2Columbia Foundation
A FAMILY’S VISION
1940-2013Columbia Foundation
board and staff
Board of Directors and Officers
Early Board Members		
at Closing
Madeleine Haas Russell, Founder
Christine H. Russell, President			 William Haas, FounderCharles P. Russell, Secretary			 John Altman
Alice Russell-Shapiro, Treasurer			 Walter Haas, Sr.
Maddy Russell-Shapiro			
Daniel Koshland
Léon Bazalgette Russell
Staff at Closing 				Susan R. Clark, Executive Director
Former Staff
Carolyn Koo, Grants Manager			 Marjorie de Young Elkus, Executive Director
Alex Hoskyns-Abrahall, Program AssociateJohn May, Executive Director
Ken Lehto, Accountant				 Jenny Holl, Administrative Assistant
Jo Hedley, London Arts-Program Consultant Henry Holmes, Program Officer
Lori Linker, Administrative Assistant
Theresa Murray, Administrative Assistant				Program Committees and Members

Arts and Culture, 2013
Human Rights, 2013					Frances Phillips
Kevin Jennings					Tom Price
Rod Seymore						Stephen Taylor					Former Members
Gary Thorne						Randy Hayes
Mike Hennessey					Food and Farming, 2013					Chris Hest
Ignacio Chapela					David Linger
Claire Cummings					Anuradha Mittal
Desmond Jolly					John Moyers
David Mas Masumoto				Former Members
Paul Hawken
James Head
Lawrie Mott

Final report
Prepared by the San Francisco Study Center. Senior Writer/Editor Marjorie Beggs researched
and wrote the manuscript. Executive Director Geoff Link edited the manuscript and helped shape
the story. Graphic Artist Lise Stampfli Torme designed the book. Alice Russell-Shapiro provided
final copy-editing.

For more information about Columbia Foundationwww.columbia.org (until 2020)
Columbia Foundation’s records are archived and available to the public at the Bancroft
Library, University of California, Berkeley. Madeleine Haas Russell’s oral history is
at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/narrators/russell_madeleine.html© 2017, Columbia Foundation

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016912175
ISBN: 978-1-999956-19-1					

						

					Contents
Letter from the Trustees

6						

Foreword: Susan R. Clark, Executive Director 1978-2013

7

		
PIONEERS IN PHILANTHROPY

9			

Stern-Haas Family History10			

The Founding of Columbia

13

Finding a New Way

14		

EARLY GRANTS

		17World War II and Human Rights

18		Arts and Culture

19

		The Environment

22

			NEXT GENERATION OF BOARD AND STAFF

23						CONTEMPORARY CONCERNS

29

Human Rights

30		Arts and Culture

35

Food and Farming

40

Jewish Life

45		

COLUMBIA foundation CLOSES
Reflections

47
50

SUMMARY OF GRANTS

52

GRANTEES 1940-2013

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Letter from the Trustees
This report is the story of how, in 1940, the orphaned siblings Madeleineand William Haas launched Columbia Foundation into the nascent philanthropic
world of the mid-20th century and how the foundation flourished for more thanseven decades.
In that first year of Columbia’s existence, the siblings called on relativesof their parents’ generation to join them as the foundation’s first trustees. Many
years later, we answered the same call, representing the second (in 1978) andthird (in 2011) generations of the family to serve as Columbia trustees.
William Haas died at 27, in 1943, but Madeleine Haas Russell lived until
1999, still at the foundation’s helm after a life of personal and philanthropic
accomplishments. Since then, we four directed Columbia Foundation until
deciding to close its doors, in November of 2013.
Columbia will always be a cherished part of our family’s history. We are
gratified by the achievements of the foundation’s thousands of grantees andproud of Columbia’s reputation for supporting substantive, often pioneering,efforts to better the world.
Alice Russell-Shapiro

6

Charles Phillips Russell, II
Christine Haas Russell
Maddy Russell-Shapiro
2017

1940
The foundation’s first brochureannounced its purpose as“advancing human welfare.”ForewordW

hen I was hired as Columbia Foundation’s executive director, in
1978, the trustees told me they wanted the foundation to “make adifference” and were willing to take risks. Their shared goal wassocial change, whether traditional or experimental, and they guided my work at
the foundation for the next 35 years.
Columbia closed its doors November 30, 2013, but its legacy continues,
reflected in a changing world to which the foundation contributed.
• In June 2015, the New York Times editorial board wrote about the justannounced “profound and inspiring” Supreme Court decision extending
the right to marry to couples of the same sex. Columbia Foundation wasan early and long-term supporter of gay rights in the general area ofcombatting homophobia and specifically the freedom to marry, providing$5.5 million from 1979 through 2012 to build the movement leading tothat momentous decision.
• The Washington Post’s Ann Midgett in August 2015 reviewed“Written on Skin,” a new opera by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp,
hailed by many as the best opera written thus far in the 21st century. Fiveyears earlier, Columbia Foundation — without knowing the opera’s title orsubject — had granted $137,000 to American Friends of Covent Garden
to develop this exceptional work. From 1984 to 2012, the foundation
awarded $1.8 million for 30 new operas in London and San Francisco.
• In a first-ever court claim, 21 eight- to 19-year-olds sued the federal
government, arguing that inaction on climate change violates their rightto life, liberty, and property. Their suit, widely reported in August 2015
when filed in Eugene, Oregon, demands federal action to safeguard theclimate. In 2011, Columbia Foundation’s seed grant of $200,000 helped
establish Our Children’s Trust, whose goal is “to protect Earth’s
atmosphere and natural systems for present and future generations . . .
through a game-changing legal campaign seeking systemic, science-based
emissions and climate-recovery policy at all levels of government.”• As classes reconvened in fall 2015, two University of California campuses
enrolled hundreds of students in the study of agroecology — nonindustrial
agricultural systems that are as productive as the industrial and havethe added benefit of yielding nourishing food crops, restoring soil health,removing toxic pesticides, and providing just employment. In 1982, inColumbia’s largest single grant to that point, it awarded $250,000 to
U.C. Santa Cruz to establish what was likely the world’s first academic

7

agroecology program. Between 2007 and 2013, the foundation awarded$275,000 to the U.C. Davis Agriculture Sustainability Institute to create
the university’s first undergraduate major in Sustainable Agriculture
and Food Systems. From 1979 through 2013, Columbia’s support forsustainable food and farming systems totaled $11.6 million.
• The Prison University Project, whose central focus is a college programat San Quentin State Prison, won the respected 2015 National Humanities
Medal. The citation, presented by President Barack Obama to Executive
Director Jody Lewen at a September 2016 White House ceremony, reads,“For transforming the lives of incarcerated people though higher
education. Its programs offer opportunity and inspiration to their students,
providing an example for others to emulate.” Columbia’s grants to theproject totaled $300,000.
The Columbia board funded the above projects — and scores more of
the same promise and importance — with no guarantee they would succeed. The
board knew only that the people involved were exceptionally knowledgeable,
creative, and persistent, and that the work they were undertaking, if successful,was certain to be of value. Risk was not a barrier to action for Columbia,
which often funded new ideas and strategies when few others would. Patience,tenacity, and a long view were accepted as necessary for real progress.

8This report documents the history of Columbia Foundation and theHaas-Russell family members who founded and led the foundation for 73 years,
providing the intellectual capital and guidance for the foundation’s ambitious,
fruitful agendas.
Susan R. Clark, Executive Director 1978-20132017

Pioneers in Philanthropy

W

hen Columbia Foundation’s four prospective board members met for
the first time — September 22, 1940 — they agreed to support “newor experimental projects that promise to reveal new facts or methods,”

according to a memorandum for that meeting. With that language, they set thestage for almost three-quarters of a century of forward-looking grantmaking.
Columbia would make more than 4,000 grants, totaling $90 million, during
its seven decades. Many grants supported projects that were unconventionalor had unpredictable outcomes: aiding American detainees of Japanese descentduring World War II, creating 30 new operas, helping launch a fledgling publicTV station, educating prisoners in order to reduce recidivism, establishing acommunity foundation, fostering sustainable agriculture, protecting the humanand civil rights of gays and lesbians.
At that first meeting, held at the Haas family home in Atherton, 30 miles
south of San Francisco, were founders Madeleine Haas, 25, her brother, William(Bill) Haas, 24, their uncle Samuel Lilienthal, and their attorney, John Altman, who
was married to a Haas cousin. Marjorie de Young Elkus, Columbia Foundation’s
first executive director, wrote the memorandum.
Altman was handling the young heirs’ finances, and the foundation was hisbrainchild. After meeting with Ms. Haas to discuss the notion in spring 1939,
he wrote her brother: “Madeleine seems very favorably inclined to create such a10foundation jointly with you. … The idea occurred to me that you and Madeleine
might find it advantageous and worthwhile to create a charitable foundation in
the form of a trust or a corporation. … [It] will enable you [two] to make studies
of social, educational, and philanthropic problems in which to interest yourselves
and to do the things which I know eventually the two of you will want to do.”Madeleine and Bill Haas were both good students who earned Phi Beta
Kappa keys. She was a recent magna cum laude graduate of Smith College, he a
Stanford University graduate with an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Their inherited wealth, Altman advised them, was more than sufficient tolaunch a foundation: their joint income for 1938 was $443,000, more than $7.5
million by 2017 standards.

S t e r n - H a a s F a m i ly H i s t o r y
The Haas siblings’ parents were descendants of renowned, business-savvy
Gold Rush-era entrepreneurs. Their mother, Fannie Stern Haas, was thedaughter of Jacob and Rosa Stern and the grandniece of jeans-inventor Levi
Strauss. Strauss, never married and childless, upon his death in 1902 left his
50-year-old, highly successful business to his nephews Jacob, Sigmund, Louis,
and Abraham Stern, the sons of his sister Fanny Strauss-Stern and her husband,
David Stern. Jacob Stern succeeded his uncle as Levi Strauss Company president.
Madeleine Haas Russell had fond childhood memories of her maternal

grandfather. In a 1989 oral-history interview for the University of California,
Berkeley, History of Bay Area Philanthropy series, she recalled him
practicing the piano, teaching her words in Spanish and Italian, conversing
with her in French, and viewing his art collection with her. “He had an art
gallery in his house … a large walnut-paneled room on the ground floor. … He
used to take me around and talk to me about the paintings.” That relationshipinitiated her lifelong love of the arts.
Her father, Charles, was descended from a prosperous San Francisco
merchant family whose grocery and liquor-distribution company dated from the1850s. He and Fannie Stern married in 1913. After her death, in 1920, and his,in 1927, the children, now orphans, went to live with their uncle and aunt, Samueland Alice Haas Lilienthal, who had a son and two daughters.
“She was a wonderful, wonderful aunt … like a mother to me,” recalled
Madeleine Haas Russell, who named her first-born child Alice.
The Lilienthals’ house was an elaborate 17-room Queen Anne Victorian on
Franklin Street in San Francisco, built in 1886 for William and Bertha Haas,

11

1920s
A formal, undated photographcaptures the early poise ofMadeleine Haas, born in 1915,
and her brother, Bill, born ayear later. They may havebeen recently orphaned:
their father, Charles Haas,
died in 1927, their motherin 1920. Russell family photo

12

1940s
Madeleine Haas and herbrother, Bill Haas,
were young adults justa few years out of college
when they founded Columbia
Foundation, one of
San Francisco’s first familyfoundations. Photograph,right, by Berenice Abbott

Alice Lilienthal’s parents. The Lilienthals raised their children, niece, andnephew there.
The Haas siblings lived in that house until they left for college. Schooled at
the Katherine Delmar Burke School for 12 years, Ms. Haas chose Smith College
on the East Coast because, she said, “I was beginning to feel adventurous. I
wanted to see a different part of the country.”
Bill Haas chose to stay in the Bay Area for his undergraduate work,
obtaining his degree at Stanford University, but then he, too, went East, toHarvard Business School, for his MBA. The school, said Mrs. Russell, had“a wonderful reputation,” gave him “different ideas” about business, andhelped him “see things with a fresher outlook.”
His sister’s education at Smith similarly paved the way for a lifetime ofliberal interests, says Alice Russell-Shapiro, the eldest child of Madeleine Haas
Russell and Léon B. Russell. “I see a line connecting her Smith years, whichradicalized her, and when she and Uncle Billy started the foundation. She wasbrought up in a conservative, upper-middle-class Jewish family, and Smith was aleft-leaning school — she told me once that she almost became a Communist.”
Indeed, Mrs. Russell confirmed that statement in her oral history: “Therewas quite a lot of political activity at Smith. We used to have speakers, I
remember, from the Seaman’s Union and places like that. There were strikes
in those days, and people would come and tell us about it. … I was quite
interested in Communism in those days. I thought it was a very interesting formof government, and I really believed quite a lot of what they said, even though,I’m happy to say, I never joined the Young Communists or the Communist Partyor any of what used to be called ‘front’ organizations.”
Her relatives, most of them Republicans, weren’t happy about her politics
when she was at Smith, or later when she was active in Democratic Party
campaigns, she said. “They thought I was very ‘pink.’ ”

The Founding of Columbia
John Altman’s letter urging the siblings to study “social, educational, andphilanthropic problems” in advance of forming a foundation and to pursue “things
which I know eventually the two of you will want to do” also contained practicaladvice. He detailed how the foundation might operate and recommended
hiring a paid worker to relieve them of the “sentimental pressure” of making“investigations and enquiries” themselves. He added, courteously, “Please do
not think I am trying to spend your money for you.”
They took his counsel. They hired a director and incorporated theirfoundation in December 1940, giving it a neutral moniker.
“I didn’t want it known that we had a foundation,” Mrs. Russell recalled.

13

“My brother thought of [the name]. We tried to find something anonymous.
Somebody suggested the Wilmad Foundation, but we decided on ‘Columbia,’from [the 19th-century patriotic song] ‘Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean.’ ”
The desire for anonymity was more than modesty, she told oral-history
interviewer Gabrielle Morris. “I was very embarrassed about having so much[money]. Other people had parents who were rich, but to be rich yourself when
you’re 22 is sort of embarrassing. Not everybody feels that way, but I did. And
especially during the Depression.” In the early days of the foundation, duringsite visits to prospective grantees, she explained, “I would change my name to
Hays so no one would know who I was.”The founders quickly found worthy grantees, many untested and some whose
work was controversial. In the first year, the young philanthropists’ grants for
projects, general support, and fellowships to 16 organizations and institutions, all
but one in California, totaled $170,000 ($2.9 million in 2017 dollars). Support
ranged from a $1,000 grant ($17,000) to the Birth Control Federation to a twoyear, $22,650 ($383,000) grant to help develop a statewide housing program as
the country edged toward war and national rent control was being considered.
Grants also supported a summer camp for diabetic children, helped establish the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank, and funded a three-year research project
on bubonic plague conducted at UCSF Medical School. Of special interest to

14

Bill Haas was a grant to cover Czech music educator and conductor Dr. Herbert
Jan Popper’s salary at Stanford University, where he established the first opera
workshop on a West Coast campus. Another provided a fellowship for Francis
J. Violich to study housing and planning efforts in Latin America. Mr. Violich
later co-founded U.C. Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Design.
Modest grants sometimes played key roles within major projects. In 1941,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture began planning a “model village” at a
migrant-labor camp in Porterville, 75 miles from Fresno, that would include
permanent housing, landscaping with flowers and trees, an efficient sewage
system, and a community center. Columbia’s October 1941 grant of $5,615
helped establish a nursery school at the camp.

F i n d i n g a N e w W ay : M o d e l i n g F l e x i b i l i t y
The East Coast has a long tradition of family foundations: Carnegie wasestablished in 1905, Rockefeller in 1913, Kellogg in 1930, Ford and Robert
Wood Johnson in 1936. But in San Francisco, only three family philanthropies
existed before Columbia Foundation formed, in 1940: the Mary A. Crocker Trust,founded in 1889 by Crocker’s four children, heirs to railroad and banking
fortunes; the Rosenberg Foundation, incorporated in 1935 by relatives andbusiness associates of Max L. Rosenberg, who, with his brothers, had begun
packing and shipping California dried fruit in 1893; and the James IrvineFoundation, established by the agricultural pioneer in 1937.
Other notables, whose family foundations in the city followed Columbia,
were: Mortimer Fleishhacker, in 1947; Richard and Rhoda Goldman, 1951;
Walter and Elise Haas, 1952 (the same year the Levi Strauss Foundation
opened); Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr., 1953; Jennie B. Zellerbach, 1956; andWallace Alexander Gerbode, 1961.
With a dearth of local models for
operating the new Columbia Foundation,
the Haas siblings began by making
grants that reflected their values and“Other people had parents who were rich, but to berich yourself when you’re 22 is ... embarrassing.”— Madeleine Haas Russell oral history

interests, a traditional approach tograntmaking, but added significant support for programs that met the pressing
needs of the time. This pioneering two-pronged approach to philanthropy became
Columbia Foundation’s hallmark.
Columbia’s first brochure was modest but elegant, four pages printed on
deckle-edged art paper. It announced the new foundation’s purpose, “advancing
human welfare,” and immediately signaled that it would encourage “those who
would work to develop vigorous new ideas” as well as help already successfulprograms to further strengthen services.
“No fixed pattern has been established beyond the aim of attaining amaximum of usefulness,” the brochure stated, and Columbia Foundation’s earlyfields of interest were, indeed, quite broad: social welfare, education, foreign
relations, academic fellowships, recreation, public health, medicine, psychiatry
and psychology, race relations, and research. Its policies were “flexible andallow for exceptions.”“I would say we didn’t have [a specific program] to begin with because wewere all experimenting,” Mrs. Russell said in her oral history. “We took anythingthat came in that we were interested in, except we didn’t fund things that were
supported by the government. At the beginning, we even did medical, then soonchanged because that takes such enormous amounts of money and was something the government and a lot of large charitable organizations were funding.”
Her growing support of human rights during the 1940s was shared by her
brother, whose special interests also included exploring the United States
connection with Latin America, promoting social equality through urban design
and music. But, sadly, he had little time to pursue those: in 1943, at age 27, hecontracted a heart infection during a trip with his sister to Mexico. Penicillin
would have saved his life, but it was wartime and none was available to civilians.
According to board minutes, the Columbia directors began to narrow theirinterests in 1953 to intercultural and interracial relations, the arts, education,and mental health. Madeleine Haas Russell, wed in 1946 to Léon Bazalgette
Russell, of Western Europe and North Carolina, was raising three young

15

children in the early 1950s, and she may have needed to minimize the demandsof chairing a foundation by limiting the breadth of its grantmaking. Also,
Columbia was awarding grants in a post-war society in which wealthy “whiteflight” to the suburbs was accompanied by urban renewal, segregation tensions,and women’s renewed role as homemakers and stay-at-home parents.
Mrs. Russell’s growing involvement in civic activities in the late 1950s
and 1960s also may have contributed to her thinking about philanthropy. In her
oral history, she says that her political interests bloomed in 1954 when she met
Roger Kent, a progressive California political leader, new chairman of the state
Democratic Party, and later active supporter of Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy,
and Pat Brown in their bids for office. In 1956, she was aboard the train with
Stevenson’s presidential whistle-stop campaign through California, and two years
later she worked for Brown’s successful California gubernatorial campaign.
In 1962, President Kennedy appointed her to head the State Department’s
San Francisco Reception Center, part of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural
Affairs, overseeing invited guests during their official visits to the United States.
At first she hesitated to accept the position: “I thought it was just going tobe having tea parties for people, and I didn’t want to do that ... [but the program]took leaders and specialists from all the countries that the United States had
relations with and invited them for three-to-six-week visits. They would travel

16

around [and] when they came to Northern California, we were in charge. I was
the director of that part of the program. … It was a variety of people, which
made it so interesting. I really enjoyed it very, very much.”
Reappointed by President Lyndon Johnson, she held the post for sevenyears, using her fluent French and hosting visitors at her San Francisco andAtherton homes. Her children recall from their teen years how seriously she
took the responsibility of planning the State Department visits, including thoseof royalty from Afghanistan and Greece. After vetting the suggestions of her staff
of seven, she chose and arranged for the visit sites, decided on the appropriate
colleagues to include at events, then memorized each guest’s sometimes long,complicated name so she could make unhesitating, correct introductions.
Her goal of fostering good relations that might lead to improved international
understanding remained a priority throughout her life. She was a longtime board
member of the Asia Foundation and had a deep interest in China, visiting
numerous times, including a trip to Tibet in 1993 as the Chinese government’s
guest. In the early 1970s, Columbia funded two chairs at Stanford University
in honor of Mrs. Russell’s brother, the William Haas Professorship of Chinese
Politics and the William Haas Professorship of Chinese Studies. And, in 1989,
Columbia grants established the Madeleine H. Russell Visiting Professorship of
Non-Western and Comparative Studies at Brandeis University.

Early GrantsW o r l d W a r II a n d H u m a n R i g h t s

War had been declared in Europe the year before Columbia’s founding.
Madeleine Haas had spent 18 months in Paris after graduating from
Smith College, returning to the United States briefly, in early 1939,

then sailing back to Europe. Urgent family cables “told me to come home,” sherecalled. Her ship docked in New York the same day Germany invaded Poland,
September 1, 1939.
Her abhorrence and fear of war were much on her mind. Foundation supportof human-rights efforts in California and groups fostering international peacebecame an outlet for those emotions. Her brother, however, like almost all young
American men, “very much wanted to join the military and did everthing he could
to be called,” she said, but he was rejected because of a congenital heart murmur.
Once the United States entered the war, in 1941, Columbia’s grantmaking
shifted to war-related local health research, mental-health programs, andemergency conditions. Some of the foundation’s most significant early grants
were to a half-dozen organizations helping detainees of Japanese descent, 62%of them U.S. citizens, during and after their internment in relocation camps.
“I was so much against [the internment],” Mrs. Russell recalled, but being
so young she felt she couldn’t influence the government’s actions against

18

Japanese Americans. She could, however, convey her feelings via her
philanthropy. “I think young people some-“I think young people sometimes know much more thanolder people. It’s a big mistake not to listen to them.”— Madeleine Haas Russell oral history

times know much more than older people.
It’s a big mistake not to listen to them. [Theinternment] was a terrible thing to do, as
most people now agree.”In August 1942, Columbia awarded a

substantial grant to U.C. Berkeley for the research and production of Dorothy
Thomas’s three-year study, “Japnese-American Evacuation and Resettlement.”
That groundbreaking analysis of the wholesale detention of innocent people
was jointly funded by U.C.’s Social Science Institute and Columbia, Giannini,and Rockefeller foundations. Columbia’s grant paid for about 30% of the$100,000-plus project.
Columbia also made two grants totaling $25,000 (worth $422,000 in 2017)
to the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council in 1943 and1944. The Council helped 4,000 nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans,leave the camps and continue their education at 600 colleges and universities
outside the Pacific “exclusion zones” — California, western Washington,
Oregon, and Arizona. And when the relocation camps were emptied, in 1945,
the foundation awarded more than $17,000 to three organizations forantidiscrimination programs, scholarships, re-employment projects, andresettlement assistance to help returning citizens resume their lives.
Kay Yamashita, who had worked for the Relocation Council in Philadelphia
during World War II, recalled in a 1992 Los Angeles Times article that whenever
the Council ran out of money, “this lady [probably Executive Director Marjorie
Elkus] would come by train to the council to talk about [our work], and verysoon after that, funds would come.”
A year after Mrs. Russell’s death, in 1999, the Relocation Council
honored her for the foundation’s wartime support. Four years later, the National
Japanese American Historical Society bestowed upon her the National Kansha
Award, citing her “humanitarian support through scholarships to JapaneseAmerican students during World War II that helped thousands complete theirlife dreams.”
Other human-rights grants in the 1940s went to Guide Dogs for the Blind,
National Federation for the Blind, United Negro College Fund, Children’s Agency
of San Francisco for psychological services for foster children, and American
Friends Service Committee for its scholarship program.

A rt s a n d C u lt u r eColumbia’s grants in arts and culture were modest at first. A handful ofawards were forward-looking, including $12,000 in 1945 to the U.C. Berkeley
Music Department to hire Roger Sessions for two years. An American composer,

1942
Japanese Americans arriveat the Santa Anita AssemblyCenter, northeast of Los Angeles.
More than 19,000 evacuees
lived at this center, a converted
racetrack, before being moved tointernment camps. Photo
Clem Albers for the U.S.
National Archives and Records
Administration

19

20

1954
Broadcast journalists James
Day, left, and Jonathan
Rice launched KQED,the country’s sixth publicbroadcasting station, in
1954. Columbia’s support,
which began two years
later, continued for ahalf-century: 28 grants
totaling $1.7 million. Photo
courtesy KQEDcritic, and music teacher, Mr. Sessions was noted for the atonal music he began
developing in the 1940s. His work flourished at Berkeley, where he taught until
1953.
The San Francisco Art Association, founded in 1871, received a Columbia
grant in 1945 to purchase equipment for a new Department of Photography at the
California School of Fine Arts, now the San Francisco Art Institute. After the grant
was awarded, Ansel Adams sent a Western Union telegram to school Director
Douglas Macagy. Half the grant, he wired, should be used for “operating expenses
salaries publicity and advertising for first year as buffer fund against possible
low registration … a precautionary measure.”

He needn’t have worried. A year later, he and Minor White established thecountry’s first fine-arts photography department at the school, with Imogen
Cunningham, Edward Weston, and Dorothea Lange among its instructors.
Another venerable institution, the California Academy of Sciences, wasfounded in 1853, but its Morrison Planetarium theater didn’t open until 100 years
later. Anticipating that opening by five years, Columbia gave the Academy $2,500
in 1947 for a monthly lecture series to stir public interest in planetary science.
Columbia did not always grant in the San Francisco Bay Area. Karamu
House, a former settlement house in Cleveland, Ohio, received a small grant, in
1947, toward a community center featuring arts education and performance.
Now the oldest African American theater in the country, its students included
Langston Hughes, who developed and premiered many of his early plays there.
In the 1950s, Columbia awarded major grants to older, more traditionalarts institutions such as the San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, but it
gave regular, smaller grants to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,established in 1935. SFMOMA was one of the first museums to recognize
photography as a fine art. Also, in the mid-1940s, it had given Jackson Pollock
his first solo museum exhibition. Both were cutting-edge decisions thatappealed to Columbia, which made its first SFMOMA grant, of $1,000, in 1952.
By 1999, the foundation’s support had exceeded $2 million.
As a young foundation, Columbia defined “culture” broadly, perhaps
because, mid-century, Mrs. Russell continued to be drawn to potentially risky
ventures, such as television programming.
The Bay Area Educational Television Association premiered in 1952,
using the fledgling medium for shows such as “Shakespeare on TV” and“Kaleidoscope,” which featured interviews with luminaries from Aldous Huxley
to Bing Crosby. Its start was rocky — temporary offices were in a founder’s station
wagon — but within two years it was broadcasting twice weekly under the name
KQED, for quod erat demonstrandum, Latin for “which was to be demonstrated.”
In 1956, KQED moved into its first “home,” at Fourth and Bryant streets,
furnished with donated equipment and egg cartons for soundproofing. That year,

211980sProfessor Stephen Gliessman
teaches an ethnobotany lab class inthe early days of U.C. Santa Cruz’s
Agroecology Program. Photo
courtesy U.C. Santa Cruz

Columbia made its first grant, of $8,800, to KQED, only the country’s sixth
public-TV station. Three more grants followed in the 1950s, two to support
Caspar Weinberger’s popular weekly, live-TV panel program “Profile Bay Area.”
By the time Columbia closed, it had supported the station with 28 grants,
totaling $1.7 million.

22

The Environment
Toward the end of World War II, California anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt
conducted a pioneering study of how corporate farming was affecting ruralcommunities. He saw that industrial farming was beginning to overtake owneroperated farms, locally and nationally, with depressing effects on rural life.
Columbia’s $800 grant went toward publishing his book As You Sow, which isstill in print.
That grant presaged a Columbia funding priority, food and farming, thatwould become one-third of its grantmaking in the future. The 1982 grant of$250,000 to U.C. Santa Cruz to establish an agroecology program led the way,followed by Columbia’s support of many more programs focused on sustainableagriculture. The earliest grants were $37,000 to Greenbelt Alliance for its
Farmlands Conservation Project, in 1979, and $25,000 to the Institute for Foodand Development Policy for research into trends in U.S. food production and apublication about threats to the U.S. food supply.
Other environmental grants in the early 1980s were to the National Wildlife
Federation to purchase a land preserve for American eagles, the Nature
Conservancy for an educational program at Fairfield Osborn Preserve on Sonoma
Mountain, the Trust for Public Land, and Peninsula Open Space Trust.

Next Generation of Board
and Staff

C

olumbia Foundation developed a reputation for funding socially
responsible and experimental efforts from its inception; this approachcontinued until its closure, in November 2013. Board and staff changes

were few in its almost three-quarters of a century.
From 1958 until 1978, the board consisted of Mrs. Russell, Walter Haas, Sr.,and Daniel Koshland. Part of her parents’ generation, the men were her father’s
cousins and also were brothers-in-law. Mr. Koshland had helped to establish the
San Francisco Foundation, in 1948, with a $5,000 grant from Columbia.
Both men resigned from Columbia’s board in 1978, a planned transition to
the next generation of the family. Mrs. Russell asked her three children to become
members. All were young adults, not much older than their mother had been
when she founded Columbia: Alice Russell-Shapiro was 30, Charles Russell
29, Christine Russell 27.
In her oral history, Mrs. Russell mused about the contributions of young
adults: “I really think that young people are not appreciated for what they haveto offer. If they’re intelligent and well educated, I think they have more flexible
minds and more flexible eyes, so that they can see things with a fresher outlook.
If you combine that with perhaps some cautionary influence from experienced
people, I do think that it is a big advantage.”“My recollection is that Mom simply asked us to join the Columbia board,”

24

says Christine Russell, who at the time was at Columbia University in New York
City pursuing a Ph.D. in anthropology. “She probably explained to us that servingon the board would be a privilege, an opportunity to make contributions to worthy
causes and do something constructive together. We all had close relationships
with our mother and held her in high regard. There was never any question —for me and I doubt for either Alice or Charles — of our agreeing to serve.”
She gives her mother kudos for having the confidence at so young an age toestablish the foundation. “I think she was taking a huge risk. A lot of young
people might think, ‘That’s something I can’t do.’ She did it, and did it alone
after her brother died.”
Alice Russell-Shapiro was the only sibling living in San Francisco when
the invitation came to join the board. A Stanford graduate and a 1970 Coro Fellow
in Public Affairs, she had earned a master’s in urban studies from Occidental
College as well as one in landscape architecture from Harvard, in 1974.
“In 1977, I was a young mother, on the board of the new Fort Mason Center,and just a few years out of graduate school,” she says. “We all deferred to Mom— she knew we were in her mold and therefore would be involved in philanthropy.”
Charles Russell, who had attended McGill University for his undergraduate
work, and New York University and Oxford for his two graduate degrees inphilosophy, was living in England when his mother’s invitation came. He
eventually made London his permanent home.

1990
From left, Christine Russell,
Alice Russell-Shapiro, andCharles Russell. Russell family
photo

2013
Susan Clark, left, Columbia
Foundation executive
director from 1978 until its
close, accepts the 2013
National Resources Defense
Council’s “Forces for Nature”
award from Peter Lehner,
then-NRDC executive
director. Photo courtesy NRDC25

He echoes Ms. Russell-Shapiro about his early years on the board: “My mother… initiated everything then. She would make a proposal to fund something and
we would approve it.” The International Peace Academy, Jewish Community
Federation, World Affairs Council of Northern California, and War Memorial
Performing-Arts Center got substantial grants during that transition period.
Among the new board members’ first tasks was to interview Susan Clark (thenSilk) for the executive-director’s job. Only

“We all had close relationships with our mother andheld her in high regard. There was never any question— for me and I doubt for either Alice or Charles — of
our agreeing to serve.”— Christine Russell

two others had held that position previously:
Marjorie de Young Elkus for Columbia’s first
10 years, followed in 1950 by John May, amajor figure in San Francisco philanthropy.
At that time, he also served as the San
Francisco Foundation’s director, its first, andhe held both positions simultaneously until

the early 1970s. Mr. May left Columbia in late 1978.
“That year, John asked me and several others to interview for the Columbia
executive-director position,” recalls Ms. Clark.
She was a returned Peace Corps volunteer, a U.C. Berkeley graduate, and a 1971
Coro Foundation Fellow in Public Affairs through which she earned a master’s in urban
studies from Occidental College. In 1977 she was studying American political theory

26

and education at U.C. Berkeley but left the doctoral program to be the Mortimer
Fleishhacker Foundation’s first executive director.
She agreed to the Columbia interview and got the job, but she stayed on
at Fleishhacker as well, handling both jobs part time for four years.
The board’s approval of Ms. Clark was unanimous. Asked during her oralhistory interview what the foundation was looking for in its executive director, Mrs.
Russell laughed, “We were looking for Susan.”When Ms. Clark became Columbia’s full-time executive director, in 1983,
the foundation was receiving 700 proposals and 300 phone calls a year regarding
grants, a major surge. She attributes some of the uptick to her increased visibility asa full-timer, regularly out in the community as the face of Columbia. The foundation
got so many requests, she says, that to operate effectively it had to establish more
limited priorities and guidelines.
With new board members and a new executive director, Columbia’s grantmaking
evolved. It increased support for the arts and added preservation of the naturalenvironment while maintaining its longtime interests in enhancing urban life andculture and protecting human rights.
The foundation also began setting aside 10% of the annual grants budget forindividual grant recommendations from the second-generation trustees. Giving her
three children access to these discretionary funds was Mrs. Russell’s way of showing
she appreciated their voluntary service as trustees. It also encouraged their

27

2010
individual philanthropy, allowing each to support organizations and projects ofspecial interest.
Recalling the creation of the discretionary funds, Ms. Russell-Shapiro
observes, “Mom was into power-sharing.”
Later, discretionary grantmaking was extended to the third-generation
trustee, as well as to all program advisers. In 30-plus years, $6.6 million of
the total $90 million in grants went to a wide variety of arts, environmental,
human-rights, and civic organizations in San Francisco and London. A majorchange in arts funding came in 1989, when the board expanded the geographic
scope to include arts organizations in the United Kingdom, to accommodate
Charles Russell’s increasing interest in the culture of his adopted country.
In 1992, at the suggestion of Ms. Russell-Shapiro, the board added
combatting homophobia to the human-rights area. About the same time, Ms.
Russell assumed board leadership for building Columbia’s focus on sustainableagriculture in California.

The interests of next-generation
Columbia trustees were reflected
in new grantees, such as Friendsof the Urban Forest, which thefoundation supported from 1981
to 2013 with $188,000 in grants.
FUF staff and Hayes Valley
neighbors plant Chinese pistachetrees on Linden Alley. Photo
courtesy Friends of the Urban
Forest“I count 1992 as the beginning of three discrete program areas: humanrights, environment, and arts,” Ms. Clark says. “We started bringing on advisers
in those areas, and in 2000 the board formally approved the three areas withequal program budgets.”
When Mrs. Russell died, in 1999, each of her children, though still involved
in all programs, took responsibility for a single area: Alice Russell-Shapiro forhuman rights, Charles Russell for arts and culture, and Christine Russell for theenvironment, which soon became the sustainable-agriculture program.

28

1976
Columbia was an early supporterof Fort Mason Center, locatedon San Francisco’s northernwaterfront. Constructed as a U.S.
Army facility during World War
II, it was repurposed in 1976
as a nonprofit arts, culture, andcommunity venue featuring theatergroups, galleries, education
programs, and more. Columbia
made several grants for programs
and facility upgrades between
1978 and 1986. Photo Alvis
HendleyContemporary Concerns

Human Rights

M

s. Clark recalls a telling moment in 1979, one that illustrates Mrs.
Russell’s relationship with her children as board members: “Iremember describing to her a proposal we’d received to support

education about homosexuality, and she said, ‘I don’t think I’m interested inthis as a human-rights issue, but my children might be, so you have to bring itto the full board.’ ” She knew her children had many gay friends.
The $10,000 proposal Ms. Clark“[Columbia] continues to be an example to American
philanthropy of nurturing the ideas of its times and[achieving] real outcomes.”— Ira Hirschfield, President and Trustee of the Evelyn
and Walter Haas, Jr. Fundbrought to Mrs. Russell was for a small,
San Francisco-based education projectto “demystify” homosexuality tostudents, and the board approved it. A
second grant, of $16,000, to the Human
Rights Foundation the following year
enabled the curriculum to be completed.

Those may have been the first such grants in Bay Area philanthropy.
During the 1980s, Columbia’s human-rights funding included programs
serving a broad array of populations: American Friends Service Committee,
ACLU Foundation of Northern California, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational
Fund, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Legal Services

30

for Children, Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development, La Casa delas Madres, Coalition for the Medical Rights of Women, United Negro College
Fund, and more.
“Our process was to bring in a variety of proposals, then Mom and Susan
looked at the most promising,” recalls Christine Russell. “Later, we had to
reduce the universe to assure more effective grantmaking.”
Beginning in the ’90s, the lion’s share of human-rights funding — morethan $5 million through 2012 — was awarded to protect the civil and humanrights of gays and lesbians.
“Alice called me in 1991 and asked if foundations were doing anything
to normalize attitudes toward homosexuality,” Ms. Clark says. “She was oneof the first leaders in philanthropy to see this as a pressing human-rights andcivil-rights issue. In my research, I found only one foundation and it was on the
East Coast. Alice proposed that board members adopt it as a program priority.”
They did and also brought on their first program adviser, David Linger, a
co-founder and first chair of the AIDS Memorial Grove project in Golden Gate
Park, now the National AIDS Memorial.
In 1991, at the Human-Rights Committee’s first meeting, Mr. Linger
suggested that the foundation contact local filmmaker Deborah Chasnoff about thepossibility of making educational films for children that addressed homophobia

2014
From left, Tommy Winfrey,
Quinton Walker, Nou Thao,
Erin O’Connor, Terrell Merritt,and Kenyota Grey graduate in2014 from San Quentin’s Prison
University Project. In 2012,
Columbia awarded $300,000
to the project, which has helped
125 prisoners earn their A.A.
degrees. Photo Saalik Khan

2009
In “Straightlaced,” a film in the
Respect for All project series,
transgender teen Rey speaks
candidly about the effects ofrigid gender roles and how
support from her peers gave her
the confidence to run for prom
queen. Photo courtesy GroundSpark31

and bullying among young people, issues that were prevalent at the time but
largely ignored by schools. Ms. Chasnoff had just won an Academy Award for“Deadly Deception,” her documentary about nuclear weapons and theenvironment, and was eager to research and plan the proposed project. Columbia
awarded her a $15,000 planning grant in 1992 and followed it with grants
totaling more than $450,000 that helped to underwrite “Respect for All,” agroundbreaking, award-winning film series and a curriculum for schools.
“None of this — the movie and project and their phenomenal
impact — would have happened without Columbia’s visionary funding andsupport,” says Chasnoff, now president and senior producer of GroundSpark,
which produces and distributes social-justice films.
“Columbia’s [planning grant] was one of the first notable grants in thisarea,” says Ira Hirschfield, former executive director of the Evelyn and Walter
Haas, Jr. Fund. “And this area is still not widely funded. The Haas Jr. Fund has
put $70 million into this work [as of 2013] and Ford Foundation finally becamea player in the field. But this was characteristic of Columbia: early, inspirational,
unconditional support.”
Mr. Hirschfield calls Columbia’s history “extraordinary. It continues to be
an example to American philanthropy of nurturing the ideas of its times and[achieving] real outcomes.”

32

By the mid-1990s, Columbia was making unprecedented grants in thefield. One was to the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
Begun in 1990 by a group of teachers in Massachusetts who were trying to stop
harassment and discrimination of these students in the schools, the network
was operated entirely by volunteers, one of whom was Kevin Jennings. His
relationship with Columbia was unique: first he was a grantee, then an adviser,and finally an executive director of Arcus Foundation, which funds globally toadvance LGBT equality.
“In 1995, [GLSEN] had only two paid employees and a budget of $250,000,”
Mr. Jennings says. “Susan invited us to submit a proposal, and when we did, she
told me it was a very good proposal but I should be asking for capacity-building.”
Columbia gave the network $225,000 over three years.
“Columbia’s intervention was transformative,” he says. “It gave us enoughto help us fly.”
He went on to write six books on education and LGBT rights, was CEO of
Be the Change, which creates and manages national campaigns, and served as
assistant deputy secretary to the Department of Education, appointed by the
Obama administration. Columbia asked him to become a human-rights adviser in
2011, and he recalls the board’s “thoughtfulness and lack of ego” at meetings.
“Susan, the first foundation director I’d interacted with, was a great teacher,”Mr. Jennings says. “She pushed you out of your comfort zone and knew how toestablish a high level of trust.”
Having worked with Columbia for almost 20 years, he feels able tocharacterize the foundation objectively: “It defined visionary philanthropy. Staff
and board really listened to grantees — a lot of foundations think they’re smarter
than their grantees. And they were willing to make big bets. In ’95, funding
GLSEN really was a risk.”
Other organizations were, too. Columbia was an early funder, along with
the Haas Jr. Fund, of the marriage-equality movement through the Freedom
to Marry Project. Columbia helped the group get organized, in 2002, with asignificant $500,000 grant over five years and put in another $215,000 through2012. Beginning in 2005, Columbia also awarded $980,000 in grants to support
the Civil Marriage Collaborative, a program to achieve civil-marriage equality
nationwide.
Decades of support paid off: a 2015 Supreme Court decision gave same-sex
couples nationally the right to marry.
“The watchwords for Columbia were always ‘make a difference’ and ‘seedgrants’ for emerging issues,” says Ms. Russell-Shapiro, who chaired Columbia’s
Human-Rights Committee. She shared her mother’s concern for populations at
risk and interest in social justice.
She also was personally and professionally involved in how landscapeaffects a city’s quality of life, leading two major community organizations, San
Francisco Friends of the Urban Forest and the National AIDS Memorial Grove,as a co-founder, board member, and board president. “Community self-help
projects interest me,” she says. “I always like getting in on the ground floor.

2016
Young plaintiffs in a lawsuit
claiming that federal inaction
on climate change violates theircivil rights celebrate outside theWayne Morse U.S. Courthousein Eugene, Ore., March 9, 2016.
That day’s successful arguments
led the judge, a month later,
to rule that the suit could go
forward to U.S. District Court.
Columbia helped establish Our
Children’s Trust, which filed thesuit on behalf of 21 youth, witha $200,000 seed grant in 2011.
Photo Robin Loznak

33

Looking back at Columbia’s granting history in its last few decades, I think I
feel the most satisfaction about our early support to combat homophobia.”
A family foundation’s history is precious, but its granting interests rarely
are immutable from one generation to the next. Ms. Russell-Shapiro’s daughter,
Maddy Russell-Shapiro, the eldest of the third generation, was interested in thefoundation’s work and was the right age to begin getting involved when invited
to begin attending Columbia meetings as an entrée to joining the board.
“That was in about 2008,” Maddy Russell-Shapiro says. “I started with
the Human-Rights Committee because that’s where my mother’s interests were,
but soon I was also going to the meetings about food and farming. I remember
how educational it was to hear the advisers in all the committees, really great
thinkers who could inform our grantmaking.”
She was 33 when she joined the board, in 2011. A Yale graduate, she
lived in San Francisco and was managing college-access programs for young
adults at a community-based nonprofit. As she became more familiar with thefoundation’s interests, she found preventing child sexual abuse, a funding area
proposed and developed by her mother, among the most “eye-opening” humanrights issues needing support. Columbia began funding these prevention programs
three years before it closed, making 12 grants totaling almost $1 million.
“It’s a very challenging area to grant in — a really taboo subject,” Maddy

34

Russell-Shapiro says. “At first, we got almost no applicants. That was so different
from the bombardment of proposals in other categories.” Her mother adds that
Columbia discovered just how difficult it is to determine what efforts will reducechild sexual abuse.
Another hard-to-fund human-rights area was education for the incarcerated
and reducing recidivism. Among 11 grants Columbia made between February
2012 and its closing, two were to the Prison University Project.
“When Columbia revised its guidelines to include recidivism efforts, it
was completely striking,” says Jody Lewen, director of the Prison University
Project since 2000. “The guidelines fit us perfectly, and the Columbia board
members and Susan asked such astute questions about our work. I felt they wereactually there to help us — so the opposite of top-down funders.”
Prison University Project provides in-person instruction for credit-bearing
college courses that can lead to an associate-of-arts degree for men incarcerated
at San Quentin State Prison. It is one of the few such programs in the country. Ms.
Lewen estimates that about 2,000 men have enrolled over the years and 125 havereceived an A.A. while locked up. Hundreds more, she believes, completed theirdegrees after they were paroled. At the end of 2013, 25 were working toward theirbachelor’s degree at San Francisco State University.
“San Quentin is my dream job,” Ms. Lewen says, “but criminal justice ingeneral is a hard sell, and very few foundations will touch this education topic.

People project all kinds of negatives onto prisoners, expecting them to continue to be criminals. And there’s the politics of envy: why should they get what I
can’t get? That’s an idea we’re trying to disrupt.” Columbia’s support for the San
Quentin program totaled $300,000.
Yet another human-rights concern taken on early by Columbia but shunnedby many funders at the time was “death with dignity,” an issue and program
area suggested by Mrs. Russell, who viewed choice at the end of life as an
essential human right. From 1991 through 2003, Columbia awarded $1.5 million
in 25 grants, six of them to Compassion & Choices, for litigation campaigns,
education, and programs to ease end-of-life suffering. The organization’s
advocacy is creating slow but steady change. It helped craft Oregon’s 1997 act,
which legalizes physician-assisted dying under certain conditions. Similar acts,
introduced in California in 1992, 1997, and 2006, were widely supported but
did not pass. However, in October 2015, California signed into law the End-ofLife Option Act, which gives terminally ill adults with six months or less to live
the choice of medical aid in dying, a modified version of the Oregon law.

A r t s a n d C u lt u r e : ‘ R a r e ly i n t h e m i d d l e ’After Columbia’s initial grants to KQED, in the 1950s, Mrs. Russell grew
ever more admiring of the public-television station and its effort to expand
exposure to culture, arts, and public affairs. She joined the board in 1979,
chaired it in 1985, and remained a board member until 1992. In 1986, with thestation’s audience topping one million viewers, Columbia gave a $1 million
challenge grant toward the capital campaign that consolidated all KQED
operations under one roof, at 2601 Mariposa Street. Mrs. Russell co-chaired thecampaign committee and personally helped raise the $1 million match. In honorof her work, a plaque was installed in the main lobby naming the building the
Madeleine Haas Russell Communications Center.
Columbia’s last award to KQED was in 2006. In 60 years, it made 28
grants to the station, totaling $1.7 million.
“I asked Madeleine one time why she was so interested in KQED,” Ms.
Clark said during an interview for Mrs. Russell’s oral history in 1990. “It really
had to do with her belief in the value of free communication of ideas and therole of public television in increasing the kinds of ideas people are exposed
to. … I think you can see that throughout the foundation’s [grantmaking]. She
doesn’t just want to hear ideas she already holds or is familiar with.”That attitude was reflected in Mrs. Russell’s lifelong passion for art, bothas a philanthropist and as a collector who inherited many masterpieces. She
displayed them in her house and lent many to museums. Her three children
remember the arts being an ever-present part of their lives from an early age,35

valued as a benefit to individuals and entire communities. Having followed theirmother into philanthropy, they, too, made support of creative work a priority.
“I was used to the arts,” says Charles Russell. “I grew up with music
playing, exposure to the theater, being taken to see important cultural events.”
And like his sister Alice Russell-Shapiro, he has introduced his elder son,
Alasdair, to family philanthropy. “He already participates, going to performancesof potential grantees. He knows his way around the arts in the same way I
learned from my mother.”
Columbia’s first arts grant

Columbia often was the first or last funder of an arts
project,“rarely in the middle, and I think that was
intentional. It’s where we could make the most difference.
We were the funder people went to when they couldn’t get
going or get finished.”— Jo Hedley, London Arts-Program Consultant

in the U.K. was made in 1987:$11,000 to the British-American
Arts Association to help the Bush
Theatre purchase equipment andresearch new American plays to
produce.
Mr. Russell says that, early on,
being connected to theaters like theBush as a funder was exciting. “Ilike being stimulated intellectually,” he says.
Columbia’s history of supporting the arts in London, as in San Francisco,36

shows consistent enthusiasm for the vigorous, new, and experimental. Grants
went to the Royal Opera House for a production of “The Minotaur,” a reworkingof the ancient myth by British composer Harrison Birtwistle that premiered in
2008, and to Opera Circus, which commissions works from emerging young
artists.
Columbia’s arts funding in London totaled approximately $2.5 million and
was administered by a donor-advised fund at the London Community Foundation.
Mr. Russell notes that becoming chair of Columbia’s arts-and-culture
program and living in London required an unusual long-distance commitment.
He talked with Ms. Clark about twice a month and conferred often with Columbia
arts consultant Jo Hedley and four respected arts advisers, three in London andone stateside, Frances Phillips, director of the Creative Work Fund, a funding
collaboration started by Columbia Foundation and the Walter & Elise Haas Fund.
When it was time to review proposals, Ms. Hedley would travel to San
Francisco for a whirlwind several weeks, meet with Ms. Clark and Ms. Phillips,
review proposals, and see as many arts venues and performances as possible.
Alternately, Ms. Phillips would fly to London and do the same, meeting with
Mr. Russell, Ms. Clark, Ms. Hedley, and the other advisers. As a mostly Bay
Area-funding foundation, Columbia had a historically small travel budget; theLondon program became an exception to that tradition.
Ms. Hedley and Mr. Russell met through a mutual friend in the 1990s, when

2008
she was working on an art-history degree at Cambridge. She went on to work in
London at the premier auction house Christie’s, was mentored by the director of
the Barbican, an arts-and-conference venue, and went through the prestigious
Clore Leadership Programme, which offers fellowships to develop leaders in artsand culture.
“I was getting a little bored with the world of collections when Susan,
at Charles’s suggestion, asked me to consult with Columbia’s arts program, so I
decided to try it for a year,” Ms. Hedley recalls. She stayed for five years, until
Columbia closed.
She is articulate about what set Columbia apart in the world of philanthropy:“Its board members had a willingness to fund unfamiliar projects. Sometimes
you have to take a bit of a gulp,” she says, or consider supporting what others
won’t.
She points to the $50,000 grant to the Kronos Quartet in 2008 for its Music
Without Boundaries series, performed at the Barbican, Yerba Buena Centerfor the Arts in San Francisco, and Carnegie Hall in New York City. Kronos
commissioned new works from Islamic cultures and brought in performers from
Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iran.
“Because of the Islamic ‘topic,’ Kronos couldn’t find support from any other
U.S. foundation,” Ms. Hedley says. “In fact, the only other funder besides
Columbia, with its strongly Jewish history, was the Aga Khan Foundation.”
Columbia often was the first or last funder of an arts project, “rarely in the

The Kronos Quartet and the
Homayun Sakhi Trio perform acomposition for Afghan rubab,
tabla, frame drum, and string
quartet at Yerba Buena Centerfor the Arts. A $50,000 grantfrom Columbia helped fundKronos Quartet’s Music Without
Boundaries project. Photo Rachel
Bleckman37

middle,” she notes, “and I think that was intentional. It’s where we could make themost difference. We were the funder people went to when they couldn’t get goingor get finished.”
Frances Phillips’s connection with Columbia went back more than two
decades, to when she was hired to guide arts-grantmaking at the Walter & Elise
Haas Fund and head its then-new Creative Work Fund, which supports Bay Areaartists’ collaborations with nonprofits whose work may be arts-related or not.
“The idea for the Creative Work Fund was really Susan’s,” Ms. Phillips
recalls. “She proposed a pooled fund for artists that would make larger grants,
and she really pushed for it. She’s one of those people who makes up her mind
quickly and stands by her ideas decisively. It’s a powerful ability.” She also
credits Ms. Clark with giving Columbia a voice and a presence that was uniquein philanthropy, a field where women executive directors were rare until the late
1990s.
The Creative Work Fund awarded its first grants in September 1994. Withthe three Haas foundations, Columbia made an initial grant of $150,000 to
the startup fund. Over the years, the Gerbode, William and Flora Hewlett, andIrvine foundations also supported the Creative Work Fund, which had distributed
grants that totaled $9.4 million by the end of 2013. Columbia’s contributions,
totaling $1.3 million, ended in 2003 when it developed its London arts funding.

38

Ms. Phillips became an arts adviser to Columbia in 2005. Reviewing
proposals for both London and San Francisco was informative, she says,
especially applicants’ answers to the question about a project’s goals. “In San
Francisco, the potential grantee would talk about improving neighborhoods
or changing hearts and minds. In London, it was always about achieving thehighest artistic qualities, period.”
Many Columbia arts grants in San Francisco were to major institutions,
often for unusual, provocative projects. One such was a $50,000 grant to the
Asian Art Museum for “Proximities,” for which more than a dozen Bay Areaartists responded artistically to the question “What is Asia?”“That pushes big institutions to be more experimental,” Ms. Phillips says.
She points to a 2011 docket that included $40,000 for Z Space to develop andproduce “Bebop Baby: A Musical Memoir” and $50,000 to help fund the
San Francisco Symphony’s two-week American Mavericks Festival, featuringcommissions and landmark works by American composers who shaped
20th-century music.
On November 8, 2013, as Columbia was preparing to close, almost 1,500
middle-school, high-school, and college students and their 300 adult chaperones
came to the San Francisco Opera House to watch an orchestra dress-rehearsalof Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville.” It was Madeleine Haas Russell Night at the2012
The dramatic stage set at
London’s Royal Opera House
is from a 2012 production ofGeorge Benjamin and Martin
Crimp’s opera “Written
on Skin,” developed with a$137,000 grant from Columbia.
From 1984 to 2012, thefoundation awarded $1.8
million for 30 new operas inLondon and San Francisco.
Photo ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

39

Opera, an annual event that Columbia endowed with $1 million in 1999 in her
memory.
Most in the audience were Bay Area students. Many dressed in their finest,
young girls tottering on heels and boys in sports jackets, and the excitement
as they entered the lush Opera House was palpable — and noisy. Respectful
and wildly enthusiastic, they even got a taste of the rigors of mounting a huge,complex production when the rehearsal was interrupted for a few minutes by atechnical problem, a literal show-stopper.
Snatches of animated conversation after the opera — “I liked the part
where …” and “that was so cool” and “wasn’t that funny when …” — confirmed
a new generation’s appreciation of a centuries-old art form.

Food and Farming: ‘Let’s go see it’
In the early 1980s, Ms. Clark’s attention was caught by a prescient
Rodale Institute report about the environmental consequences of the industrial
food-and-farming practices prevalent in the United States. California was home
to well funded industrial-farming research in the universities as well as tothe organic revolution — unfunded, but pioneered by farmers and young people
statewide. No one yet was viewing agriculture and the food system as a potential

40

solution to environmental problems.
The University of California at Santa Cruz, in 1982 the state system’s newest
campus, began formally recognizing the stellar farm and garden created by
English master-gardener Alan Chadwick. He had arrived on campus in 1969 tooversee two acres of flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees, and to teach students
how to use hand-tools and organic practices on the land. Five years later, thegarden had grown into a 17-acre organic student farm, and, in the early 1980s, theuniversity hired leading agroecologist Stephen Gliessman to develop academic
programs and conduct research on the garden and farm.
Columbia awarded the university $250,000 over four years to start an
academic “agroecology” program, most likely the first in the world. It was thefoundation’s largest grant to date and helped to put organic farming on the map,
becoming a source of pride to board and staff. Alfred Heller personallycontributed another $250,000, and Huey Johnson, then California Secretary of
Natural Resources, allocated $250,000 in public support.
In 2008 California Farmer magazine reported that many considered theSanta Cruz program “the birthplace of organic agriculture” and “the Harvard oforganic farming.”
Ms. Clark tells a backstory about how Columbia came to support the U.C.
Santa Cruz program: “I’d heard about it, and when Madeleine asked me who wasfunding the work there I said, ‘No one except Alf Heller.’ She said, ‘Let’s go see it.’2015
Undergraduate interns at U.C.
Santa Cruz’s Alan Chadwick
Garden, begun in 1969, learn
about proper soil moisture fromgarden Manager Orin Martin,standing right. The organic
garden now is one part of theuniversity’s comprehensive
academic Agroecology Program,
likely the world’s first, developedwith the support of Columbia
Foundation. Photo Damian Parr

41
And we did — Alice and Madeleine and I. We had lunch on the farm, smelled
and tasted the soil with the students, and met the chancellor. And then our board
approved the recommended grant.”
Authorizing it, however, was complicated, she adds. “It was a controversial
grant for U.C. because its agriculture programs were primarily serving industrial
agriculture. We had to convince a reluctant U.C. president to support the grantbefore Columbia would release the money.”
The farm grew to 25 acres and now is part of the Center for Agroecology
and Sustainable Food Systems. It includes classrooms, offices, tractor-tilled
row crops, research fields, orchards, greenhouses, and a laboratory named the
Madeleine Russell Agroecology Lab. The center also offers undergraduate andgraduate courses, international programs, as well as field trips, workshops,
and tours for young students and teachers. It’s a working model of sustainableagriculture, showing how crops can be grown efficiently, using methods that
do no harm to the environment or farmworkers.
Mr. Gliessman pushed the university to accredit the program and retiredin 2012 after directing it for two decades. When he heard Columbia Foundation
was closing, he emailed Ms. Clark: “The incredible grant back in 1982 got us
started on the remarkable agroecology journey we are still on. … The global

movement that is happening around the world today would not have happened
without the support of Columbia Foundation in those challenging early days.”
Thinking back to that funding, Christine Russell is unsurprised thatfood and farming became a major part of the foundation’s portfolio. “There’s
the family context. My father and“Christine’s leadership coupled with the wise advice ofprogram-committee members enabled the foundation to makethe most effective decisions. We all were learners together, but
I always felt I had the most to learn.”— Susan Clark, Columbia Foundation executive director

mother loved the outdoors andnature, and both were interested
in growing food. Throughout her
life, Mom continued to maintainthe small family farm in Atherton
where her parents had grown
flowers, fruit, nuts, and vegetables,and raised chickens, and, for a time, milk cows.”
Ms. Russell’s interests are similar. She and her husband, Mark Schlesinger,
use sustainability principles on their farm in Sonoma, and they share its bounty
with family and friends, as did her mother.
“Sustainability isn’t easily defined, because of its complexity,” Ms. Russell
says, “but I like the Center for Food Safety’s description of sustainable food: ‘food
solutions that are biodiverse, socially just, appropriately scaled, local, andhumane.’ I’d add, moreover, that this approach doesn’t deplete planetary resources42

and ecosystems or degrade the health and welfare of plants and animals.”
She volunteered as a program officer at Columbia in the 1980s, usefulexperience in her evolution as a philanthropist. She recalls “truly inspiring”
site visits with Ms. Clark to U.C. Santa Cruz after the Agroecology Center was
established, and another in 1994 to East Palo Alto, where efforts were underway
to preserve for open space and agriculture the 300-acre Weeks Poultry Colony,an early-20th-century utopian community. A Columbia grant supported thedevelopment of a preservation plan, which is yet to be implemented.
Another visit was to 242 acres of farmland adjacent to the Sunol Water
Temple, about 40 miles southeast of San Francisco, land owned by the city’s
Public Utilities Commission. Columbia’s grant helped the nonprofit Sustainable
Agriculture Education (SAGE) negotiate a lease with SFPUC for an 18-acre
Sunol AgPark and develop it as a replicable model where organic farmers
and seed-growers could receive technical and marketing help. SAGE opened
Sunol AgPark in 2006, established and managed its programs for a decade,and, in 2017, turned over its operations to the Alameda County Resource
Conservation District.
“Christine has been far ahead of the times with her knowledge in the foodand-farming field,” Ms. Clark said during her acceptance of the Natural Resources
Defense Council’s “Forces for Nature” award in April 2013. “Working quietly inthe background, she’s promoted this work, and taught and mentored me.”2011
Xerces Society works globally to
expand the habitat of pollinatorssuch as this Western honeybee.
Columbia’s grants to Xerces, from2007 to 2011, totaled $210,000.
Photo Luc Viatour

Ms. Russell served for many years as an NRDC trustee, where she wassteeped in ecological sciences and practices, and worked to promote NRDC’s
leadership on sustainable agriculture and food as a major solution toenvironmental degradation.
“Christine’s leadership coupled with the wise advice of program-committee
members enabled the foundation to make the most effective decisions,” Ms. Clark
says. “We all were learners together, but I always felt I had the most to learn.”
One effort the program committee recommended for Columbia support was
expanding the habitat of native bees, essential crop-pollinators. In 2007, shortly
after the news broke about the worldwide scope of colony-collapse disorder inhoneybee populations, the board approved the first of four grants to the Xerces
Society, which works globally to expand pollinators’ habitats.
Safeguarding genetically diverse seeds for crops is another area Columbia
funded. It made four grants to the national Organic Seed Alliance for a programthat educates Northern California farmers, gardeners, and the public about
seed-saving basics, develops new organic seeds adapted for specific agroecosystems of the state, and promotes a regional system for collecting and storing
seeds. Funding of Xerces for pollinator-protection and the Organic Seed Alliancetotaled $324,000.
Protecting bees and seeds are specific examples of Columbia’s support
for projects that encourage agricultural sustainability, but the foundation also
promoted larger systemic change. Columbia and Heller foundations together
launched the Funders Agriculture Working Group, in 1999, with the goal ofmoving all California agriculture toward sustainability. Two years later, theKellogg Foundation became a major funding partner and the working group43

changed its name to Roots of Change, the title of its first major report.
The report challenged government to offer farmers incentives to use
renewable resources and organic practices, funders to invest in that work, andindividuals and organizations to join a civic network calling for change.
In 2002, Roots of Change convened its Stewardship Council of prominent
leaders from different sectors of the food system to help develop a vision for“a new mainstream” food-andfarming system in California.

“Columbia pushed for systemic changes. It recognized that you“At that time, the food
couldn’t change farming without changing the system, andmovement was a fledgling, withthat there had to be a vision to help build the movement.”
hunger and sustainability just
— Michael Dimock, President, Roots of Change

starting to be worked out,” says
Michael Dimock, Roots of Changepresident since 2006. “Columbia

pushed for systemic changes. It recognized that you couldn’t change farming
without changing the system, and that there had to be a vision to help build the
movement.”
Passing new laws, he says, is the last step and, though daunting to
implement, he believes there are signs it will happen. Changes already are
occurring.

44

According to the “AgVision 2030” report of the California Department ofFood and Agriculture, published in 2010, one such change is the CDFA’s plan
to address food-production problems in the state caused by “regulations, watersupply, urbanization, and climate change.” Two years earlier, Columbia andHeller foundations had given CDFA grants to hold statewide hearings on thoseissues, which became the basis for the report.
This was the first time a California government entity had adopted a plan toachieve a robust, sustainable agricultural system statewide, and many strategies ofCalifornia’s official “AgVision 2030” came directly from Roots of Change’s work.
One expert involved with Roots of Change was agricultural economist
Desmond Jolly. He was a founding member of its Stewardship Council and its
co-chair from 2005 to 2007. The year he stepped down as co-chair, he wasinvited by Columbia to become an adviser to its food-and-farming program, basedon a career studded with government appointments, teaching experience,
directorships, and awards for his work in international agriculture development
as well as on small-farm issues.
“Being an adviser, I got to see private philanthropy up close,” he says, “howproposals must justify their work with pollinators, for example, or water policy
or genetic engineering.” He adds that such work is hard to fund, especially earlyon when organizations lack “measurable outcomes or establishment imprimatur”
to leverage other support. That’s why Columbia was always so respected in thefield, he says. “It got out in front of things. It was a risk-taker and a leader.”Columbia’s support of Roots of Change totaled $1.8 million.
Mr. Jolly, now retired from U.C. Davis, for many years served on the boardof the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) andchaired its agriculture-policy committee. CUESA received 14 Columbia grants,
including its first planning grant, to establish the Ferry Building Farmers
Market, in San Francisco, which it now operates as a thriving destination for
locals and tourists.

J e w i sh L i f e
The American Friends of Hebrew University in Jerusalem was one ofColumbia’s early grantees, receiving general support of $1,000, in 1942. Mrs.
Russell became a trustee of the Friends organization, and, by 2013, grants fromthe foundation totaled $722,000. The largest, $300,000 in 1980, endowed achair in the school’s Department of Soil and Water Sciences, which promotes
efficient management of natural resources, land cultivation, and soil health — afitting combination of Mrs. Russell’s strong interests in the environment, Israel,and Jewish life.
She was not raised in a traditionally observant Jewish home, her children
say, but she believed that her philanthropy should support organizations that
promoted Jewish values and culture, which Columbia did for seven decades. Her
children recall their mother saying, “If Jews don’t support Jewish organizations,
who will?”
During its formative years, in the 1940s, Columbia made a dozen grants
to Mount Zion Hospital, which opened in 1897, in San Francisco, as the first
Jewish-sponsored hospital in the West. The foundation also gave $1.3 million
to Brandeis University, in Massachusetts, where Mrs. Russell was a trustee,
to endow the Madeleine H. Russell Visiting Professorship of Non-Western andComparative Studies.
With grants totaling $275,000, it supported Hand in Hand: Center for
Jewish-Arab Education in Israel, which operates integrated, bilingual schools
for Jewish and Arab children. And when the Contemporary Jewish Museumin San Francisco was building its new museum, in 2006, Columbia supported
it with a $250,000 grant and also made two later grants totaling $80,000 for
exhibitions.
Congregation Emanu-El, the first Jewish congregation west of theMississippi, was established in 1850. Beginning in 1952, Columbia made 17
grants to it, the first for a stained-glass window in the temple’s main sanctuary
by renowned local artist Mark Adams; another was a $1-million grant for the45

1970sUsing 2,000 pieces of glass in 200
colors, local artist Mark Adams
designed two of Congregation
Emanu-El’s stained-glass windows.
One of them, the water-themed
window pictured here, wascompleted in the early 1970s witha Columbia grant. The foundation
supported the congregation with
17 grants between 1952 and2013. Photo courtesy Congregation
Emanu-El

46

Madeleine Haas Russell Institute of Jewish Learning, awarded in 1999, the year
Mrs. Russell died.
“She was one of the key people in the community,” Phyllis Cook, thendirector of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, told Jewish News Weekly
in 1999. “She believed in Jewish philanthropy in breadth. She believed inculture and arts, human services, Israel.”Foundation Closes: BittersweetC

olumbia Foundation set out to support important work “whose resultscannot be guaranteed [as they] represent highly speculative possibilities,”
according to its first brochure. Madeleine and Bill Haas might have

hoped, but surely did not foresee, that their 1940 aim of “attaining a maximumof usefulness” from their philanthropy would continue for more than sevendecades, or that Mrs. Russell’s three children would play such a major role in
the work for more than half of Columbia’s life, extending its reach into the future.
Now a third generation, her grand-“Given my grandmother’s privileged life and how she shaped
her interests and beliefs, I don’t take the foundation’s workfor granted. I realize that it was the result of her focused
attention, and that of my mother and her siblings, over many
years. I’m proud to have been able to serve as a trustee.”— Maddy Russell-Shapiro

children, are poised to further her
vision in their own ways.
Charles Russell establisheda foundation focused on the arts,
in 1981, first incorporating it under
his name and later renaming it
Cockayne. Christine Russell andher husband, Mark Schlesinger,

established Gaia Fund, in 1995, with programs in sustainable agriculture,effective democracy, and San Francisco Jewish life. In 2013, Alice RussellShapiro and her family established Yerba Buena Fund, whose guidelines arebeing decided.

48

Like Columbia, the foundations created by Mrs. Russell’s children do notbear their names, an anomaly among family foundations. Jody Lewen of the
Prison University Project puts it best: “This family is humble and modest.”
When Ms. Clark accepted the NRDC “Forces for Nature” award, she
told the audience that as a Columbia newcomer, the board set three goals forher: “They said make a difference, don’t view controversy as necessarily abarrier to foundation action, and build castles in the community, not within
the foundation.”
Columbia’s closing celebration was held at the Haas-Lilienthal House,
where Mrs. Russell had grown up. In 1973, the Lilienthal children donated thehouse to the nonprofit San Francisco Heritage, which operates it as a museum,
the only Victorian-era residence with original furnishings open to the public.
The Columbia Foundation event at the house was a “bittersweet occasion,”
said Maddy Russell-Shapiro in the opening remarks, with the family saddenedby the door being closed but looking forward “to the next stages of Russellfamily philanthropy and the continuation of the philanthropic values andtraditions of my grandmother.”
The gathering was an opportunity for trustees and staff to reflect on what
the foundation had helped build, acknowledge the philanthropic partners in thatwork, and give kudos to the hundreds of grantees whose efforts have benefited
the public.

2013
Columbia staff and board members
at Greens, a Fort Mason Center
restaurant, where they held theirclosing dinner. From left, Alex
Hoskyns-Abrahall, Ken Lehto,
Maddy Russell-Shapiro, Carolyn
Koo, Alice Russell-Shapiro, Susan
Clark, Christine Russell, Charles
Russell. Columbia Foundation photo

Ms. Clark praised the trustees for “continuously pushing the foundation
to consider new issues and emerging needs. … [They were] farsighted, withthe ability to look over the horizon and consider the well-being of future
generations.”
Board President Christine Russell took the microphone to publicly thank
Ms. Clark for her 35 years as a “perfect match for the foundation and ourfamily,” and for her contributions of “spark, character, energy, intelligence, andenthusiasm — and that’s just the short list of her virtues.”
Columbia Foundation’s administration always operated with few staff
handling multiple tasks. Carolyn Koo, grants-manager, joined in 1998, and Alex
Hoskyns-Abrahall, program associate, in 2002. Accountant Ken Lehto worked
for Columbia for more than 30 years. All were there for the difficult work ofclosing the foundation.
“Alex, Carolyn, and Ken have been not only exceptionally capable but
also dedicated to the foundation’s mission,” Christine Russell told guests. “Fortrustees, applicants, and grantees alike, they’ve been a pleasure to work with.”
All of Mrs. Russell’s children agreed that keeping Columbia open andvital for 14 years after their mother’s death was a deeply gratifying experience.
Although the decision to close wasn’t easy, Christine Russell stated, “It wastime.”
Standing before the crowd at the closing event, Alice Russell-Shapiro
injected some levity by reflecting on the modesty of Columbia’s founding:49

“My mother and her brother used the name ‘Columbia’ because they wanted
anonymity as philanthropists. That slightly backfired, in that contemporary
newspaper articles about Columbia’s projects would emphasize that unusual
and, therefore, noteworthy, anonymity factor.”

Reflections
A few weeks before the closing event, family members reflected on theirrole in Columbia’s longevity and its support of eclectic, sometimes controversial,
issues and programs.
Alice Russell-Shapiro remembers as a young person hearing about thefoundation from her mother. “ ‘I’m rushing to a Columbia board meeting,’ wastypical,” Ms. Russell-Shapiro recalled. But real involvement didn’t come until
she and her siblings joined the board.
“Even then, at first Mom ran it without discussing much with us,” she said.
“We deferred to her interests, which were multifarious and lofty: we used tofund in the area of world peace.”
Those interests, of course, were shaped by her own life experience,
Ms. Russell-Shapiro said. “Mom lived through World War II as a well educated,
informed person who read about the less fortunate and must have comparedthem to her own comfort and privilege. When we, her children, developed our50

own ‘there-but-for-fortune’ interests, such as access for all to fresh, wholesome
food and countering homophobia, she supported them as ‘the right thing to do.’ ”
Maddy Russell-Shapiro described her pride in Columbia’s work: “Given
my grandmother’s privileged life and“Mom lived through World War II as a well educated,
informed person who read about the less fortunate and musthave compared them to her own comfort and privilege. Whenwe, her children, developed our own ‘there-but-for-fortune’
interests . . . she supported them as ‘the right thing to do.’ ”— Alice Russell-Shapiro

how she shaped her interests andbeliefs, I don’t take the foundation’s
work for granted. I realize that it was
the result of her focused attention,and that of my mother and her
siblings, over many years. I’m proud
to have been able to serve as atrustee.”
What pleased Charles Russell

the most was that “over 73 years it worked out the way my mother wanted it towork out — to involve her children. It was her baby and that is satisfying to me.”Regarding the closing, Christine Russell explained that during the years
that she and her siblings worked together as trustees, they recognized thechanges ahead.
“First, the more we delved into the separate program areas each of us
headed, the more passionate we became about them and the more we wanted toconcentrate our efforts in those areas,” she said. “Also, as more of our children
reached adulthood, with some living at significant distances, we knew it would
get increasingly difficult to arrange and manage board meetings.” Columbia’s
board size would have doubled if all the siblings’ children had joined.
Christine Russell mused that she wasn’t sure how her mother would havefelt about the closing. “I imagine she would have been sad and disappointed,
because the foundation meant so much to her personally. But at the same time,
Mom was always supportive of us. I think she would have been proud andpleased that by pursuing philanthropy through our own foundations, we’rehonoring her and the values she represented.”
In the end, Madeleine Haas Russell will be remembered for thephilanthropy that began when she was a very young woman, and for the legacy

1998
Madeleine Haas Russell in
her early 80s. Russell family
photo

she left to her children and grandchildren: “Make a difference.”

51

COLUMBIA FOUNDATION
1940-2013
Summary of Grants
Categories

Number of Grants

Awards627$18,168,517

12$ 2,451,800

Environment97$ 1,968,320

Food and Farming

231$11,465,677

Human Rights

355$16,510,886

Cross-Cultural Understanding, Race Relations

25$

International/Peace196$ 4,339,850

Preservation of Wilderness Ecosystems and Biological Diversity50$ 1,968,200

Sustainable Communities & Economies

91$ 5,108,500

Urban Community267$ 4,071,150

1,659$12,375,306

518$11,278,269

4,128$90,012,250

Arts and Culture
London Community Foundation

Discretionary Grants (recommended by President Madeleine Haas Russell,

314,775

other trustees, and program advisers)
Other: Civic Organizations, Education, Jewish Life

52

TotalsColumbia Foundation
Grantees 1940-2013
20/20 Vision Education Fund
509 Cultural Center
80 Langton Street
9th Street Media Consortium
A
Acción Latina
ACLU Foundation of Northern California
Adoptive Parents Committee, Inc.
African-American Shakespeare Company
Afterimage Public MediaAg Innovations
Agape Foundation – Center for Capital Assistance
Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association
AIDS Action Foundation
Alameda County Health Department
Alaska Wilderness League
Albany Friends Meeting
Alcoholic Rehabilitation Association, Inc.
Aleph Society
Alliance for California Traditional Arts
Alliance for Sustainable Jobs and the Environment
Almeida Theatre Company
Alonzo King LINES Ballet
Alumnae Resources
Alumni Fund Association of Yale
American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
American Associates of The Haifa Foundation
American Associates of the National Theatre
American Association for the United Nations
American Cancer Society
American Committee for Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem
American Committees on Human Rights
American Communications Foundation
American Conservatory Theater
American Council on Education
American Council on Race Relations
American Craft Council
American Farmland Trust
American Friends of Covent Garden
American Friends of Eton College
American Friends of Hebrew University
American Friends of Magen David Adom
American Friends of Rechov Sumsum
American Friends of St. George’s Church Hanover Square
American Friends of the British Museum
American Friends of the Israel Museum
American Friends Service Committee
American Heart Association
American Himalayan Foundation
American Indian Contemporary Arts
American Indian Film InstituteAmerican Indian Lawyer Training Project
American Inroads
American Institute of Family Relations
American Institute of Pacific Relations
American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Congress
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
American Jewish World Service
American Lung Association
American Museum of Natural History
American Paralysis Association

American Public Welfare Association
American Red Cross
American Social Hygiene Association
American Society for Technion
American Women’s Voluntary Services
American-Chinese Committee of the Mass Education Movement
Americans for Campaign Reform
Americans for Oxford Inc.
Americans for Peace Now
Amnesty International
Amnesty International – Ginetta Sagan Fund
Amnesty International – Program to Abolish the Death Penalty
Anchor Rescue Mission
Ancient Forest International
AnewAmerica Community Corporation
Anne Bluethenthal and Dancers
Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith
Antioch College
Apple Tree International
Arc Ecology
Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress
Arriba Juntos
Artists Television Access – High Risk Group
Artspace Development Corporation
Ashoka Society
Asia Foundation – Women in Politics Program
ASIAN, Inc.
Asian American Dance Collective
Asian American Theatre Company
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
Asian Law Caucus – Hate Violence Project
Asian Neighborhood Design
Assn. for the Preservation of the Presidential Yacht Potomac
Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics
Associated Students of the University of California
Association of Fundraising Professionals
Athenian School Library Building Fund
Audubon Canyon Ranch
Axis Dance Troupe
B
Barenboim-Said Foundation USA
Bat Conservation International
Bay Area Action
Bay Area Alliance for Sustainable Development
Bay Area Black United Fund
Bay Area Institute – Pacific News Service
Bay Area Network of Gay and Lesbian Educators
Bay Area Ridge Trail Council
Bay Area Transportation and Land Use Coalition
Bay Area Urban League
Bay Area Video Coalition
Bay Area Women Against Rape
Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic
The Bay Institute of San Francisco
Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Berkeley Shakespeare Festival
Berkeley Society for the Preservation of Traditional Music
Berkeley Theatre Arts Foundation
Beyond War Foundation
Bioneers
Birth Control Federation of America
Black Box Theatre
Black Repertory Group
Boise State University Foundation – Frank Church Chair of Public
Affairs
Border Crossings
Boulder-Lhasa Sister City Project – Namling Country School Project53

Boys Scouts of America
Brandeis Camp Institute
Brandeis University, Rose Art Museum
Brandeis University, Women’s Studies Program
BRAVA! For Women in the Arts
Breakthrough Collaborative
Breast Cancer Action
Brennan Center for Justice
Brentwood Agricultural Land Trust
British American Arts Association – Britten Sinfonia
British American Arts Association – Lyric Theatre
British American Arts Association – Paul Carr
British American Arts Association – Pop-Up Theatre
Brookings Institution
Buckelew House
Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency
Bureau for Intercultural Education
Business Alliance for Local Living Economies
Business Executives for National Security Education FundBusiness for Social Responsibility – Education FundBusinessmen’s Educational Fund54

C
Cal Poly Corporation
Cal State University, Los Angeles – Edmund G. Brown Institute
California Academy of Sciences
California Agricultural Water Stewardship Initiative
California Alliance for Arts Education
California Association of Nonprofits
California Association of Secondary-School Principals
California Center for Research and Education in Government
California Citizens’ Committee
California Clean-Money Campaign
California Climate and Agriculture Network
California Coalition for Food and Farming
California College of the Arts
California Community Foundation
California Conference of Social Work
California Council of Land Trusts
California Department of Food and Agriculture
California Environmental Trust – Bay Vision 2020
California Exhibition Resources Alliance
California FarmLink
California Historical Society
California Housing and Planning Association
California Institute for Rural Studies
California Labor School
California Lawyers for the Art
California League of Conservation Voters
California Marine Mammal Center
California Pacific Medical Center
California Poets in the Schools
California Reinvestment Committee
California Rural Legal Assistance
California Safe Schools Coalition
California School of Fine Arts
California State Parks Foundation
California Theatre Foundation
California Tomorrow
California Trout
California Voter Foundation
California Wilderness Coalition
Californians Against Waste Foundation
Californians for GE-Free Agriculture
CALPIRG Charitable Trust
Cambridge School of Weston
CAMFED USA Foundation

Capp Street Project – Artist-in-Residence Program
Capp Street Foundation – Escola Nova de Samba
Capp Street Foundation – The Harvey Milk Film Project
Caring for Children
Carrie Chapman Catt Memorial Fund
Carter Center at Emory University
Catholic Youth Organization
Catholic Charities of the East Bay
Catholic Social Services – Holy Redeemer Refugee Program
Catticus Corporation
Center for Biological Diversity
Center for Citizen Initiatives
Center for Community Legal Education, USF Law School
Center for Defense Information
Center for Democracy
Center for Ecoliteracy
Center for Food Safety
Center for Governmental Studies
Center for Independent Living
Center for Innovation and Resources, Inc.
Center for Innovative Diplomacy
Center for International Security and Cooperation
Center for Investigative Reporting
Center for Land-Based Learning
Center for Media & Democracy
Center for National Independence in Politics
Center for New Americans
Center for Participation in Democracy
Center for Public Integrity
Center for Science in the Public Interest
Center for the Family in Transition
Center for the Study of Law & Politics
Center for the Study of the American Electorate
Center for U.S.-U.S.S.R. Initiatives
Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture
Center for Whole Communities
Center for World Music
Center for Young Women’s Development
Center to Prevent Handgun ViolenceCenterspace Dance Foundation
Central America Resource Center
Central City Hospitality House
Central Park Conservancy
Central YMCA San Francisco
Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc.
Centro del Pueblo
Chamber Soloists of San Francisco
Chamber Symphony of San Francisco
Chamberworks
Change Congress
Charles F. Menninger Society
Chez Panisse Foundation
Children’s Agency of San FranciscoChildren’s Garden of California
Children’s Health Council
Children’s Home Society of California
Children’s Hospital at Stanford
Children’s Hospital Foundation of San FranciscoChildren’s Self Help Center – “Caught in the Crossfire”
Chinatown Community Development Center
Chinese Culture Foundation
Chinese for Affirmative Action – Kearny Street Workshop
Chinese for Affirmative Action – SoundSeen
Chinese Historical Society of America – “Carved in Silence”
Chinese Youth Alternatives
Christmas in April
Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples

Cine Acción
Cities in Schools
Citizens for the Eastshore State Park
City and County of San Francisco
City Arts & Lectures
City CarShare
City Celebration – Taiko Dojo
City Celebration – World Drum Festival
City College of San Francisco
City of Oakland, Department of Public Health
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
Civil Rights Project
Clapperstick Institute
Claremont Colleges
Claremont Intercultural Housing Project
Clean Elections InstituteClean Water Fund – California Wetlands Education Project
Clear Water Ranch
Climate Theatre
Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights – “Women’s Rights
Are Human Rights”
Coalition for the Medical Rights of Women
Coalition for the Presidio Pacific Center
Coastal Fisheries Foundation
Cockayne
Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth
College of Marin Foundation – “Wings of Fire”
College of the PacificCommittee for Nuclear Responsibility
Committee for Sustainable Agriculture
Committee for the Study of the American Electorate
Committee for the Waterfront Organ Pavilion/Friendsof Recreation and Parks
Committee on American Principles and Fair Play
Committee on Children’s Television
Committee to Bridge the Gap
Committee to Restore the Opera House
Common Cause Education Fund
Common Counsel Foundation
Commonweal
Communication Works
Communications Consortium Media Center
Community Alliance with Family Farmers
Community Art Resource
Community Association for the Retarded
Community Bank of the Bay
Community Boards
Community Breast Health ProjectCommunity Chest of Oakland
Community Chest of San Mateo County
Community Economics
Community Environmental Council
Community Food Security Coalition
Community for Mindful Living – Plutonium-Free Future
Community Health Association
Community Information Network
Community Music Center
Community Partners
Community Welfare Council of the Richmond Area
Company in Flight – Day of the Dead Series “Quetzalcoatl”
Comparable Worth Project
Compassion & Choices
CompassPoint
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Conard House
Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion
Congregation Emanu-El

Congregation Sha’ar Zahav
Congressional Human Rights Foundation
Conservation Corps North Bay
Consortium for Global Development
Constitution ProjectConsumers Union of United States
Contemporary Jewish Museum
Co-op America
Cornell University – Department of Entomology
Cornerstone Theater Company
Cornucopia InstituteCoro Foundation
Council for a Livable World Education FundCouncil for Civic Unity
Council on Economic Priorities
Council on Foundations
CounterPULSE
Coyote Point Museum Association
CRDC Maintenance Training Corporation
Creative Work Fund
Creativity Explored
Crosspulse
Crossroads 40 – “Radio Bikini”
Crossroads Community (the farm)
The Crucible
Cultural Conservancy
Cultural Odyssey
The Culture Project
Cutting Ball Theater
D
Daly City Filipino Organizing Project
Dance Brigade
Dancers’ Group
Davis Media Access
Death Penalty Focus
Death Penalty Information Center
Death with Dignity National Center
Defenders of Wildlife/Endangered Species Coalition
Delancey Street Foundation
Delinquency Control Institute
Demos
Department of the Environment San Francisco
Diabasis
Dimensions Dance Theater
Displaced Homemakers Center
Djerassi Resident Artists Program
Doctors Without Borders USA
Dolores Street Community Center
Donmar Theatre
Door Dog Music Productions
E
Each One Reach One
Earplay
Earth Day USA
Earth Island Institute
Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund
East Bay Center for the Performing Arts
East Bay Community Foundation
East Oakland Youth Development Center
East Palo Alto Community Law Project
East Palo Alto Historical & Agricultural Society
Ebony Museum
Ecocity Builders
Ecology Action
Ecology Center
Economists Allied for Arms Reduction

55

56

EDGE: Alliance of Ethnic and Environmental Organizations
Edible Schoolyard
Educational Broadcasting Corporation
Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science
El Teatro Campesino
El Teatro de la Esperanza
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Ellen Webb Dance Company
Emanu-El Community Service Fund
Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists
English Center for International
English National Opera
English Speaking UnionEnterprise for High School Students
Environmental Commons
Environmental Defense
Environmental Grantmakers Association
Environmental Media Services
Environmental Policy Center
Environmental Protection Information Center
Environmental Research Foundation
Environmental Working Group
EPIC – Headwaters Legal Defense Network
Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco
Equal Rights Advocates
Equality California InstituteEquity InstituteEsalen Institute Russian-American Exchange Program
Eschaton Foundation – Resource Center
Eschaton Foundation – Educational Film & Video Project
Eureka Theatre
Everybody’s Creative Arts Center
Experiment in International Living
Exploratorium
Exploratory Committee for an Inter-Organizational Council
on World Affairs
Eye Gallery
F
Facing History and Ourselves
FACT/SF
Fairhaven Home for Unmarried Mothers
Faith & Politics Institute
Family Farm Defenders
Family Planning Alternatives
Family Service Agency of San Francisco
Fannie Lou Hamer Project
Farallones InstituteFederal Security Agency – U.S. Children’s Bureau
Federation of American Scientists – Arms Sales Monitoring Project
Feedback Productions – Talespinners Theatre
Fellowship Academy
Fenton Communications
Festival at the Lake
Fiberworks/Center for the Textile Arts
Film Arts Foundation
Film Fund
Filoli Center
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
First Baptist Church of Modesto
Fisk University
Focus Productions
Food and Environment Reporting Network
Food and Water Watch
Food Bank Incorporated of Santa Clara County
Food Partners
Food Project

FoodRoutes Network
Foreign Policy Association
Fort Mason Center
Forum Institute
The Foundation Center
Foundation for Art in Cinema
Foundation for National Progress
Foundation for Women Judges
Foundation of City College of San Francisco
Franciscan Friars of California – National Sanctuary Defense Fund
Frank Church InstituteFrederick Burk Foundation
Freedom to MarryFrench American International School
Fresh Start Farms
Fresno Community Council
Fresno Filmworks
Fresno Intercultural Fellowship
Friends & Foundation of the San Francisco Public Library
Friends Aware of Wildlife Needs
Friends of American Judaism
Friends of ETC Group
Friends of Lubavitch
Friends of McGill University
Friends of Photography
Friends of Recreation & Parks
Friends of Sir Mortimer B. Davis Jewish General Hospital
Friends of the Arts
Friends of the Bancroft Library
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Eel River
Friends of the Frederick Law Olmstead Papers
Friends of the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning
Friends of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark
Friends of the San Francisco Arts Commission – Festival 2000
Friends of the San Francisco Health Department
Friends of the Urban Forest
Fund for Animals
Fund for Free Expression – Americas Watch
Funders Agriculture Working Group
Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation
Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues
Funders for Sustainable Food Systems
G
Gaia FundGaleria de la Raza
Gallery Faire Enterprises
Gamelan Sekar Jaya
GAPA Community HIV Project
Garden Conservancy
Garden for the Environment
Garden Hospital Building FundThe Garden Project
Gay & Lesbian National Hotline
Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
Gay Ice Hockey All Stars
Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network
Gay-Straight Alliance Network
Gender Public Advocacy Coalition
Genesis Church and Ecumenical Center
George Coates Performance Company
Giarretto InstituteGirls to Women
Glide Foundation
Global Exchange – Communication Works
Global Fund for WomenGlobal Heritage Fund
Glyndebourne Association America
Glyndebourne Productions
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
Golden Gate Performing Arts
Golden Gate University
Good Samaritan Community Center
Gorbachev Foundation
Government Accountability ProjectGrace Cathedral
Graduate Theological Union
Grand Delusion
Grantmakers in the Arts
Great Books Foundation
Great Valley Center
Green Foothills Foundation
Green Seal
Greenbelt Alliance
The Greenhorns
greenmuseum.org
Greenpeace
Greenpeace Fund
Grist Magazine, Inc.
GroundSpark
Guide Dogs for the Blind
Gulf of the Farallones
H
Habitat MediaHaight Ashbury Music Workshop
Hand In Hand
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Hastings College of Law
Hawaii Seed
Headlands Center for the Arts
Healing Waters Wilderness Adventures
Health Care Without Harm
Hearing Society for the Bay Area
Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Henrietta Weill Child Guidance Clinic
Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture
Herbert Hoover Boys’ & Girls’ Club
Heyday InstituteHolbrook-Palmer Recreation Park Foundation
Holocaust Library and Research Center
Holocaust Oral History Project
Home Care Companions, Inc.
Home Hospice of Sonoma County
A Home Within
Horizons Foundation
Hospice of San Francisco
Housing Authority of the City and County of San Francisco
Housing Development and Neighborhood Preservation
Human Rights Advocates
Human Rights Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Humane Farming Association
Humanitas
Hunters Point Boys’ and Girls’ Club
Husbandry InstituteI
Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Independent Documentary Group
Independent Press Association
Independent Sector
Indian Dispute Resolution Services

Indiana University
Infant Formula Action Coalition
INFORM
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Institute for East-West Security Studies
Institute for Fisheries Resources
Institute for Food and Development Policy
Institute for Medical ResearchInstitute for National Strategy
Institute for Policy Studies
Institute for Sustainable Forestry
Institute of International Education
Institute of Pacific Relations
Institute of Physical Fitness
Institute on Aging
Institution for the Chinese Blind
Instituto Laboral de la Raza
Instituto Pro Musica de California
Interfaith Center to Reverse the Arms Race
Intergroup Clearinghouse
International Center – San Francisco
International Center of Photography – American Ground Zero
International Conference of Social WorkInternational Dendrological Research InstituteInternational Development ExchangeInternational Diplomacy Council aka International Visitors Center
International Forum on Globalization
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission
International Hospitality Center of the Bay Area
International Human Rights Funders GroupInternational Institute of Alameda County
International Institute of San Francisco
International Museum of WomenInternational Peace Academy
International Primatological SocietyInternational Rivers Network
International Society for Ecology & Culture – Ladakh ProjectInterprofessional Commission on Marriage and Divorce Laws
The Interra ProjectIntersection for the Arts
Intertribal Friendship House
Investors’ Circle
Irwin Memorial Blood Bank of the S.F. Medical Society
It’s Just a StageJ
J. Walter Johnson Institute – W.O.R.T.H.
Japan Society
Japanese American Citizens League
Japanese Community and Cultural Center of Northern California
Japantown Art and Media Design
Jazz in the City
The Jerusalem Foundation
Jewish Committee for Personal Service
Jewish Community Federation
Jewish Community Museum
Jewish Community Relations Council
Jewish Family and Children’s Services
Jewish Home
Jewish Theatre San Francisco
Joe Goode Performance GroupJohn F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Johns Hopkins University
Judah Magnes Museum
Julian Theatre
Juma Ventures
June Watanabe Dance Company

57

Junior Museum of Palo Alto
Junior Statesmen Foundation
Justice at StakeJWB Associates
K
KAHEA
Karamu House
Katherine Delmar Burke School
KCTS TV – “Green Plans “
Kelly + Yamamoto Productions
Kelsey Street Press
Kids Company
Kingston Land Trust
Klamath Riverkeeper
Koncepts Cultural Gallery
KQED
Kronos Quartet
Kulintang Arts, Inc.

58

L
La Casa de las Madres
La Peña Cultural Center
La Raza Graphics
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
Landscape Architectural Foundation
Lao Iu Mien Culture Association, Inc.
Laotian Handcraft Project
Larkin Street Youth Services
Latin American Theatre Artists
Latino Issues Forum
Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center
Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights
League of Women Voters of San Francisco
League of Women Voters Overseas Education Fund
League to Save Lake Tahoe
LEGACY – The Landscape Connection
Legal Aid Society of San Francisco
Legal Assistance to the Elderly
Legal Services for Children
Leo Baeck Institute
LEVYdance
Library Foundation of San Francisco
Library of International Relations
Life Frames, Inc.
LightHawk
Lines Contemporary Ballet
Live Oak Institute
Local Economic Assistance Program – Bay Area Renewal
Local Government Commission
London Community Foundation
Long Bow Group
Lorraine Hansberry Theatre
Los Angeles Coordinating Committee for V.D. Control
Los Cenzontles Mexican Arts Center
Low-Income Housing Fund
M
MacArthur Justice Center
Magic Theatre
Maine Community Foundation
Mainstream Media Project
Mandeleo Institute – African Cultural Festival
Mandeleo Institute – Fua Dia Congo
Mandeleo Institute – Ladzekpo Brothers
Mandeleo Institute – Oakland Jazz Alliance
Manhattan School of Music

Manhattanville Neighborhood Center
MAPLight.org
Margaret Hibbard Art Center and Carroll College Foundation
Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
Marin Agricultural Land Trust
Marin Council of Community Services
Marin Organic
Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday Observance Committee
Materials for the Future Foundation
Meals on Wheels of San Francisco
Menlo Park-Atherton Education Foundation
Mental Health Association of San Francisco
Meridian Gallery
Merola Opera Program
Metropole Film Board
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Mexican Museum
Midpeninsula Open Space District
Midwest Voter Registration Education Project
Mills College
Mission Bay Consortium
Mission Creek Conservancy
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
Mission Economic Development Agency
Mission Graduates
Montana Land RelianceMonterey Institute of Foreign Studies
Moreshet Israel
Mothers & Others for a Livable Planet
Mount Zion Health Systems – Shock Research Project
Mount Zion Health Systems – Veterans’ Rehabilitation Clinic
Ms. Foundation for Education and Communication
Ms. Foundation for Women
Municipal Art Society of New York
Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Museum of Modern Art - International Program Endowment Fund
Museum SocietyMusic Concourse and Garage Fund/The San FranciscoFoundation Community Initiative Funds
Music in Schools TodayMusical Traditions – Paul Drescher Ensemble
Musign Theatre Company
Musique PassionN
Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational FundNARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation
Nation InstituteNational AIDS Memorial Grove
National Alliance Against Violence – Western Alliance
National Art Education Association
National Asian American Telecommunications Association –“Citizen #13660 “
National Asian American Telecommunications Association – “XX ”
National Asian American Telecommunications Association –Living Room Festival
National Association of Atomic Veterans
National Association of Chiefs of Police
National Association of Radiation Survivors
National Audubon Society
National Center for Family Philanthropy
National Center for International Schools
National Center for Lesbian Rights
National Center for Youth Law
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty

National Committee for Mental Hygiene
National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
National Committee on Maternal HealthNational Conference for Community and JusticeNational Council of Negro Women
National Council of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
National Council on Alcoholism
National Council on Social Work Education
National Defenders’ Club
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Federation of the Blind
National Gallery of Art
National Indian Justice Center
National Japanese American Historical Society
National Japanese American Student Relocation Council
National Jewish Hospital
National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association
National Mental Health Foundation
National Multiple Sclerosis Society of Northern California
National Municipal League
National Parks Conservation Association
National Peace Garden Foundation
National Public Radio
National Publicity Council
National SANE Education Fund
National Sexuality Resource Center
National Social Welfare Assembly
National Urban League
National Wildlife Federation
National Youth Advocacy Coalition
Native California Network
Natural Resources Defense Council
The Natural Step
Nature Conservancy, California
Neighborhood Parks Council
Neighbor-to-Neighbor Education Fund
New Conservatory Theatre Center
New Directions Unlimited
New Economics Institute
New Education Fellowship
New Israel Fund
New Langton Arts
New School
New Venture Fund
New Ways to Work
New Ways to Work – “The Forest Through the Trees”
New World Productions
New York City Ballet
New York Public Library
Newton Cable Television Foundation – ACAJOU Productions
Nextcourse
Ninth Judicial Circuit Historical Society – Judge Cecil Pool
Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund, Inc.
Noe Valley Ministry Community Building Fund
The NonprofitCenters Network
Tenderloin Economic Development ProjectNorth Star FundNorthcoast Environmental CenterNorthcoast Regional Land Trust
Northern California Cancer CenterNorthern California Community Loan FundNorthern California Council
Northern California Ecumenical Council
Northern California Grantmakers – AIDS Task Force
Northern California Grantmakers – Arts Loan FundNorthern California Grantmakers – Council on Foundations
Conference
Northern California Grantmakers – Earthquake Recovery FundNorthern California Grantmakers – Emergency Family Needs
Program
Northern California Grantmakers – Emergency Fund Committee
Northern California Grantmakers – Task Force on Homelessness
Northern California Grantmakers – Task Force on Legalization of
Immigrants
Northern California Grantmakers – Task Force on the Buck Trust
DisputeNorthern California Hillel Council
Northern California Service League
Northern California Society for Prevention of Blindness
Northern California Union Health Committee
Novation, Inc.
NOW Legal Defense and Education FundO
Oakland Area Community Welfare
Oakland Ballet
Oakland Ensemble Theatre
Oakland Festival of the Arts – East Bay Dance Series
Oakland Festival of the Arts – Rova Saxophone & Taiko Dojo
Oakland Institute
Oakland Museum Association
Oakland Youth Works
Oberlin Dance Collective – NewArt Connections
Oberlin Dance Collective – New Performance Gallery
Oberlin Dance Collective – Talking Dance Project
Oberlin Dance Collective – U.S.S.R. Tour
Obstetrics and Gynecology Research and Education Foundation
Occidental Arts and Ecology Center
Occidental College
Oceanic Society
ODC Theater
Ohana Cultural Center
Ojai Festivals, Ltd.
Old Vic Theatre Trust
Older Women’s League
Om Organics
Omega Boys Club of San Francisco
OMI-Pilgrim Community Center
On Lok Development Corporation
On Lok Senior Health Services
Open Eye Pictures
Open Space InstituteOpera Circus
The Opera Group
Opéra Parallèle
Optic Nerve Foundation – Ideas in Motion
Oregon Death with Dignity Legal Defense & Education Center
Organic Consumers Association
Organic Farming Research Foundation
Organic Seed Alliance
ORGANIZE Training Center
Osborne Association
Our Children’s Trust
Oxfam America
P
Pacific Center for Human Growth
Pacific Environment and Resources Center
Pacific House
Pacific Jewish Theatre
Pacific Primary
Pacific Rivers Council
Pacific School of Religion

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60

Pacific Science Board
Pacifica Foundation
Paines Plough Theatre Company
Palo Alto Humane Society
Palo Alto Medical Foundation
Paragon Media
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
Parliamentarians for Global Action
Patient Assistance Foundation
Peace and Common Security
Pear Garden in the West
Pegasus Opera Company
Peninsula Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired
Peninsula Community Foundation
Peninsula Jewish Community Center
Peninsula Open Space TrustPeninsula School
People for the American Way Foundation
People’s Grocery
People’s Mandate Committee for Inter-American Peace
People’s Theatre Coalition/Life on the Water
Performing Arts Services
Performing Arts Workshop
Pesticide Action Network North America
Pesticide Education Center
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Pickle Family Circus
Pie Ranch
Planned Parenthood Golden Gate
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Planned Parenthood of Alameda/San Francisco
Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona
Planned Parenthood of Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino
Planning and Conservation League Foundation
Planting Justice
Playworks Center for Dramatic Arts
Ploughshares Fund
Pocket Opera
Poetry Flash
Polaris Institute USA
Political Research Associates
Pop-Up Theatre
Positive Futures Center
Precita Eyes Mural Arts Center
Pre-School Education and Child Service
Presidio School of Management
Presidio Sustainability Project
Prevention InstitutePrison Media Project – San Quentin News
Prison University Project
Pro Arts
Product Policy Institute
Programs for People
Project Genesis
Project Open Hand
Project ReboundProteus Fund
Public Advocates – Hawaiian Public Interest Law Feasibility Study
Public Campaign
Public Citizen Foundation
Public Health InstitutePublic Media Center
Public Policy Institute of California
Q
QwavesR
Rachel’s Network
Rainforest Action Network
Rainforest International
Community Educational Services – Ready To Work
Reality House West
Recording for the Blind
Recreation Center for the Aged
Recreation Center for the Handicapped
Red Tab Foundation
Redefining Progress
Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance
Redwood Cultural Work
Redwoods Group Foundation
Reflective Image
Reform Jewish Appeal
Rehearsal Orchestra
Resolution – California Newsreel
RESOLVE
Resource Renewal Institute
Rex Foundation
Rhythmic Concepts
Rich Mix
Richmond Art Center
Riverside Park Fund
Rockefeller Family Fund
Roots of Change
Rosa Montoya Bailes Flamencos
Rose Foundation – Headwaters Debt for Nature Project
Rose Foundation
Rose Resnick Center for the Blind and Handicapped
Royal Court Theatre
Royal National Theatre
Royal Opera House Foundation
S
Safe Future Education Fund
St. Anthony Foundation
St. Dominic’s Preservation and Restoration Project
St. Luke’s Hospital Foundation
St. Michael’s Montessori School
St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin County
Salvation Army Boston – Dorchester’s Jubilee House
Samuel Huston College
San Diego Public Schools
San Francisco AIDS Foundation
San Francisco and Marin Food BankSan Francisco Art Association
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Ballet
San Francisco Bay Area Book Council
San Francisco Bay Area Dance Coalition
San Francisco Bay-Delta Preservation Project
San Francisco Bay Girl Scout Council
San Francisco Baykeeper
San Francisco Big Sisters
San Francisco Boys & Girls ClubSan Francisco Camerawork
San Francisco Center for Research and Education in Government
San Francisco Center for the BookSan Francisco Chamber Orchestra
San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center
San Francisco Chronicle Season of Sharing FundSan Francisco College for Women
San Francisco Committee for Education on Alcoholism
San Francisco Community Trust
San Francisco Conservation CorpsSan Francisco Conservatory of MusicSan Francisco Contemporary Music Players
San Francisco Department of Public Health
San Francisco Education FundSan Francisco Food Systems Council
San Francisco Foundation Community Initiative Funds
San Francisco Foundation – Asian Pacific Environmental Network
San Francisco Foundation – United Nations Plaza Project
San Francisco Free Clinic
The San Francisco Garden ClubSan Francisco Hearing and Speech Center
San Francisco Heart Association
San Francisco Hemlock Society
San Francisco Heritage
San Francisco Housing and Planning Association
San Francisco Interfaith Council – Interfaith Center for a Global
Ethic
San Francisco International Arts Festival
San Francisco Jazz Organization
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners – East Bay Urban
Gardeners
San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners
San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community
CenterSan Francisco Live Arts
San Francisco Mime Troupe
San Francisco Museum & Historical Society
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Neighborhood Legal Assistance Foundation
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Parks Trust
San Francisco Partnership Ministry
San Francisco Performances
San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum
San Francisco Physicians ForumSan Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association
San Francisco Planning Department
San Francisco Public Dance Hall Committee
San Francisco Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center
San Francisco School of Dramatic Arts
San Francisco Senior Center
San Francisco Shakespeare Festival
San Francisco-Shanghai Friendship Committee
San Francisco Sheriff’s Department Five Keys Charter School
San Francisco S.P.C.A.
San Francisco Special Events Committee
San Francisco State University
San Francisco Study Center
San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Theatre Association
San Francisco Waldorf School
San Francisco Women’s Centers – Capital Campaign
San Francisco Women’s Centers – Girls’ Leadership Project
San Francisco Youth Association
San Francisco Zen Center
San Francisco Zoological Society
San Mateo County Historical Association
Sanctuary Forest
Santa Cruz Citizen’s Committee for the Homeless – Homeless
GardenSanta Fe Opera
Save Our Sunol
Save San Francisco Bay Association
Save the Redwoods League
School for Jewish Studies
School of the Arts

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership
SummitSedgwick, Mrs. Walter, for UC lecture on the aged
Sempervirens Fund
Seven Tepees
Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development
SEW Productions – Lorraine Hansberry Theatre
ShadowLight Productions
Shanti Project
Shared Living Resource Center
Shunt Events
Sierra Club Foundation
Sierra Club Legal Defense FundSierra FundSierra Watch
Sigmund Freud Archives
Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Slow Food Nation
Small Press Distribution
Small Press Traffic
Smith College
Smith College Museum of Art
Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Foundation
Social Workers Placement Bureau
Society for Art Publications of the Americas
Society for the Promotion of New Music
Sonoma Land Trust
South & Meso American Indian Information Center
Southern Exposure
Southwest Voter Registration Education Project
Spare Stage
Spectrum Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender
Concerns
Sponsors of San Francisco Performing Arts Center
Spring Opera Association
Stanford Jazz Workshop
Stanford University – Center for Research in International Studies
Stanford University – Friends of Raisa Gorbachev
Stanford University Institute for International Studies
Stanford University – Stanford Museum
Stanislaus County Welfare Department
Stanley M. Isaacs Neighborhood Center
State of California Department of Social Welfare
Stepping Stone
Stern Grove Festival Association
Stiles Hall
Stone Soup Fresno
Stonewall Equality
Summer Fields School
Sunset Nursery School
Support Center of San Francisco
Support Group Training Project
Sustainable Agriculture Education
Sustainable City
Sustainable Cotton Project
Sustainable Economies Law Center
Sustainable San Francisco
Sustainable Sonoma County
T
Taproot Foundation
Tectonic Theater Project
Teddy Bear Films
Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center
Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation

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Tenderloin Senior Organizing ProjectTête–à–Tête Productions
The Commonwealth Club of California
The Working Group
THE.ART.RE.GRUP, Inc. – Artlab
Theatre Artaud
Theatre Bay Area
Theatre Flamenco
Theatre of Yugen
Theatre Rhinoceros – “The Queen of Swords”
Thick Description
Thirteen/WNET New York
Tibet House New YorkThe Tides Center
Tides Foundation
Tides Shared Spaces
Towards Utility Rate Normalization
Town School for Boys
Tracey Quezada Productions
TreePeople
Trees Foundation – Headwaters Forest Coordinating Committee
Triangle Speakers
Trinity Episcopal Church – Empyrean Productions
Trust for Public Land – Bay Area Land Fund
Trust for Public Land – California ReLeaf
Trust for Public Land – Solano/Peralta/Capistrano Park Citizen
Tuolumne River Preservation Trust
Twin Cities Council for Civic Unity
Twin Pines Cooperative Foundation

62

U
U.S. Commission on Improving the Effectiveness of the U.N.
UCSF Foundation, Raising Hope Benefit
UCSF – Mount Zion Center on Aging
Ukiah Players Theatre
UN50 Committee
UNICEF
Union of Concerned Scientists
Union Settlement
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
United Bay Area Crusade
United Community Fund of San Francisco
United Crusade
United Indian Nations
United Indian Nations Community Development Corporation
United Nations Association of San Francisco
United Negro College Fund
United Neighbors in Action Research Association
United States Department of Agriculture Farm Security
Administration
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United Way of New York City
United Way of the Bay Area – Refugee Task Force
United Way of Tulare County
University of California Berkeley – Art Museum & Pacific Film
Archive
University of California Berkeley – City & Regional Planning
University of California Berkeley – College of Environmental
DesignUniversity of California Berkeley – Colman Watershed Fund
University of California Berkeley – Department of Agriculture
University of California Berkeley – Graduate School of Journalism
University of California Berkeley – Graduate Studies
University of California Berkeley – Haas School of Business
University of California Berkeley – Incentive Awards Program
University of California Berkeley – Institute for Government
Studies

University of California Berkeley – Institute for Urban andRegional Development
University of California Berkeley – Jewish Studies
University of California Berkeley – Library
University of California Berkeley – Music Department
University of California Berkeley – PACE
University of California Berkeley – Students for Peace
University of California Berkeley – Young Musicians Program
University of California Cooperative Extension Sonoma County
University of California Davis – Agricultural Sustainability Institute
University of California Los Angeles – Asian American Studies
University of California Los Angeles – Center for International
Study
University of California San Francisco – Department of Neurology
University of California San Francisco – Department of Psychiatry
University of California San Francisco – Medical School
University of California Santa Cruz – Agroecology Program
University of California – Sustainable Agriculture Research and
Education Program
University of Chicago – Community Research Project
University of Denver
University of New Mexico Press
University of Oregon Medical School
University of Pennsylvania
University of San Francisco
University of San Francisco – Center for the Pacific Rim
University of San Francisco – Fromm Institute of Lifelong Learning
University of San Francisco – Gleeson Library
University of San Francisco School of Law
University of Southern California
Urban Ecology
Urban Ecology – East Bay Community Gardening & Greening
Coalition
Urban Habitat Program
Urban School of San Francisco
V
Valley Keeper
Vanguard Public Foundation – Adelante Corporation
Ventana Wilderness Sanctuary
Ventura County Ag Futures Alliance
Vermont Community Foundation
Versailles Foundation
Vesper Society
Veterans Vietnam Restoration Project
Violich, Francis J., for Latin America Housing Study
Visiting Nurse Association of Sonoma County
Volunteer Program of the Department of Social Services
Volunteers in Asia
W
Wagner Society
Wajumbe Cultural Institution
Walden House
Wallflower Order
Watershed Media
Watts Garden ClubWest Marin FundWest Oakland Food Project
West View HospitalWestern Consortium for Public Health – Tibet Child Nutrition
Western Public RadioWGBH – Frontline
Whitney Foundation
Wigmore Hall Trust
Wild Farm AllianceWild Rumpus
Wild Swan Theater

Wilderness Finders
WildWest InstituteWilton’s Music Hall
Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security
Women’s Alcoholism Center
Women’s American ORT
The Women’s Building
Women’s City Club
Women’s Earth Alliance
Women’s Foundation – San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium
Women’s Initiative for Self-Employment
Woods Hole Research Center
World Affairs Council of Northern California
World Arts WestWorld College WestWorld Institute on Disability
World LearningWorld Resources InstituteWorld Wildlife FundWorld Without War Council
X
Xerces Society
Y
Yale University
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Yerba Buena Fund
Yolo Land Trust
The Yosemite Foundation
Young Women’s Christian Association of San Francisco
Youth Advocates
Youth Alive
Youth Gender Project
Youth Industry
Youth Power
Youth Project – Initiatives for Campaign Reform
Youth Project – Tribal Sovereignty Program
Youth Speaks
Youthnews
Yuba CityZ
Z Space Studio
Zeum
Zyzzyva

63