Mimi and Peter Haas Fund
/OVERVIEW: The Mimi and Peter Haas Fund mainly focuses on early childhood education and care for San Francisco’s underserved communities. To a lesser extent, the foundation supports K-12 and higher education, arts and culture, health and the environment.
IP TAKE: The Mimi and Peter Haas Fund maintains a “deep commitment to early childhood education” and strives to “provide children and families with access to high-quality early childhood programs that are part of a comprehensive, coordinated system.” This fund is not particularly accessible and does not accept applications for funding. One way to gain its attention, however, would be to collaborate with one of the six agencies that run the fund’s signature Model Centers early childhood programs throughout the city of San Francisco. While the organization’s website does not offer individual email addresses, profiles of the fund’s staff are available here.
PROFILE: The San Francisco-based Mimi and Peter Haas Fund (MPHF) was established in 1982. The late Peter Haas was chair of his family’s business, Levi Strauss & Co., and was known as “a generous philanthropist and civic leader throughout San Francisco, academia, and in the Jewish community” and “for his socially responsible business ethics and practices.” Mimi Haas, Peter’s widow, serves as president of the fund. She also serves in trustee positions at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
The main focus of the Mimi and Peter Haas Foundation is support for “activities that provide children and families with access to high-quality early childhood programs that are part of a comprehensive, coordinated system.” Giving for early childhood stems from its Model Centers and Early Care and Education grantmaking initiatives. A much smaller portion of the fund’s giving stems from its Trustee Initiated Grants, which focus on “strengthening civic and community life in San Francisco.”
Other areas of interest include Jewish causes, health and humanitarian response. The Bay Area of Northern California is the site of most of the fund’s giving, although organizations operating in other parts of the U.S. and globally also receive grants.
Grants for Early Childhood Education
The Haas Fund’s early childhood grantmaking is rooted in a vast body of empirical research “show[ing] that positive stimulation of a child’s brain during the critical first years of life lays the foundation for the child’s future ability to learn.” In terms of investment, the fund notes that “[f]or every $1 dollar spent on high-quality early education, the public will save $7 or more in future costs like grade repetition, early parenthood, or incarceration.”
While more than half of the fund’s giving supports early childhood initiatives in and around San Francisco, grantmaking also goes to national organizations, as well; the fund is a member of both the Bay Area Early Childhood Funders and the Early Childhood Funders Collaborative, a national organization.
At this writing, the fund makes grants through two early childhood initiatives.
The Model Centers Initiative is the fund’s “flagship, signature grantmaking program” and “provides significant, multi-year support to six San Francisco agencies that serve low-income children by providing high-quality, culturally responsive, and developmentally appropriate early childhood education.”
Launched in 1995, this program has expanded significantly over the years and now serves 600 children across ten model centers with different curricula, goals and student needs.
Across all ten model centers, demographics include “96% staff of color, 92% low-income children, 95% children of color [and] 69% immigrant families.”
Agency-grantees of this program include Compass Family Services, the Cross Cultural Family Center, the Felton Institute, the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, Mission Neighborhood Centers and South of Market Child Care.
The Haas Fund also runs a general Early Care and Education grantmaking program to support work outside of its Model Centers program. This program works in a range of areas related to early childhood.
MPHF supports professional development for early childhood educators and caregivers, focusing on “programs to develop and deliver state of the art professional early childhood educator preparation, training, and coaching, as well as programs that provide stipends and educational pathways including attainment of Bachelor of Arts degree for early childhood teachers.”
Grants support initiatives for shared services “to ease the administrative burden of child development centers so that staff can spend more time with children and families.” Areas of focus include centralizing “enrollment, finance, and human resources or shared maintenance services.”
MPHF funds scholarships to assist low-income families and those facing hardship in paying for early childhood education and care.
Grants have provided scholarships via the six agencies involved in the Model Centers Initiative and the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco.
The fund also makes grants for program materials and equipment that “improve the quality, safety, and environments of child care centers serving low-income children.” Early childhood schools and care providers in San Francisco are eligible for grants of $3,000 to $5,000 “to purchase books, arts, materials and play equipment.”
In addition to the agencies involved in the Model Centers Initiative, MPHF provides core support to “key family support agencies in San Francisco” that “provide essential leadership and resources for children and families and help to make sure the most vulnerable young children and their families receive the support they need.”
The fund makes grants for early literacy, focusing on “organizations that develop children’s reading and writing skills and instill a lifelong love of reading.
Finally, MPHF also makes grants for early childhood education in Israel. Grants support organizations that offer “services that promote the healthy development of all Israeli children ages 0-3 from both Arab and Jewish backgrounds.”
Grants for K-12 and Higher Education
K-12 and higher education represent a much smaller portion of MPHF’s giving. Grantmaking in these areas appears to focus on K-12 education in the San Francisco area and higher education programs for early childhood teacher education.
K-12 grantees include the Eastside College Preparatory School in Palo Alto, the San Francisco Friends School and KIPP Public Schools or Northern California.
Higher education grants have supported the UCLA Foundation, the University of California at San Francisco and San Francisco State University.
Grants for Arts and Culture
The fund’s arts and culture giving prioritizes organizations in San Francisco, as well as a few East Coast organizations with which Mimi Haas has been involved. As some of the fund’s arts and culture grantees run programs for young children, grantmaking interest overlaps with the fund’s child development commitment.
San Francisco area grantees include the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Ballet Association, the San Francisco Opera and the Peninsula Arts Guild of Palo Alto. Elsewhere, the fund has supported the Shed in New York City, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Friends of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'Orangerie.
Grants for Jewish Causes
In addition to its giving for early childhood education in Israel, the Haas Fund makes a few grants each year to Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Israel. The fund does not articulate a strategy for this giving. Grantees include the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the American Friends of the Israel Museum.
Grants for Public Health and Diseases
Public health is another smaller area of giving, but grants have supported hospitals and other health organizations in San Francisco and elsewhere. Grantees include the California Pacific Medical Center Foundation, New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Mass General Brigham Health Care System in Massachusetts, the San Francisco Free Clinic and Mayday Medicines, an organization that works to “educate on accessing critical healthcare in response to acute health crises” and focuses on reproductive care and health care equity.
Grants for Environment, Climate Change and Clean Energy
Haas’s environmental and climate change grants mainly stay in the San Francisco Bay area. The foundation does not name priorities for this giving. Grantees include the Surfrider Foundation, the clean energy provider Little Sun, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the Francisco Park Conservancy.
Important Grant Details:
The Haas Fund’s grants range from $500 to $1.25 million, although most grants stay below $500,000.
This funder’s main area of giving is early childhood education for San Francisco’s underserved and low-income communities. Other areas of giving amount to just a fraction of this funder’s total giving.
Haas provides ongoing support to six San Francisco agencies that coordinate early childhood programs and services for the fund’s Model Centers Initiative.
The Haas Fund recognizes “the importance of connecting the work of early childhood direct service grants to improvements in public policy and seek opportunities to share and collaborate with other non-profit and public organizations.”
This funder does not accept unsolicited proposals for funding.
For information about past grantmaking, see the fund’s pages for its Model Centers Initiative and Early Care and Education. See the fund’s past tax filings here.
Submit general inquiries to this fund via its contact page or by telephone at 415-296-9249.
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