Fiscal Sponsor: Alameda County Office of Education
The Alliance for Arts Learning Leadership, based in the Alameda County Office of Education, is recognized for thoughtful, groundbreaking work in arts education, including its broad-based partnerships, engagement of parents and families, and consistent models for evaluating its work and communicating its vision. The Fund's grant enables the Alliance to further build its Arts Active Parents group and spread quality arts education to classrooms, schools, and districts throughout the county.
Grant Amount: $60,000 [2007], $60,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/09/2007 through 07/09/2009
Project Web Site: www.acoe.org/acoe/

ArtSpan produces San Francisco's annual Open Studios event each fall. It also has a long-standing partnership with a nearby elementary school, where it offers an 11-week visual arts program in all elementary grade classrooms. The Fund's grant supports ArtSpan's expansion of this program to serve a second elementary school with a predominantly low-income student population.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: www.artspan.org

Founded in 1976 to serve the emerging field of video arts, the Bay Area Video Coalition has emerged as a training center in media-related fields for adults and youth. Among its youth programs, Digital Pathways serves 20 low-income teenagers over an 18-month period of biweekly classes and placements for participants in entry-level positions in the media arts industry. Youth participating in Digital Pathways can focus on either audio or video production skills. This program builds mentoring relationships between working artists and youth, recruits and serves youth from schools with limited arts offerings, and fosters the creation of high quality youth media works.
Grant Amount: $45,000 [2008] , $45,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 03/31/2008 through 03/31/2010
Project Web Site: www.bavc.org

Brava's theater academy primarily serves youth from low-income families and its Mission District neighborhood. The Fund's grant is helping Brava to make a cluster of successful workshops into a conservatory-style training program, instituting new rigor and structure through staff support, faculty training, and curriculum development.
Grant Amount: $50,000 [2006], $40,000 [2007], $30,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 06/14/2006 through 06/14/2009
Project Web Site: www.brava.org

California Poets in the Schools places professional poets in classrooms statewide, although its largest program is in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Fund's grant supports its recruitment and training of new poets and its assistance to local area coordinators�who act as liaisons with school districts, help poets find teaching placements, and coach newly assigned poet teachers. The grant also supports subsidized poet-residencies at schools with low-income student populations and limited discretionary funds to hire artists.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/07/2008 through 07/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.cpits.org

Cazadero Performing Arts Camp is well known for its intensive summer camp program for children and youth interested in studying music. The Fund's grant is helping to support JumpStart�an introductory program for middle school students, their music teachers, and their parents that is held on six three-day weekends during the school year. Cazadero recruits primarily from East Bay public schools for JumpStart and provides full scholarships to those who cannot afford camp fees, increasing access to quality music instruction to low-income youth.
Grant Amount: $7,500 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/07/2008 through 07/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.cazadero.org

Chinese Cultural Productions features artists who work in both traditional Chinese and contemporary forms. Dancers from its Lily Cai Chinese Dance Ensemble lead classes in traditional Chinese dance after school on four campuses with large Chinese immigrant and Chinese American student populations. Three are San Francisco public schools and the fourth is a parochial school in the city's Chinatown. A program goal is for participating students to feel greater pride in and knowledge of their heritage.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/25/2008 through 07/25/2009

Based in industrial West Oakland, The Crucible offers classes, workshops, and studio space to young and adult artists working in fine and industrial arts�including foundry work, blacksmithing, glass fusion, jewelry-making, and woodworking. The Fund's grant supports The Crucible's efforts to serve more young people with sequential workshops after school, during the summer, and on weekends. This effort focuses on reaching more low-income youth from The Crucible's neighborhood.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: thecrucible.org

Galer�a de la Raza, based in the Mission District, has a distinguished track record for presenting Chicano and Latino artists. Responding to demand voiced in community meetings, it is creating a computer arts center in its former store. The center allows Galer�a de la Raza to expand a multi-generational arts mentorship program so that it serves 65-80 youth each year and to provide computer access to low-income children and adults from the neighborhood. Among other activities, participating youth will help their parents (many of whom are immigrants) create e-mail accounts, blogs, and web pages to connect with family members in Latin America.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2006], $20,000 [2007], $20,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/11/2006 through 12/11/2009
Project Web Site: www.galeriadelaraza.org

The Imagine Bus Project offers free and low-cost after-school visual arts workshops at 10 sites serving low-income San Francisco children. Instructors are professional artists trained in youth development and arts education standards. The Fund's grant will help a planned expansion to 25 sites over three years.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2007], $30,000 [2008] , $25,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 07/09/2007 through 07/09/2010
Project Web Site: www.imaginebusproject.org

Leap...imagination in learning (Leap) places teaching artists and architects in Bay Area public schools to lead residencies. The Fund's grant focuses on sustaining the quality of Leap's core programs through professional development of its teaching artists and on gradually expanding programs in the San Francisco Unified School, where it will serve 16 elementary and middle schools in 2008-09.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 09/16/2008 through 09/16/2009
Project Web Site: www.leap4kids.org

The Museum of Children's Art offers hands-on, age-appropriate arts classes for children and families in its museum, in schools, and at other community sites. The Fund's grant assists the Museum with implementing two aspects of its recent strategic plan: strengthening professional development of teaching artists, and hiring an evaluation consultant to revise its survey instruments and improve data-gathering systems.
Grant Amount: $40,000 [2008] , $30,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 11/21/2008 through 11/21/2010
Project Web Site: www.mocha.org

The arts are one of the only academic fields in which outside professionals deliver a significant amount of the instruction given in public schools. Because teaching artists' employment, training, and service are so important to the arts education field, a Chicago-based arts policy expert has launched a study of them in several California sites and in communities across the country. The Fund's grant supports the research being conducted in San Francisco and Alameda County.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 11/11/2008 through 11/11/2009
Project Web Site: www.norc.org

Originally formed as a teen performing group, the Oakland Youth Chorus now provides one of the largest music education programs for Oakland public schools, working with some 1,000 students per year at 23 sites. Its curriculum is clearly aligned with California's Visual and Performing Arts framework, and it reaches many children who otherwise would not have opportunities to study music. The Fund's grant is helping the Chorus address both programmatic and organizational development goals identified in its strategic plan.
Grant Amount: $40,000 [2008] , $40,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 07/11/2008 through 07/11/2011
Project Web Site: www.oaklandyouthchorus.org

Oaktown Jazz Workshops promotes, preserves, and presents live music through several family-oriented music events, lecture-demonstrations, youth and adult jazz festivals, and free jazz workshops for young students. These workshops are offered twice each week after school at two Oakland community centers. The 25 participants have opportunities to work with some of the region's and country's leading jazz artists, and the youth ensemble that grows out of this workshop is excellent. The Fund's grant supports the Workshops' continuing focus on serving inner-city, low-income youth.
Grant Amount: $7,500 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/10/2008 through 12/10/2009
Project Web Site: www.oaktownjazz.org/

Opera Piccola is dedicated to making opera and theater widely accessible. Its most robust program, ArtGate, places teaching artists in classrooms during and after school, where they teach art-making skills and develop work with young students based on the participants' ideas. The Fund's grant supports both ArtGate and strategic planning for Opera Piccola as it manages the departures of both its artistic and managing directors.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/12/2008 through 12/12/2009
Project Web Site: www.opera-piccola.org

Performing Arts Workshop (PAW) is one of the oldest San Francisco organizations advancing arts education for San Francisco children and youth. Its programs serve students in local public schools, transitional housing, and after-school programs; and it sponsors professional development in the arts for classroom teachers. The Fund's grant helps PAW pursue its strategic plan and extend the arts to more young people from low-income families, including English language learners and students with special needs.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2005], $35,000 [2006], $35,000 [2007], $35,000 [2008] , $35,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 10/07/2005 through 10/07/2010
Project Web Site: www.performingartsworkshop.org

Artists renting studios at Root Division in San Francisco's Mission District are required to volunteer for the organization or in its community. One of its largest volunteer programs places artists in classrooms and after-school programs to lead six-week sessions. Root Division members who have educational backgrounds and experience in arts education train these volunteers before they are placed, help them develop curricula, and observe and critique their teaching. This community service program enhances the volunteers' professionalism and skills and benefits the children who receive free art lessons.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 08/04/2008 through 08/04/2009
Project Web Site: www.rootdivision.org

The San Francisco Film Society produces the San Francisco International Film Festival and has been expanding its scope to offer more year-round presentations, educational activities, and services to filmmakers. Two years ago it began working with staff in the San Francisco Unified School District on the annual Young at Art festival. Now wanting to deepen this partnership, it is studying the state of media arts education in San Francisco public schools, looking at what other nonprofit organizations provide, and assessing the capacity of district teachers. This study, supported by the Fund, will enable the Film Society to design an appropriate media arts education program and will inform the District's Arts Education Master Plan.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/16/2008 through 12/16/2009
Project Web Site: www.sffs.org

San Francisco Opera is committed to the premise that opera is a living art form that can be enjoyed by anyone�including children and youth. Following a recent study of its capacity in arts education and hiring of a new director of education, the Opera is piloting two model programs�one for elementary and middle schools and one for high schools. The programs include: introductory workshops led by teaching artists; educational DVDs; opportunities for students to attend simulcasts, dress rehearsals, or performances; and artists working with students to create mini-operas in their classrooms. The Fund's grant supports piloting these programs in 12 or more schools.
Grant Amount: $50,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 11/21/2008 through 11/21/2009
Project Web Site: www.sfopera.com

Fiscal Sponsor: University Corporation, San Francisco State
A service learning class in the dance department at San Francisco State University places college students as dance instructors at youth agencies, community centers, and church halls in the Visitacion Valley, Bayview-Hunters Point, and Ingleside neighborhoods of San Francisco. The college students, mentored by a veteran dance teacher, offer young students in these neighborhoods opportunities to take classes twice each week. The most motivated young children also take weekend classes at the university. The project is fostering a next generation of dance educators and arts learning opportunities to children in low-income neighborhoods.
Grant Amount: $24,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009

The San Francisco Symphony has a long history of serving the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and encouraging students' enjoyment of and participation in classical music. Through Opus, a new program, Symphony musicians will work closely with middle and high school music teachers, shaping their contributions to meet the classrooms' needs. Activities include coaching students, special workshops, advising music teachers, instrument repair, and free concert tickets for students and their teachers. Beginning in seven schools, over three years Opus will expand to serve 16 campuses.
Grant Amount: $83,333 [2006], $83,333 [2007], $83,334 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/15/2006 through 07/15/2009
Project Web Site: www.sfsymphony.org/

Stagebridge brings together seniors with children and youth through storytelling activities. Its StoryBridge program provides two-day summer storytelling institutes for classroom teachers and places trained senior storytellers in Oakland and Berkeley public schools to teach the elements of a story and coach students through developing and telling their own tales. The program culminates with student performances at their schools. The Fund's grant is helping Stagebridge to rewrite its Storybridge curriculum guide to include more information about working with English-language learners, to revamp its assessment tools, and to intensify the training of its senior artist-teachers.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 08/26/2008 through 08/26/2009
Project Web Site: www.stagebridge.org

Started with a focus on serving sixth- grade classrooms, Streetside Stories has become an extensive in-school and after-school program for first- through eighth- graders that leads them through writing and performing their own stories. In the last three years, Streetside Stories doubled the number of students served. The Fund's grant helps it to hire a deputy director for programs who will oversee teaching staff and manage relationships with new and current program sites, making possible continued program growth.
Grant Amount: $40,000 [2007], $30,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 11/27/2007 through 11/27/2009
Project Web Site: www.streetside.org

Fiscal Sponsor: Community Initiatives
A group of the Bay Area artists who provide classes in public schools and after-school programs is testing the idea of creating a professional association that would provide training, employment information, insurance, and other professional services to teaching artists. The Fund's grant provides seed support for initial programs and membership recruitment.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: www.communityin.org

Fiscal Sponsor: Z Space Studio
Word for Word, a theater ensemble (part of the Z Space Studio), has developed a well-received theater and literacy program for classrooms. Recently Word for Word completed an evaluation and curriculum revision of its Literature from the Inside Out program. The Fund's grant is helping the company to invest in program improvements that were uncovered in its assessment and to recruit and train more teaching artists. At least two workshops featuring the revised curriculum will be presented to teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District and a minimum of three 10-week artist residencies will serve the district in 2008-09.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/07/2008 through 07/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.zspace.org

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Young Artists at Work is an intensive nine-month-long multidisciplinary program serving up to 30 high school students from diverse backgrounds. Each spring, participants choose between two disciplines, which they study with adult artist mentors twice each week along with weekly media arts workshops. In summer, participants are placed in community internships. In 2008, the Center is expanding the program to include mentoring by museum curators and support of an exhibition curated and produced by participants in Young Artists at Work.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008] , $25,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 03/31/2008 through 03/31/2010
Project Web Site: www.ybca.org

Youth Speaks is a nationally-recognized proponent of spoken word poetry by youth. Its workshops, in-school presentations, and performances reach approximately 43,000 youth each year. The Fund's grant is dedicated to a mainstay Youth Speaks program-after school writing workshops for which youth meet twice each week in small groups at ten Bay Area sites. Workshops excel at bringing together young people from different schools, neighborhoods, and life experiences, and enabling them to strengthen their creative and critical thinking skills.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2008] , $30,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 03/31/2008 through 03/31/2010
Project Web Site: www.youthspeaks.org

The greater San Francisco Bay Area is home to the nation's second-largest South Asian community, whose population has doubled in the last decade. The 3rd I South Asian Independent Film Festival annually gives these residents access to films that reflect their experiences. The Fund's grant supports the festival's efforts to reach diverse Bay Area South Asians through screenings and interpretive programs organized with community-based organizations, professional associations, religious groups, and social service agencies. It also contributes to sustaining the festival's family programs and efforts to reach more South Asians under age 18.
Grant Amount: $7,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 09/25/2008 through 09/25/2009
Project Web Site: www.thirdi.org/~sf

The 509 Cultural Center presents visual arts exhibitions at two locations in San Francisco's Tenderloin. In 1989, it began transforming the alley behind one of its galleries into a green space, filled with art and available for free events. The site, Cohen Alley, now known as 'The Tenderloin National Forest.' is close to completion, and the Fund's grant partially supports the final phase of its transformation-installing stone walkways, artist-designed benches, a small stage, and a greenhouse. The Fund's grant makes possible fuller use of the site for cultural programs serving the Center's low-income neighbors.
Grant Amount: $7,500 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009
Project Web Site: www.luggagestoregallery.org/

Fiscal Sponsor: Regents of the University of California
Over the last three years, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego�working with the international organization Rare�sent eight thoughtful, innovative artists on mini-residencies to World Heritage sites to make art in response to their observations. Art created through these residencies will be presented at the Berkeley Art Museum in the 2009 Human/Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet, an exhibition that provides a vivid illustration of links between environmental and cultural preservation. The Fund's grant supports public conversations and lectures in conjunction with the exhibit as well as demonstrations of local grassroots projects related to its themes.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/19/2008 through 12/19/2009

A leading source of affordable music lessons for people of all ages, the San Francisco Community Music Center is expanding its scholarship program, opportunities for students to play together in groups, and free concerts by student ensembles. The Fund's grant supports implementation of the Center's new five-year plan in which, among other goals, the Center seeks to serve more low-income students and advance a 'Creating Community: Making Music Together' initiative.
Grant Amount: $50,000 [2004], $50,000 [2005], $50,000 [2006], $50,000 [2007], $50,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/14/2004 through 12/13/2009
Project Web Site: www.sfmusic.org

Staff at the contemporary dance organization CounterPULSE and at the Alliance for California Traditional Arts noted that some immigrant artists feel inappropriately pigeonholed as traditional or folk artists when they explicitly want to break with traditions of their homelands or want to evolve beyond the boundaries of traditional forms. Such artists feel estranged from venues and programs for traditional artists and poorly understood by contemporary dance presenters. The experimental program Performing Diaspora, supported in part by the Fund, offers commissioning fees, free rehearsal space, and work-in-progress productions to help such artists develop new works that will be presented by CounterPULSE in public discussions and an annual festival.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/04/2008 through 12/04/2009
Project Web Site: www.counterpulse.org

Crosspulse is the artistic company of percussionist/rhythm dancer Keith Terry, whose specialty is body music�a discipline that encompasses a wide range of cultural traditions. The Fund's grant supports an inaugural biannual International Festival of Body Music that will bring together Bay Area practitioners of traditional, culturally specific body music alongside a famous Brazilian body music group, the Canadian Inuit throat singers, and performers from France and Turkey. Festival activities will include public performances, school assemblies, workshops for practitioners, and classroom workshops featuring a curriculum about hand games from around the world. The festival's formats have the potential to contribute to building cross-cultural relationships among its artists and audiences.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 09/22/2008 through 09/22/2009
Project Web Site: www.crosspulse.com

The Lower San Antonio district of Oakland is one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in the Bay Area. Community activists in the neighborhood worked together as the Eastside Arts Alliance, acquiring a building and developing it to include subsidized housing, small businesses, and a cultural center. The Fund's grant helps the Alliance sustain its longest-running, free cultural program, the Malcolm X Jazz Festival in San Antonio Park.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 11/07/2008 through 11/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.eastsideartsalliance.com

The Foundation Center is a national resource of information about grantseeking and philanthropy serving nonprofits and foundations. The Fund's grant supported the Center's San Francisco branch library in presenting Funding for Arts Month in October 2008. Programs are designed to serve a broad cross-section of the arts community and focus on developing sustainable fundraising plans, understanding foundations' priorities, conducting research into foundations, and preparing more successful grant proposals.
Grant Amount: $2,500 [2008]
Project Dates: 09/24/2008 through 09/24/2009
Project Web Site: www.fdncenter.org

Frameline produces an acclaimed annual festival of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender films. Its Generations Film Project, conducted in partnership with the youth media-training organization TILT, provides hands-on filmmaking instruction to at-risk LGBT youth and LGBT elders. After each group learns the basics of filmmaking and creates a film, they collaborate on cross-generational projects. Their completed short films are shown during the annual Frameline festival.
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/02/2008 through 12/02/2009
Project Web Site: www.frameline.org

Artists working with elders from the Mien community and with neighborhood youth are using community gardens, potlucks, recipe exchanges, oral histories, photography, and other art projects to bring together neighbors from different cultural backgrounds. Among other benefits, these cross-cultural and cross-generational activities strengthen the community's sense of ownership of a newly developed park on an historic property.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2007], $25,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 03/29/2007 through 03/29/2009
Project Web Site: www.peraltahacienda.org/

Grantmakers in the Arts, a national professional organization serving public and private arts grantmakers produces a journal, The Reader, maintains a Website highlighting member services, articles, reviews, and research; and holds an annual conference. The Fund's grant supports aspects of the 2008 conference addressing arts education and arts in new immigrant communities, as well as a one-time investment in upgrading the Website to make it more searchable and user-friendly to foundations, nonprofits, and research groups nationally.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 09/30/2008 through 09/30/2009
Project Web Site: www.giarts.org

Founded in the 1970s in response to the military coup in Chile, La Pena Cultural Center has developed into a nationally recognized presenter of traditional music from around the world, a forum for cross-cultural and cross-generational exchange, and a site for community members to take classes in music, dance, and theater. It fosters an array of grassroots arts efforts, from community choruses to teen hip-hop groups. La Pena's mission of contributing to positive social change by creating understanding among people of different cultures is closely aligned with the Fund's Arts goals. A core support grant helps with implementation of a strategic plan, leadership and succession planning, and piloting of arts education programming in East Bay public schools.
Grant Amount: $40,000 [2007], $40,000 [2008] , $40,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 11/27/2007 through 11/27/2012
Project Web Site: www.lapena.org

Annually the Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired produces Insight, an exhibit of remarkable artworks by blind and visually impaired artists. Selected by a jury of arts professionals, the works are exhibited in San Francisco's City Hall�a venue that provides broad public exposure to the artists. The exhibition includes tactile works, audio tours, interpretive materials in Braille, and other efforts to engage audiences that are blind and visually impaired. Goals of this exhibit include reaching a broad cross-section of the community and building deeper understanding between sighted people and those whose vision is impaired.
Grant Amount: $7,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 09/05/2008 through 09/05/2009
Project Web Site: www.lighthouse-sf.org

Fiscal Sponsor: Intersection
Litquake is an annual San Francisco literary festival that brings a diverse range of Bay Area authors before audiences of all ages for 10 days of readings, performances, and panel discussions. The Fund's grant assists Litquake with producing the Litquake Lit Crawl�a multivenue literary event that takes place along Valencia Street in the Mission District. Some 240 authors read or discuss their work in 49 venues�bookstores, cafes, restaurants, art galleries, and outdoors in Clarion Alley. The Lit Crawl attracts a wide range of people who rarely attend more formal literary events. Litquake intends to reach 6,500 people in 2008.
Grant Amount: $5,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 09/16/2008 through 09/16/2009
Project Web Site: www.theintersection.org

The Cultural Data Project was created in Pennsylvania by collaborating grantmaking agencies that wanted consistent, reliable information on the state's cultural sector and to reduce nonprofits' burden in applying for grants. Its founder designed a sophisticated Web-based system for collecting and organizing data about finances, staffing, volunteers, and audiences. The Fund's grant supports costs associated with bringing the Data Project to California-modifying the system to meet local funders' needs, providing extensive online and in-person training, and supporting applicants with a robust help desk. By 2010, an estimated 1,000 San Francisco and Alameda County organizations are expected to participate. This grant is supported by the Fund's Arts program at the level of $25,000 and $10,000 from Jewish Life.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2007], $35,000 [2008] , $35,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 11/27/2007 through 11/27/2010
Project Web Site: www.pewtrusts.org

Shakespeare-San Francisco presents professional productions of Shakespeare's plays, free of charge, in Bay Area public parks, reaching 30,000 people annually--83% of whom report that a Free Shakespeare in the Park performance was their first experience of professional, live theater. Audiences also are culturally and socioeconomically diverse. The organization's board and staff recently completed organizational effectiveness training. The Fund's grant is helping it to invest in making improvements identified in that process, with a particular focus on board recruitment and individual donor development. A portion of the Fund's grant requires matching funds to be raised or contributed by the board.
Grant Amount: $15,000 [2008] , $10,000 conditional
Project Dates: 09/30/2008 through 09/30/2009
Project Web Site: www.sfshakes.org

Small Press Distribution distributes literary books published by small presses to bookstores, libraries, and individuals. Responding to the National Endowment for the Arts' 'Reading at Risk' study, it created New Lit Gen, which connects emerging literary writers with college and high school students. The Fund's grant supports Small Press Distribution's general needs, New Lit Gen, and an effort to target older adult readers with special, cross-generational programs.
Grant Amount: $25,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/03/2008 through 12/03/2009
Project Web Site: www.spdbooks.org

The Translation Project creates cultural programs focused on members of the Iranian community living in the San Francisco Bay Area and on poetry, a time-honored and popular art form in Iran. In 2009, with assistance from the Fund, the project also is producing its second literary arts festival, designed to bring together members of the Iranian community with general audiences to promote a civic dialogue and build cross-cultural understanding.
Grant Amount: $10,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 12/03/2008 through 12/03/2009
Project Web Site: www.thetranslationproject.org

To support the 30th Anniversary Fund and the 2008-09 season. In 2009, Traveling Jewish Theatre celebrates its 30th anniversary as a Bay Area cultural treasure. Like many small theater companies, TJT faces significant financial challenges, including a mounting debt untenable for an organization of its size. With the support of its funders, TJT developed a plan to retire much of its debt, scale back production costs, expand its board, and pursue a partnership with the San Francisco Jewish Community Center. This grant is supported by the Fund's Jewish Life program at the level of $50,000 and $25,000 from the Arts.
Grant Amount: $75,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/11/2008 through 07/11/2009
Project Web Site: www.atjt.com

Yerba Buena Arts and Events presents an annual festival of more than 100 free public events from May through October. The program's central location and accessibility, and the cultural diversity of its programming-which includes strong threads in Latin jazz, salsa, and Western classical music along with co-productions by Asian, Filipino, Indian, African American, and Native American groups-appeals to a broad cross-section of residents and tourists. With the Fund's support it continues to strive to diversify its audience, work in partnership with an array of Bay Area arts and cultural organizations, and sustain annual audiences of 90,000 or more people.
Grant Amount: $30,000 [2008] , $30,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 03/31/2008 through 03/31/2010
Project Web Site: ybgf.org

Golden Thread Productions produces plays by, for, and about people from the Middle East�encompassing artists and audiences of different ethnic, cultural, and religious backgrounds. To further its mission of enriching understanding of the Middle East, it is launching a theater education program that will teach performing arts through storytelling and plays based on the cultural stories, histories, and characters of Middle Eastern literature. It has experimented with this program at a small scale. The Fund's grant helps the theater company to institute this education program as part of its ongoing work�passing on traditional cultural knowledge through reaching and serving the children of recent immigrants from the Middle East.
Grant Amount: $12,500 [2008]
Project Dates: 09/04/2008 through 09/04/2009
Project Web Site: www.goldenthread.org

Heyday Institute is a nonprofit publishing house and cultural center that focuses on the distinctive environment, history, and cultures of California. One of its strengths is fostering the cultural revival of native California tribes' cultures through News from Native California. Heyday often works in partnership with other nonprofits to produce books for exhibits and special programs. Recognizing its heavy dependency on a single foundation, Heyday has engaged in planning and organizational development to broaden its base of support. The Fund's grant assists with marketing materials and staff costs associated with an individual donor campaign.
Grant Amount: $35,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 11/07/2008 through 11/07/2009
Project Web Site: www.heydaybooks.com

To continue Song Routes in a New Land, a series of artists' residencies featuring Russian, Armenian, and Bulgarian folk song traditions
Grant Amount: $20,000 [2008] , $5,000 conditional
Project Dates: 10/31/2008 through 10/31/2009
Project Web Site: www.kitka.org

Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center offers music and dance classes in traditional and popular Mexican genres that are attended weekly by 200 children and youth, manages a critically acclaimed group of touring musicians, and produces community events. Its Cultures of Mexico in California project uses DVDs and CDs developed by Los Cenzontles as centerpieces for community events that also incorporate live performances, lecture-demonstrations, and discussion. This project's goal is to facilitate the generational transfer and preservation of traditional art forms from Mexico within the Bay Area's Mexican American community; to bring together recent immigrants from Mexico with second- and third-generation Mexican Americans on a subject of common interest; and to educate the broader public about authentic versions of these art forms.
Grant Amount: $30,000 [2008] , $30,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 11/21/2008 through 11/21/2011
Project Web Site: www.loscenzontles.com

San Francisco Chinese Arts Foundation is dedicated to preserving and transmitting the traditional arts of Cantonese opera. It is working in partnership with Red Bean Cantonese Opera House, which is based in Oakland's Chinatown. The Fund's grant supports Red Bean's youth training program, which serves 20 students ages nine to 16. The youth participate in classes that teach all the elements of Cantonese opera from martial arts and acrobatics to singing and make-up.
Grant Amount: $8,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/08/2008 through 07/08/2009
Project Web Site: redbeancantoneseopera.com

Kala Art Institute offers professional artists facilities where they can work in all forms of printmaking, digital media, photography, and book arts. It also manages a long-running artists-in-schools program. Having outgrown its long-time space within the historic Heinz Building in Berkeley, it is expanding into a second, street-level site in the same facility. The new space will create easier access for audiences attending exhibits or purchasing prints, improve the work environment for artists, and create new spaces for public programs and workshops, including activities managed in conjunction with the artists-in-schools program.
Grant Amount: $50,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 11/21/2008 through 11/21/2009
Project Web Site: www.kala.org

The Contemporary Jewish Museum is building a new facility that will allow it to expand educational and artistic programming and engage a diverse audience in the arts and Jewish Life. Its campaign goal encompasses construction, transition costs, and endowment growth. Among the 50 Jewish museums in the United States, San Francisco's is the only one that focuses on contemporary perspectives on Jewish culture, history, art, and ideas. With programs that celebrate the diversity of the Jewish people and work to build relationships across cultures, the museum's mission fits two Fund program areas, which share the grant equally, the Arts program's cultural commons emphasis and Jewish Life's creative expression and promoting diversity goals.
Grant Amount: $330,000 [2007], $330,000 [2008] , $340,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 11/27/2007 through 11/27/2010
Project Web Site: www.thecjm.org

Based for 30 years in the historic Winters Building in Richmond, California, the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts is one of the region's leading community cultural centers, offering classes and performance opportunities to 480 students on site and an additional 1,100 students in Richmond public schools. A $10 million capital campaign is enabling it to purchase the Winters Building, make required seismic and other safety code upgrades, and expand available theater, office, and classroom spaces within the building. The Fund's grant is awarded as a challenge to other funders for contributions in the range of $25,000-$350,000.
Grant Amount: $100,000 [2008] , $100,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 07/11/2008 through 07/11/2010
Project Web Site: www.eastbaycenter.org

In 2001, several of the Bay Area's leading media arts organizations formed a consortium to purchase and renovate a long-term facility in the South of Market neighborhood. At the time, all four were facing dramatic rent increases and were anxious to ensure their futures in San Francisco. Their collaboration has been widely hailed as a national model. One of the four partners decided to close in 2008 and had to sell its equity in the building. A loan from W&EHF is enabling the consortium to purchase part of that equity share for later sale and sustain the stability of the project.
Grant Amount: $100,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 08/27/2008 through 08/27/2011
Project Web Site: www.frameline.org

The Oakland Museum of California's galleries display visual arts, history, and sciences. A frequent destination for school field trips, the museum has a strong California art collection, a community-focused sense of purpose, and expansive exhibition space. Itscapital campaign enables it to replace storage facilities, enclose spaces for better temperature and humidity control, expand education centers, redesign entryways, and re-install exhibits. The redesign makes it an even more welcoming gathering place and effective education center through innovative uses of technology, materials in several languages, and flexible spaces that can accommodate changing programs.
Grant Amount: $150,000 [2007], $150,000 [2008]
Project Dates: 07/09/2007 through 07/09/2009
Project Web Site: www.museumca.org

ODC/SF, one of the Bay Area's largest dance organizations, is composed of a dance school, a modern dance company, and a theater. Currently it is completing the second phase of a capital project to develop two buildings in San Francisco's Mission District. The Fund's grant is for improvements to the building on 17th Street that will include a renovated theater space and two new studios for classes and artists' residencies. Among others, youth studying dance at ODC will benefit from the new studio spaces.
Grant Amount: $100,000 [2008] , $100,000 [2009]
Project Dates: 11/21/2008 through 11/21/2010
Project Web Site: www.odcdance.org