2014 Annual Report

20 Years of the Creative Work Fund

Converting ideas into art requires the energy born of collaborative exchange among creators, the artistic community, and the community at large.

This synergy is what the Creative Work Fund (CWF) has celebrated since 1994. Over the past two decades, the CWF has awarded $10.5 million dollars via 309 grants to artists — each working in conjunction with a non-profit.

When the CWF was launched, four family foundations — The Columbia Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; Miriam and Peter Haas Fund; and Walter & Elise Haas Fund — recognized the decline in support available to individual artists. They united to celebrate the role of artists as problem solvers and the role of art as a profound contributor to community cohesion. After its first decade, the Walter & Elise Haas Fund continued on as a lead supporter and others generously stepped in: ArtPlace, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, and the Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation.

Today the Creative Work Fund is made possible by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

The CWF accepts applications for grants — of up to $40K — in five categories: performing arts, literary arts, media arts, visual arts, and traditional arts.

These grants fund artists from across the spectrum of experience, background, and age. Funded projects have provided creative and practical solutions to community concerns, as in visual artist Sam Bower’s work with the artists of Meadowsweet Dairy and the Pt. Reyes Bird Observatory. That CWF project created a sculpture on Southeast Farallon Island that serves both as a bird habitat and a tool facilitating scientific research.

Grants from the Creative Work Fund have engaged otherwise estranged community members in artistic expression — such as with performing artist Rhodessa Jones’ project, completed in collaboration with a physician and patients at UCSF. Her work guided HIV-positive women in creating and performing works about their life experiences.

CWF grants have shifted the course of community education, environment, and engagement — as with traditional artist Linda Yamane. Working with the Big Sur Land Trust, Linda wove a traditional Ohlone presentation basket, the first made by a Native Californian for centuries.

Through these projects and hundreds of others, the Creative Work Fund unites the creativity of artists with the empathy of non-profits to serve the community in collaboration. We look forward to another twenty years.

Pictured: Taj Mahal, who collaborated with Los Cenzontles Mexican Art Center to create American Horizon, a suite of songs telling stories of immigration, work, and pursuit of the American dream.

Economic Security

The most far-reaching way for us to help generations of low-income American families establish their own economic security is by reforming the U.S. tax code.

As it stands, our tax code encourages asset building by incentivizing important investments such as homeownership and retirement savings. The complex system of deductions, exemptions, and lower tax rates used to encourage these investments are known collectively as tax expenditures.

The problem is that tax expenditures — representing over $540 billion in annual tax revenues not collected — benefit the very wealthiest Americans far more than they do everyone else.

With other funders, advocates, and practitioners, the Walter and Elise Haas Fund seeks to reform tax policy and reverse the trend towards increased economic inequity. We understand that tax policy reform is a gargantuan task complicated by politics, endemic systems, and disparate concerns, but that does not dissuade us.

As part of The Tax Alliance for Economic Mobility, we collaboratively advocate for change. We focus on priority concerns and insert tax reform issues into the national dialogue. One current goal is strengthening the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — a way for low-income families to get tax money back. Provisions that extend eligibility for this credit are set to expire in 2017. Through the Tax Alliance, we will work not only to extend EITC provisions, but also to open eligibility for the credit to workers without children.

We also support other grantees in addressing tax policy reform along parallel paths. The Inequality Media Project, for example, produces videos that explain issues concerning financial inequity, including an upcoming video on asset-building tax reforms.

Working together with others, over the long term, we look to dismantle barriers to economic equity. Reforming tax policy is where our long-standing Economic Security program sees the highest potential to most significantly benefit those on the margins.

The more who join in this work, the more likely it is that change will come. Gradually, through committed effort with true partners, we can build a more just, more equitable society.

Photo provided by the Creative Work Fund

Education

Education is not a one size fits all endeavor.

Over the past two years, the number of unaccompanied immigrant students entering Bay Area schools has more than doubled. Many of these youths have been deprived of years of formal education. They often struggle with English and suffer from the effects of trauma. Yet they belong in school and they deserve an education that prepares them for success.

When it comes to welcoming these students, however, Bay Area public school systems face challenges. Schools scramble to supply enough teachers, classrooms, services, and funds. As a result, vulnerable newcomers often end up with novice teachers and, as frequently, their needs far surpass what schools can provide.

At the Walter & Elise Haas Fund we work to dismantle barriers to educational equity such as these. We put the weight of our Education program grantmaking behind the most effective lever at our disposal: teachers. Grants made to Oakland and San Francisco unified school districts support robust professional development for teachers. This training provides teachers with the tools, confidence, and experience required to effectively serve students — including those who have newly immigrated.

Another of our grantees, the Internationals Network of Schools, operates high schools in Oakland and San Francisco that solely serve immigrants, including unaccompanied newcomers. In these high schools, much attention is paid to developing strong teacher learning communities and implementing language-rich approaches to teaching. Internationals Network schools serve as beacons within their districts, broadcasting what learning can look like for newcomers. They serve as lab schools where teachers from across the district study effective instruction delivered by experienced teachers. They also provide school administrators with resources for learning about the supports and systems needed to address student needs in and out of school.

The Bay Area is now and will continue to be a point of entry for many immigrant children. Our schools play a crucial role in helping these students transition into their new community. That’s why we invest in building teachers’ abilities and in connecting vulnerable students to well supported teachers. Over time, in collaboration, we’re working towards increased educational equity for newcomers and everyone else who depends on our public school systems.

Photo Credit: Margot Duane

Jewish Life

Our Jewish Life program celebrates Jewish life and values as conduits towards a more just and vibrant society for all.

We support groups that work towards a more innovative, diverse Jewish community and those that extend the community’s service outward, to engage neighbors regardless of their cultural heritage. Whether working on an individual scale — helping diverse Jews to access the full opportunity of community, for example — or on a regional scale — such as developing clergy advocating networks — we push back against the barriers to equity.  Social justice work such as this naturally springs from Jewish tradition.

One Jewish Life program grantee, Bend the Arc, enlists partners across the United States to work collaboratively to foster economic opportunity and to promote social justice. It organizes communities across lines of race and faith and trains Jewish and interfaith social justice leaders. In 2014, Bend the Arc added its voice to the Black Lives Matter movement. It fought to increase the minimum wage and joined the growing chorus of voices working to make our country’s tax code more equitable.

Another Walter & Elise Haas Fund grantee, Hebrew Free Loan Association, offered its first series of loans to those outside of the Jewish community in 2014. These interest free loans went to students struggling to afford higher education. In some cases their assistance enabled teenagers to become the first members of their families to attend college. The Hebrew Free Loan Association uses its successful model to recycle funds, supporting generation after generation of applicants in improving their own lives.

Other Jewish Life grantees worked to welcome Jews of color, to campaign for immigrants’ rights, and to assist Jews and others in engaging in dialogue concerning the issues that might divide us. We support their work to engage, extend, and enliven the Jewish community so the Jewish community can contribute more fully to making the Bay Area a better place.

Pictured: Innovators from The Kitchen and IDEO brainstorm during a two-day workshop. Image courtesy of IDEO.

Mission-Related

For one in four San Franciscans going hungry is a daily fear.

In 2008, the Walter & Elise Haas Fund responded to the economic downturn by directing an additional one million dollars to support safety net services in the Bay Area. This temporary increase in annual giving — providing immediate assistance with food, shelter, and safety, plus ongoing assistance through policy work  — was meant to shepherd the community through lean times.

Lean times, however, continue. So does our Safety Net funding.

Seven years after its creation, due to wage stagnation, growing costs of living, and a reduction in federal support, the need for the Safety Net program hasn’t abated; it has increased. Concurrently, emergency response grants from other sources continue to dry up. This is often an unfortunate reality of disaster response giving; as the initial surges of concern dissipate, funding gets directed to meet newer crises. This leaves those still navigating the original problem with dwindling support and decreased opportunity.

At the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, we accept that we cannot solve endemic problems such as hunger and homelessness through short-term efforts. Our obligation to assist our in-need neighbors goes on. While application to the Safety Net funding pool remains by invitation only, our Board in 2014 approved the program’s continuation as a regular part of our annual grantmaking.

Our Safety Net funding continues because it’s needed. One quarter of San Franciscans still do not know where or how they will meet all of their daily nutritional needs. That level of food insecurity means that too many Bay Area residents must regularly put off study, work, and other essentials to seek out basic nourishment.

When our Safety Net program began, Meals on Wheels, served 623,000 meals a year in San Francisco. Today that number is close to 1.6 million — and there’s a waitlist. Grantees such as Meals of Wheels, along with Episcopal Community Services in San Francisco, the Alameda County Food Bank, the Mercy Brown Bag Program in the East Bay, and many others help keep our community’s most hard-pressed residents from regular hunger.

Their work is why the Walter & Elise Haas Fund has a Safety Net program and why it continues.

In addition to its four program areas, the Fund engages in Legacy and Mission-related Special Grantmaking. Legacy grantmaking encompasses several programs, each of which has a direct relationship to the Fund’s founders, Walter and Elise Haas. Mission-related Special Grantmaking provides the Fund flexibility to respond to emerging and changing community needs, and to address key areas of interest that cut across or otherwise support the Fund’s overall mission and categorical programs. This includes the Safety Net program.

Photo provided by the Creative Work Fund