Meet our members! AFN’s greatest asset is our members—a diverse network of national, regional, and community-based foundations, financial institutions, and grantmakers—investing in advancing equitable wealth building and economic mobility. Check back each month and meet your peers!
1: What is the mission of your organization and how is advancing equitable wealth building and economic mobility incorporated into the work?
At the San Francisco Foundation, the People Pathway’s grantmaking is organized into two buckets: Decriminalizing Poverty and Advancing Quality, Empowered Jobs. Within the first bucket, we focus on Eliminating Fines and Fees, Reimagining Public Safety (including addressing the root causes of harm and violence and shifting public budgets away from policing and punishment toward community investment), and Reimagining School Climate and Safety. The second bucket has a focus on Investing in Worker-Owned Cooperatives, Convening a Workers’ Rights Cohort, and Promoting Equity in Project Labor Agreements. We also invest in efforts to form public banks in the East Bay and San Francisco.
2: How does your organization currently or plan to explicitly and intentionally include and empower people of color in the design of your policies and strategies to close the racial wealth gap?
Racial equity is at the heart of the foundation’s work, including grantmaking that prioritizes BIPOC leadership, internal processes that center the perspectives of communities of color in the development of our strategies, and building trusted relationships with grantees who serve directly-impacted communities of color. The People Pathway’s two programmatic buckets are intended to address wealth-stripping of and wealth-building for people of color, with an eye towards eliminating wealth disparities by race.
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3: Where are we lacking investments as a sector that will result in greater economic equity, and how can we address the gap?
To realize the systems transformation we need to achieve a truly equitable economy and financial stability for all, we have to fund more organizing (including political education), narrative change work to address deep-seated mindsets like anti-Blackness and misogyny, and policy work (including lobbying and implementation).
4: Share a question you would like to raise to your funder colleagues.
What are best practices to assess grantee impact over the medium/long term while still prioritizing the implementation of trust-based philanthropy principles?
5: Are there any useful resources you would like to share with your funder colleagues?
The San Francisco Foundation is proud to host ReWork the Bay, a funder-field collaborative that envisions a Bay Area economy that centers the voices, power and needs of working people. Rework the Bay aims to advance collective solutions that increase: 1: The number of quality, empowered jobs with pay and say; 2: Equitable access to those jobs; and 3: Affordable, accessible support systems.
For more information, please visit https://reworkthebay.org/
6: What TV show are you watching and what do you like about it?
I’ve been loving the show South Side, streaming on HBO Max. It’s a perfect mix of silly hijinks and poignant satire.
About Anand Subramanian, Senior Director, San Francisco Foundation (SFF)
Anand directs the People Pathway’s grantmaking, focused on ensuring economic security and opportunity for all in the Bay Area. SFF believes that all Bay Area residents should be able to make a good living and build long-term financial wellbeing for their families and communities. Other Pathways include Power and Place, focused on organizing/mobilization and place-based equitable development, respectively.
The San Francisco Foundation envisions a Bay Area where everyone has a chance to get a good job, live in a safe and affordable home, and have a strong political voice. Our equity agenda has a strategic focus on a just and equitable recovery and on leading the way for our communities, partners, and staff to engage in radical reimagining and transformative solidarity to create a better reality for all. Together with community leaders, nonprofits, and donors, we are committed to an agenda that advances racial equity and economic inclusion for everyone in the five-county Bay Area. We want all people in the Bay Area to be economically secure, rooted in vibrant communities, and civically engaged.
