Philanthropy Front and Center-San Francisco is a blog sponsored by the Foundation Center.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact Janet Camarena, Director, Foundation Center-San Francisco.
For more information about the Foundation Center, visit our web page.
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Our library is open Monday through Friday* free of charge and no appointment is necessary.
Library Hours:
| Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday* 10:00am-5:00pm | |
| Wednesday 10:00am-8:00pm |
*closed Friday, July 4 for Indepedence Day
Did you know that California foundations gave twenty-nine percent of all U.S. foundation giving for the environment? Some of our big environmental funders include the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Energy Foundation, and Marisla Foundation. To glean more tidbits download our brand new 2-page report, Spotlight on Funding for the Environment and Animals in California.
You also should check out two grantmaker conversations in our Philanthropy News Digest (PND). PND staff interviewed Steven J. McCormick, president and CEO of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, about his tenure at the Nature Conservancy, his new role and responsibilities at the foundation, its approach to environmental grantmaking, and the challenges facing environmental philanthropy. And David Grant, president and CEO of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in New Jersey, spoke with PND about the history of the foundation's environment program, its forward-thinking approach to grantmaking in the environment area, and what the foundation is doing to make itself a greener organization.
In fall 2007 we launched Philanthropy Chat, an online audio series featuring interviews with West Coast grantmakers and other philanthropy and fundraising experts. Listen to the current edition of Philanthropy Chat and hear Mary Gregory, senior program officer for Pacific Foundation Services (PFS), discuss the giving priorities of PFS foundations and trends in the family foundation field. Since PFS administers the giving for a dozen Bay Area family foundations Mary provides a view of the field few others can.
If you missed a Meet the Grantmaker program or want to listen to other Philanthropy Chats peruse the offerings in our Events Archive.
Our library is open Monday through Friday free of charge and no appointment is necessary.
Library Hours:
| Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday 10:00am-5:00pm | |
| Wednesday 10:00am-8:00pm |
I'd like to extend our Congratulations to Julie Pokrandt, Development Director of River Partners since her organization was selected to receive the $1,000 grant at our Reality Grantmaking program this morning, co-sponsored with the Development Executives Roundtable and AFP-Golden Gate Chapter. Julie's proposal received a near perfect score of 19.5 out of 20 possible points, and it may have been a Reality Grantmaking first that three of the four judges gave her a perfect score! What the judges seemed to find most compelling about the River Partners proposal, aside from the compelling nature of the project, was how well detailed it was and how much information she was able to include in two pages.
As detailed in its proposal, "The Great Acorn Grow-out," River Partners will work with seven schools throughout the Central Valley to grow more than 16,000 Valley oak trees for habitat restoration projects along the Sacramento and Feather rivers. Since we spotlight nonprofit organizations from time to time, I thought I'd give some background on the Reality Grantmaking winner in our "Nonprofit Spotlight" format.
Organization Name: River Partners
Year Founded: 1998
Contact: John Carlon, President
Address: 580 Vallombrosa Ave., Chico, CA 95926 and 806 14th St., Modesto, CA 95354
Phone: (503) 894-5401 and (209) 521-1700
E-mail: info@riverpartners.org
Mission: River Partners creates wildlife habitat for the benefit of people and the environment.
Background: River Partners was founded by two conservation-minded farmers who believed that the fields of habitat restoration and agriculture could work together. River Partners protects the environment by implementing large scale restoration projects such as planting almost one million native trees and shrubs along streams and rivers in the Central Valley. See a map of River Partners projects. In addition, River Partners has reforested more than 6,000 acres of river banks and floodplains, providing critical habitat for California' s wildlife. This restoration work supports efforts to sequester greenhouse gases, improve water and air quality, recover salmon populations, solve California's levee crisis, and protect open space.
Additional Programs: Riparian Sanctuary and Bidwell Ranch Project: Mitigation Bank and Management Plan Development
Funding Needs: Demands on the natural landscape and rivers are multiplying. California's population growth and continued development are impacting our environment, clean air, water, and wildlife. California has already lost at least 90 percent of its riverside forests and grasslands. Contributions will support River Partners work to restore and preserve those special places that add so much to the quality of life in the state.
Would you like to have your organization spotlighted? Following the above format, send your spotlight to Jean Johnson.
If you are the type of person that likes to see data presented in a visual format, then you will love the Foundation Directory Online Professional's new mapping and charting features. You can now really get a sense of exactly which places grantmakers are talking about when they say they are "place based" or "give where they live."
Visit our library today to test drive these new features yourself or download a flyer that shows sample screen shots of the maps and charts.
I just want to extend our congratulations and thanks to the six finalist environmental organizations that have been selected to compete for a $1,000 grant as part of our Reality Grantmaking session tomorrow morning. For those of you not familiar with Reality Grantmaking, it is an exciting program we have done for the past few years in collaboration with the Development Executives Roundtable and the Association of Fundraising Professionals-Golden Gate Chapter. During Reailty Grantmaking, attendees have the opportunity to observe grantmaking in action as a panel of grantmakers determine which of the competing proposals will be selected to receive the grant. In order for us to fulfill that strong grantseeker desire to listen in on the grant deliberation process, some organizations had to be willing to "take one for the team" and volunteer to have their grant proposals publicly reviewed. Not surprisingly when funding is at stake, there was some competition involved and we have now announced the six organizations that were selected as finalists:
The links above will take you to the submitted proposals. If you plan on attending tomorrow, you can do some advance reading and place bets with yourself or your friends about which of these organizations will take home that $1,000 prize.
If you are one of the many regular users of our popular and most comprehensive grantseeking database, Foundation Directory Online Professional at our Foundation Center-San Francisco library, then you may be interested to know that San Francisco State University's library has acquired what we call an "institution wide access" plan. This means all students and faculty at San Francisco State now have remote access to the database through their personal library accounts. If you are a current student or faculty member at SF State, but you have not yet set-up a library account there, just visit SF State's "create a library PIN" page. If you already have a profile set-up, then just visit the web access management page to access FDO.
In addition to our library here in downtown San Francisco, FDO Professional is also available for free use at our Cooperating Collections throughout the Bay Area: at the Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Management of Marin, CompassPoint in Milpitas, the Richmond Public Library, the San Mateo Public Library, Solano Community Foundation, and at the Sonoma County Library.
Our library is open Monday thru Friday free of charge and no appointment is necessary.
Library Hours:
Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday
10:00 am-5:00 pm
Wednesday
10:00 am-8:00 pm
Since throughout June the Foundation Center is offering special classes and events for our Funding for the Environment Month, it seems apt to use our blog this month to share with you news about recently awarded environmental grants. This grant from Pacific Gas & Electric Company was just announced last week to support what is "poised to be the 'greenest museum' of its kind in the world."
The Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has announced a four-year, $1.5 million grant to the California Academy of Sciences for climate change and environmental sustainability exhibits and programs in the academy's new location, which is scheduled to open during the fall. This recent grant is the largest made by PG&E to a single San Francisco institution.
The collaboration is intended to help educate Californians about how they can take action on climate change. As the lead corporate sponsor of the academy, PG&E will provide energy-related content for the Science in Action exhibit and expertise for ongoing programs. In addition, PG&E employees will have an opportunity to participate in year-round volunteer activities and special events. The company is also the lead sponsor of the academy's environmental-sustainability exhibit, Altered State: Climate Change in California.
"The need for science and climate change education is one of the most critical issues of our time," said academy executive director Greg Farrington. "PG&E, which continues to demonstrate environmental leadership within California and nationwide, is an ideal partner for the new academy as we seek to serve as a leading resource for science education in the twenty-first century."
For more information, read the press release.
Have you recently received or awarded a noteworthy environmental grant? Let us know.
