All posts in Green Access

Today was Carmen Rojas’ last day at the Kapor Foundation. Her exuberance and steadfast dedication to social justice will certainly be missed by her colleagues. We wish Carmen well in her new endeavors and look forward to seeing her new justice work take shape.

I wanted to share more information on our grantmaking plans during this transition.

We will continue our Green Access and VoICE grantmaking, although we are delaying new conversations about grant support until the fall. We’re going to re-set our grant request deadlines to October 31st for any remaining 2011 requests and December 15th for requests to be considered in early January 2012. This will help us to firm up our program direction and staffing. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause in your development planning.

For Fall cluster key partner organizations, final reports and renewal requests are still due by August 1, 2011. We’re prepared to make these grants in accordance with our original September timetable.

For grant requests that were submitted by the May 18th deadline, we aim to have responses by mid-July. Stay tuned!

And yes, we’ll most likely hire another program staff person after first completing an organizational needs assessment. Check our blog here over the summer for any announcement about a position search.

Please contact us with any questions.

This is another reminder about the Kapor Foundation’s first ever Grant Application Workshop that we will host at our offices (543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco) next Tuesday, January 11, 2011, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. This is an opportunity for current grant recipients and other interested nonprofit organizations to learn more about our grantmaking strategies for Green Access and Voting Integrity and Civic Engagement.  It’s also a chance for current grant recipients, particularly key partner organizations, to find out how to access various additional supports, including some new opportunities, as part of our Assistance & Advising program.

I’ve received some inquiries as to whether or not this is a mandatory meeting for our current grant recipients, and the answer is no.  If you have the time and staff (any and all staff are welcome to attend) who are interested in attending, then we welcome you.  All you need to do is to register by clicking HERE.  I hope to see many of you next Tuesday!

City Slicker Farms, a Kapor Foundation food justice grant recipient, has been awarded $4,000,000 from Prop 84 funds for a “West Oakland Park and Urban Farm” project.  Proposition 84 is a 2006 California bond initiative that reserves 5.4 billion dollars in bonds for projects involving water quality and access, park improvements, and natural resource and park preservation.  This development will allow City Slicker Farms to bring healthy, local, organic food to more families – exciting news for City Slicker Farms and for the West Oakland community!   To see the full press release, click HERE.

Image source: www.cityslickerfarms.org

We are excited to host our third annual What Works! Convening November 8-9, 2010 at the David Brower Center in Berkeley. This year’s convening will bring together organizations from across the country working at the cross-section of race, civic engagement, and criminalization. Angela Davis – scholar, life-long activist, and co-founder of Critical Resistance – will be the keynote speaker.

As the national conversation about race has become inundated by the reactionary, exclusive, and xenophobic, the Kapor Foundation sees a critical opportunity to bring together organizers from across the nation – New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, New York and Oakland among others – to deepen their relationships and build a meaningful network of support for the collective well-being. The convening also aims to inform a cross-race and cross-sector national agenda to build political and economic power with low-income people and people of color.

The Kapor Foundation is committed to creating meaningful spaces for its allies and colleagues to share and learn what has worked in their efforts to build power in low-income communities of color. What Works! is the annual manifestation of this commitment. We’re especially pleased that our 2010 gathering is in partnership with the Ford Foundation, Solidago Foundation, and Surdna Foundation.

Panels showcase a range of community-based work: youth organizing in the Bay Area and New York; worker organizing of Black workers in the Midwest, immigrant workers nationally, and cross racial organizing in San Francisco; and long-term civic engagement illustrating the relationship between Oakland and Albuquerque.

What Works! is open to staff and membership of community based organizations, funders, students, academics, and the interested general public. Space is limited. General admission is $50. There is free admission for students (with valid ID) and for staff of grant recipient organizations of the Ford, Kapor, Surdna, and Solidago Foundations. To register for What Works!, go to whatworks2010.eventbrite.com.

Please click the following link to see the convening agenda and speaker bios:  What Works! 2010 Program Booklet

The time has come to get out there and vote!

It’s been a crazy two years since the historic presidential election of President Obama.  Since then, we’ve seen the passage of national health care reform,  the rise of the tea party movement, and the economic crisis strike across the country.  We’ve also seen negative campaign ads, local critical mass, and all kinds of parties to make sure we make it out on election day.  And now the time has come.  A number of our key partner organizations are at the forefront of local and national civic engagement efforts including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, San Francisco Rising, Oakland Rising, and Voto Latino.  Below are some voter resources, including two voter guides from the League of Women Voters & The Ballot as well as organizational voter guides from the Ella Baker Center and Oakland Rising

League of Women Voters

The Ballot

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights Voter Guide

Oakland Rising

Everyone keeps talking about August being a slow month in the work world… it’s a lie.

Our grant recipients are gearing up this month for amazing fundraisers, street food, and festivals.  All of these events will provide great opportunities for you & your friends and family to eat delicious food in support of great local activists and causes.

August 15, 2010 Causa Justa//Just Cause at Dona Tomas

The kick-off event is Causa Justa//Just Cause’s Benefit for Housing and Immigrant Rights, which will be hosted on the 15th  from 5:00- 7:00pm at Oakland’s famous Dona Tomas located at 5004 Telegraph Avenue.  This event will highlight the work of the newly merged organization and lift up the efforts of their organizers and members.   Causa Justa :: Just Cause (CJJC) is a multi-racial, grassroots organization building community leadership to achieve justice for low-income San Francisco and Oakland residents.

How could you pass up a great night of delectable treats in the company of those who are fighting for the rights of San Francisco and Oakland’s residents?  You really can’t, can you.

August 21, 2010 San Francisco Annual Street Food Festival

One week later, on August 21st from 11:00am to 7:00pm, you can roam Folsom Street between 24th & 26th streets to taste some of the best street food the city of San Francisco has to offer.

The San Francisco Street Food Festival is an event hosted by La Cocina to advocate for the creation of policies that support the formalization of mobile food vending in San Francisco. As they note: “Policies as they exist today are discouraging and create barriers rather than opportunities for the creation of viable businesses and jobs for San Franciscans. Street food has the power to bring communities casual, affordable, delicious foods made by food entrepreneurs who reflect San Francisco’s diverse population. Policies that support the formalization of mobile vending will work to connect communities throughout San Francisco’s spectrum of class and culture to the everyday food that we all eat and love”.  Can you really pass this up? Again, I think not.

August 27-29, 2010 Eat Real Festival

To close out this amazing month of August, we have the annual Eat Real Festival, which will be held in Oakland’s Jack London Square.  Eat Real Festival was founded in 2008 by a group of people who believe that delicious, convenient, affordable and sustainable food should be celebrated through an annual food festival.  They know that today’s eaters are concerned about how to spend their food dollar yet are also increasingly interested in learning about how food choices can contribute to a healthier environment and stronger communities. By using fresh and local ingredients (and their amazing flavors), Eat Real aims to show how easy it can be to support a regional food system by bringing farmers, food producers and eaters together.

I hope to see you all at each of these events!