One of the greatest challenges our region faces is that alongside economic instability and injustice, too many people do not feel they are included in the Bay Area’s brighter future. We are living within a crisis of belonging. The newly announced Social Well-being program joins the profound legacies of the Fund’s Arts, Jewish Life, and Racial Justice grantmaking to address community fragmentation. The program recognizes that while the racial and gender wealth gap is often framed as an economic problem, its implications extend deeply into social cohesion.
The Social Well-being program aims to cultivate and sustain belonging by fostering connection, creativity, and culture. The program recognizes that we need each other to imagine and build a better future together.
Our hope is that investments in the Social Well-being program will address the roots of social disrepair, uplift cultural identity and stories, and support collaborative and community-led action for our collective joy.
One of the greatest challenges our region faces is that alongside economic instability and injustice, too many people do not feel they are included in the Bay Area’s brighter future. We are living within a crisis of belonging. The newly announced Social Well-being program joins the profound legacies of the Fund’s Arts, Jewish Life, and Racial Justice grantmaking to address community fragmentation. The program recognizes that while the racial and gender wealth gap is often framed as an economic problem, its implications extend deeply into social cohesion.
The Social Well-being program aims to cultivate and sustain belonging by fostering connection, creativity, and culture. The program recognizes that we need each other to imagine and build a better future together.
Our hope is that investments in the Social Well-being program will address the roots of social disrepair, uplift cultural identity and stories, and support collaborative and community-led action for our collective joy.
WE Initiative
The WE Initiative supports organizations that celebrate culture and bring people together in solidarity to work towards positive community change. Named as a tribute to Walter and Elise Haas while evoking the spirit of togetherness, the WE Initiative expresses the belief that the antidote for othering is belonging, and that healing and joy are at the center of bridging divides and cultivating a diverse, broad, and meaningful “we.”
Our 2025 grantees
For grantseekers
The open call for WE Initiative letters of inquiry closed on June 27, 2025. Click here to read about the awarded grantees.
Creative Power Awards
Creative Power Awards are founded on the belief that art and culture is essential to a connected Bay Area, where the community can imagine a better, more expansive future. Creative Power Awards recognize the leadership and contribution of individual artists working in the arts ecosystem with arts nonprofits for both the preservation of culture and positive community transformation.
For Grantseekers
Creative Power Awards use a community nomination process, and does not accept unsolicited proposals. Click here to read about the 2025 awardees.
Click here to subscribe to updates on this program.
Check out some of our inspiring grantees
I’m grateful for this long-term, game-changing support. Systems change is difficult work. [This kind of initiative is] what leaders like myself have been calling for in the sector, pushing trustees, and the folks who provide the funding for nonprofits, to shift how they approach grantmaking.Zoe Polk, Executive Director of East Bay Community Law Center
This commitment to longer-term funding is really going to impact how organizations are able to move.Abigail Richards and Julia Arroyo, Co-Executive Directors of Young Women’s Freedom Center
This past year brought a difficult backdrop for the sector and across the country, nonprofits faced growing challenges. Harmful narratives took hold in public discourse, questioning the integrity and value of nonprofit organizations and the people who lead them. These narratives erode trust, strain already under-resourced organizations, and make it harder for communities to solve problems together.
We want to say clearly: we see and value the people doing this work.
Every day, nonprofit leaders, staff, volunteers, artists, organizers, and community members, including young people, show up out of genuine commitment to others. They help families weather hardship, strengthen neighborhoods, foster civic participation, build connections across differences, and create opportunities for people to thrive. The people who make up nonprofits are often present on people’s hardest days and among the first to respond when communities face uncertainty. They are the connective tissue of our communities, and our communities are stronger because of them.
Over the past several years, we have come to understand that community well-being depends on relationships of trust and belonging, and that those relationships are often stewarded by nonprofit organizations whose people also need the support and conditions necessary to thrive. Healthy communities depend on healthy nonprofits.
This belief shaped much of our work in 2025.
The board approved the WE Initiative, a new grantmaking strategy dedicated to activating and sustaining belonging in Oakland and San Francisco. We increasingly see belonging not as a luxury, but as essential community infrastructure. When people feel connected, valued, and invested in one another, communities are better able to address challenges, navigate differences, and create opportunities for everyone. The WE Initiative reflects our commitment to strengthening those connections.
We also completed the evolution of the Creative Work Fund into the Creative Power Awards (CPA), which joined the Endeavor Fund and the WE Initiative as one of the Fund’s three anchor strategies. CPA reflects our commitment to trust and shared power through artist nominators, community panelists, unrestricted grants, and a model that allows artists to direct funding to community organizations that matter deeply to them.
This year, we published Nonprofits Don’t Win Alone, a learning report drawing on the first three years of the Endeavor Fund, our trust-based, multi-year strategy supporting seven Bay Area organizations working to close the race and gender wealth gap. The report’s central finding was straightforward but powerful: when funders listen deeply, remain flexible, and support nonprofits’ agency, grantees are better positioned to do their best work.
One of the clearest lessons involved nonprofit worker well-being, a core element of the Endeavor Fund’s design. All grantee organizations raised wages, expanded benefits, and strengthened organizational culture. These outcomes were made possible because organizations had the flexibility to invest in their people. We share this report not only as an account of our grantees’ accomplishments, but also as an honest reflection on how this work has changed us as funders, making us more responsive, more relational, and more aligned with the communities we seek to serve.
We also mark a leadership transition with deep appreciation. Bradley Haas completed three years of thoughtful and committed service as board chair. His leadership helped guide the Fund through one of the most significant strategic refreshes in its history and shepherd many of the milestones reflected in this report. We are grateful for his stewardship and pleased to welcome Alejandro Foung as incoming board chair.
As we look ahead, we remain hopeful.
At a time when division and distrust can feel overwhelming, we continue to believe that people want to belong, contribute, and build something larger than themselves. Nonprofits help make that possible every day. Philanthropy has a responsibility to support that work, not only through grants, but by standing up for the value of community, civic participation, and collective care.
We are proud to stand alongside the organizations, leaders, artists, and residents working to strengthen the Bay Area. Together, we can build communities where all people have the opportunity to reach their fullest potential and live with a sense of purpose, dignity, and joy.
