Our Grantmaking History – “Change, Not Charity”

In 1994 the San Diego Foundation for Change incorporated as its own 501c3 corporation and became a member of the Funding Exchange network. It shares with other member funds a commitment to movement building and grassroots organizing as the basis for lasting change.

This approach has proven to work: the Funding Exchange has been at the forefront of numerous efforts that, while once seemingly obscure, are now widely recognized as important transforming social movements. Over the years, the Funding Exchange has partnered with activists and funded community organizing to:

- Confront domestic violence when it was still considered a “private, family matter;”
- Launch the environmental justice movement;
- Advance the rights of workers, women, immigrants, indigenous people, and the poor;
- Propel the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender liberation movement;
- Promote peace movements in the US and abroad;
- Support the first living wage campaigns; and
- Fight against prison expansion and the growing criminalization of poor people.

The Foundation for Change is rooted in – and committed to – this culture of community-based organizing. We are committed to growing grassroots movements for progressive social change.

Our Grantmaking Success – Planting Seeds of Change

This model of grassroots philanthropy has had its successes here in San Diego. Whether for lack of education, experience, resources or awareness, many leaders from San Diego’s most marginalized communities have been unable to access more traditional funding sources and so have depended on the Foundation for Change to help them launch their grassroots organizations.

The brief list below gives an idea of the kinds of organizations that the Foundation for Change has helped to launch (years funded in parentheses):

- The Environmental Health Coalition (1987, 1990, 1993, and 1996) promotes environmental and social justice by empowering leaders in underserved communities to protect public health and the environment as these are threatened by toxic pollution.

- Supportive Parents Information Network (SPIN) (1999, 2001, 2003, and 2006) helps low-income families break out of the isolation of poverty and achieve self-sufficiency.

- The Employee Rights Center (1999) helps nonunion workers with a host of issues, including unemployment claims, wage disputes and proceedings at the National Labor Relations Board.

- Shakti Rising (2001) provides holistic, gender-specific and trauma-informed services to young women, ages 15–30, who are dealing with multiple issues including substance abuse, body-image issues, interpersonal violence, and depression.

- Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice (2004) was the leading partner in a broad-based coalition that won a Living Wage Ordinance from the San Diego City Council in 2006.

- Gay, Lesbian, & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) (2006) strives to ensure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.

- Sun & Moon Vision Productions (2006) supports local women in producing documentaries, digital video and media art that nurtures a humanitarian vision.

Our Grantmaking Future – Gardening on Both Sides of the Border

The leaders at the Foundation for Change are committed to making a greater impact in our region. We recognize that progressive organizations in San Diego face a number of significant obstacles: a local economy dominated by the military and related industries; a local media committed to promoting San Diego’s national reputation as a tourist wonder-land; a predominantly conservative population with vocal right-wing leaders on issues ranging from immigration to U.S. foreign policy; and a dominant culture of complacency in the face of social injustice.

The other great and overwhelming reality facing progressive organizations in our region is that the social injustices we aim to combat are rooted deeply on both sides of the international boundary. San Diego and Tijuana are sister cities – twins joined at the hip, even – and what ails them cannot be remedied on just one side of the border.

We can see a day in which grassroots groups from San Diego and Tijuana are joined together in mutually supportive ways, working together for more comprehensive social, economic and environmental justice. The list of potential causes is endless – improved access to reproductive and other health services; reduction in transmission rates of HIV and other communicable disease; empowerment of neighborhood leaders fighting for environmental justice; promotion of alternatives to violence in families, schools and neighborhoods; expanded opportunities for children and youth of recent immigrants; improved wages and rights for the working people on the bottom of both the San Diego and Tijuana labor markets; enhanced capacity of culturally-competent organizations addressing the rights of sexual minorities; the list goes on.