Anchor Institutions

Established in 1948, the San Francisco Foundation works to mobilize resources and catalyze change that will build strong communities, foster civic leadership, and promote philanthropy in the San Francisco region.  With $1.2 in total assets, the Foundation’s focus areas include full service schools, financial stability, sustainable communities, cultural hubs, and affordable housing.  To leverage additional capital into underserved communities, the Foundation launched a PRI program in 2002 that provides loans and loan guarantees to organizations aligned with its program priorities.  As of 2014, the program had seven active investments, which include a $500,000 loan to the affordable housing developer Eden Housing to help to finance the installation of solar panels on eight of its affordable multi-family properties, an effort projected to save up to $1.1 million in electricity costs.

Founded in 1986 and headquartered in San Francisco, Dignity Health is the fifth largest health system in the nation and the largest hospital provider in California.  In 1990, it established a Community Grants program, which has provided over $51 million in support to over 3,000 projects working to improve access to jobs, housing, food, education, and health care for people in low-income and minority communities.  To create larger pools of capital for those who have been historically underserved, Dignity Health established a Community Investments program, which provides below-market interest rate loans to nonprofit organizations working to improve the health and quality of life in their communities.  Since 1992, Dignity Health has invested more than $88.1 million in 185 nonprofits that are developing child care and community clinics, affordable housing for low-income families and seniors, job training for the unemployed or underemployed, and health care services for low-income and minority neighborhoods.

Based in Indianapolis, Community Health Network (Community) is a nonprofit healthcare system with 200 sites across central Indiana.  Since beginning to conduct Community Health Needs Assessments in the 1990s, Community has recognized the importance of addressing social and economic factors that impact health. One initiative is Project Search/Indiana, a high school transition program for students with disabilities that provides participants with worksite-based training.  Initiated in 2006 with an investment of $92,000, Community also supported an Individual Development Account program designed to help area residents build assets through matched savings.  To promote nutrition, Community sponsors farmers’ markets in neighborhoods and within its hospitals, helped develop the Community Heights garden where it maintains a medicinal herb garden, and provided technical assistance to the Indy Food Co-op, which opened the city’s first community-owned grocery store, Pogues Run Grocer, in a food desert at the end of 2010.

Founded in 1925, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis is a nonprofit committed to creating family learning experiences that transform the lives of children and families.  It is also committed to serving Indianapolis’ communities, demonstrated by the resources and time it invests in its surrounding neighborhoods.  For example, in 2001, it created a Neighborhood Improvement Fund, which includes a $2 million revolving loan fund to support collaborative neighborhood projects.  In 2004, it catalyzed an on-going housing rehabilitation and new construction project focused in its bordering neighborhoods, which has, to date, resulted in the rehabilitation and construction of 40 homes, demolition of 50 vacant properties, and repair assistance for 100 houses.  It also played a lead role in managing the redevelopment of an abandoned hospital near its campus, which resulted in a new affordable housing complex with 50 units.