All posts in Green Access

As we prepare to close up shop at the Kapor Foundation and celebrate our debut in our new skin as the Kapor Center for Social Impact, we wanted to conduct a thorough analysis of what we’ve learned from the terrific community of organizations we’ve worked with since our program areas launched in 2007.

Attached please find our Green Access and VoICE retrospective papers. Many thanks to Judi Powell of Seven Hills Philanthropy for her meticulous work in shaping our learnings, which were gathered from final reports, internal analysis, and interviews with community leaders.  We are distributing the reports through our professional affinity associations: Funders Committee for Civic Participation, Bay Area Justice Funders Network, and Neighborhood Funders Group. We hope that you, as funder peers and community colleagues, will find them to be instructive and even inspiring!

Download the Green Access Program Retrospective here.

Download the Voting Integrity & Civic Engagement Program Retrospective here.

We’re excited to share our video summary of the 2012 year! Many thanks to everyone involved in making this happen – both the video and the accomplishments of the past year!

To view the list of 2012 grant recipients by program area, click here.
To view the video in our YouTube channel, click here.

Just in case you missed this announcement on our home page, we’re excited to share news of our next iteration!

On a related note, we’ll continue sharing news here on the mkf.org site until our changeover officially happens on May 15th.

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Dear Community:

For the past year, we’ve been keeping you abreast of an ongoing strategic shift here at the Kapor Foundation. We’re very excited to announce that we’ve arrived. As of May 15, 2013, the Kapor Foundation will have a new public face, the Kapor Center for Social Impact. Through a shared vision, set of values, and program activities, we’ll work more closely with Kapor Capital, our sibling venture capital microfirm focused on seed-stage tech startups.

The Kapor Center’s working mission is to “relentlessly pursue  creative strategies that will leverage tech for positive social impact in underrepresented communities, primarily focusing on closing academic, political, health, and economic gaps.” This mission represents our deep belief in the power of information technology as a tool to accelerate social good, and fully aligns with the Kapors’ longtime involvement in the tech industry, stemming back to their days at Lotus Development Corporation in the early 1980s.

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Just wanted to loop back around with everyone; we’ve received a few eager inquiries about our2013 grantmaking priorities. As we’ve mentioned before, we’re in store for some major changes as we shift our focus to tech-driven strategies and tools that further social justice/social impact. Once ready, we’ll announce the changes here on our website and Twitter account, so please check back with us in mid-February for updates.

I love that the Presidential Inauguration falls on the Dr. Martin Luther King holiday. Rather than pontificating on the vision and promise that these two leaders represent, I’m simply going to challenge myself to use this day as a jumping off point for the next year of social justice work, as related to Dr. King’s legacy, and the next four years of social impact efforts in the age of President Obama. What can we individually and collectively accomplish in the next year/four years? Let’s go! Best wishes for a powerful, peaceful, and (broadly defined) prosperous 2013.

Photo from theSoulPitt.com

We’re in the midst of making some major changes to the Kapor Foundation’s approach to social impact work, as I alluded to in a July 17th post. Last week we shared an update with our current grant partners that may be useful for others to know:

“The purpose of this email is to update you on our evolving strategy to meet our mission, which has not changed: ‘We support organizations that provoke social change in communities of color en route to equality.’

For the past five years, the Kapor Foundation has worked to support critical work that affects communities of color both nationally and here in the Bay Area. At the beginning of 2012, we shared our interest in learning more about how info tech can be mobilized in pursuit of positive social impacts. With the ever-growing presence of info tech in our everyday lives, we strongly believe that CBOs must harness technology to more effectively achieve their missions.
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Since 2007, more formerly homeless San Franciscans are becoming leaders in recycling and environmental awareness thanks to the work of Community Housing Partnership (CHP). The SFGate recently chronicled our grant recipient whose Recycling and Environmental Awareness Program is garnering attention in its efforts to educate previously homeless participants in environmental stewardship and resource management.

Residents enrolled in CHP’s REA Program are trained to teach compost collection and recycling practices to their neighbors. Participants also learn about resource conservation, environmental justice and urban agriculture, and receive basic job support to help prepare them for work in the green economy. “Since beginning its Recycling and Environmental Awareness Program in 2007, Community Housing Partnership has minted 100 activists…all residents of supportive housing.”
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On Tuesday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) passed a budget that included a two-year pilot program providing free public transportation to low-income youth. This vote was the culmination of deep organizing work – outreach, education, leadership development, coalition building, all within a campaign framework – led by Kapor Foundation grant recipient, POWER.

Don’t get us wrong, we are always proud when community-based organizing groups, our vehicles for change, move us closer to equal opportunity. But there’s something that feels especially good today about a vehicle for change winning access for our youth to the literal vehicles that connects us to schools, services, and jobs.

Congratulations to POWER and to all the youth who led and participated in the work. Congratulations on winning a core demand and, also, congratulations for raising the issue of public transportation inequity and access to one we should all care about.

Photo credit: SFBayview.com

We are very pleased to share highlights of the past year with you! Thanks for helping us make this work happen!

Please note that of the $4.4 million distributed last year:
$2.2 million provided core support for the Level Playing Field Institute;
$1.3 million supported civic engagement & green economy work;
$500,000 supported college access and retention; and
$400,000 supported capacity building & research.