Northern California Grantmakers

Struggling to Make Ends Meet in the Bay Area, a new report released by NCG member the United Way of the Bay Area, used the California Self-Sufficiency Standard to measure the economic well-being of families in our region.

The report “found that many households require three full-time minimum wage jobs just to pay for basic needs.” [emphasis added]

Even before the global economic crisis, having a job was not a guarantee of adequate income as 86% of Bay Area households with incomes below the Self-Sufficiency Standard had at least one worker.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard measures the actual cost of living for different household types of working age in each county, including costs for housing, food, health care, taxes and child care. These 440,000 households with sub-Standard income are neither a small nor marginal group, and are more than three times the number defined as poor by the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). Because many government and social programs use the FPL or variants of FPL to determine eligibility, a large and diverse group of struggling individuals and families is routinely overlooked and undercounted.

These hidden poor subsist in a “policy gap” where they earn too much income to qualify for most supports yet still struggle to meet their most basic needs, especially as the costs of housing, health care and other necessities continue to outpace increases in income.

Read the full report online.

As You Sow has a free and timely resource available to help foundations learn about important upcoming proxy votes and ensure that they vote in an informed manner on social and environmental issues that are directly relevant to their mission and programs.  The Proxy Season Preview – Spring 2010 is currently available  for free download and most of the proxy voting occurs over the next 6 weeks.

With total endowments of more than $600 billion, foundations are major institutional investors.  Foundations annually grant 5% of their endowment to support their mission, but how many utilize the remaining 95% to promote that same mission? Proxy voting is an easy first step for foundations wishing to align their mission and investments.

Northern California Grantmakers encourages foundations to consider socially responsible investment activities such as proxy voting, mission-related investments (MRIs), and program-related investments (PRIs).  This builds off previous discussions related to payout rate–such as were outlined in the Beyond 5% publication–produced by NCG  in collaboration with Philanthropy New York and the French American Charitable Trust.

Download As You Sow’s proxy voting guide here.

Download NCG’s Beyond 5% publication here.

Released late last month by Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media (GFEM), the report Funding Media, Strengthening Democracy: Grantmaking for the 21st Century provides a funding snapshot of media funding by grantmakers.

Despite the pervasiveness of media, the amount of philanthropic dollars in support of public interest media remains minuscule… Within a 12-month period, more commercial money was invested in a single Hollywood blockbuster than was invested in all public service media by three of the largest philanthropic donors combined: the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Teleconference Opportunity: Funders Only

On May 14th GFEM is hosting a teleconference featuring one of the reports authors to discuss the findings from Funding Media, Strengthening Democracy: Grantmaking for the 21st Century. Learn More >>

Download the Executive Summary online.
Download the full report online.