuals to protect iconic wildlife, conserve vast land and waterscapes, and promote community livelihoods and economies. Thanks to the commitment of donors, members, and partners, WWF tackles solutions that build a better tomorrow for both people and nature. Most recently, WWF:

• Worked with public and private partners across 13 countries to double the global tiger population by 2022, the year of the Tiger. 
• Restored bison to America’s Northern Great plains, including the newly established 27,680-acre Wolakota Buffalo Range on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota and slated to become North America’s largest Native American owned and managed bison herd. 
• Created a Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online with major e-commerce companies, including Tencent, Ebay, and Etsy, which to date have blocked or removed more than three million listings of endangered and threatened species and associated wildlife products from their online platforms.
• Completed a survey of Fiji’s Great Sea Reef, which harbors approximately 40% of the known plant and animal species in Fiji and supplies as much as 80% of the fish caught for the domestic fisheries industry. 
• Developed new climate action coalitions made up of businesses, local governments, community leaders and other stakeholders to champion a zero-carbon transition in key countries such as Vietnam, South Africa, Mexico, Argentina, Japan, and most recently Brazil.
• Helped prevent the next pandemic by addressing pressures on nature—including wildlife consumption and deforestation--that lead to zoonotic diseases like COVID-19.  

Emergency Amazon Fire Fund

WWF is grateful to the Seed Fund for supporting the Emergency Amazon Fire Fund. In 2019, more than 27,000 square miles of the Brazilian Amazon and 19,300 square miles of Bolivia burned. Communities—as well as jaguars, tapirs, and other threatened wildlife—lost their homes, as volunteers worked arduously to extinguish fires with little to no training and only basic equipment. WWF raised more than $1.4 million that helped furnish firefighting equipment—including gloves, protective goggles, machetes, chainsaws, water pumps, hoses; and even food, water, and medical supplies–for impacted communities. The Fund also provided communication radios and GPS, car rentals, and fuel to deliver supplies in remote areas, as well as equipment and training to monitor ongoing fires and provide alerts to those at risk. To mitigate the threat of future fires, local organizations, communities, and key partners used WWF funding to launch fire awareness campaigns and convene fire management and prevention workshops.

worldwildlife.org