Overview

Cradled in Silicon Valley, San Jose is the 10th largest city in the nation and an epicenter of innovation, opportunity, and wealth. San Jose also boasts a rich connection to its culture, history, and diversity. Consider San Jose’s rich history in grassroots organizing, including community activism by leaders like Cesar Chavez and Sophia Mendoza, who led movements for farmworker rights, hospital access, and other local priorities that served as a model for future organizing. Yet stark racial and economic inequities persist in San Jose, leaving a significant portion of residents unhoused, food insecure, feeling unsafe with police, and living in poverty. Among those most affected are Black, Latinx, and working-class residents as well as those living in historically disenfranchised neighborhoods like the East Side.

GOal

To address these inequities, we launched our current local grantmaking strategy in 2019 with the goal of building resident power in San Jose to change policies and systems and ultimately improve lives and opportunities. We do not prioritize specific issues or approaches, but rather walk alongside our community partners and work to lift up their self-identified priorities. We focus on residents who have been historically marginalized from decision-making, including immigrants, BIPOC residents, residents from low-income households, and young people. Through the redistribution of wealth and power, we ultimately envision a more economically and racially just San Jose.

With input from San Jose community leaders, we identified three strategies for building resident power in San Jose:

  • Invest in anchor organizations – we invest in community-based organizations, large and small, that utilize community organizing to build resident power. We provide flexible multi-year resources to organizations with deep roots in San Jose, the trust of community members, and a track record of policy and systems change.
  • Build an ecosystem of collective power – we invest in a power-building ecosystem that has a shared vision, coordination, strategic communications, and receptivity by local government. We support community coalitions, local applied research, and civic engagement organizations.
  • Bolster emerging community leaders – we invest in a pipeline of future changemakers in San Jose. This includes youth participatory research, grantmaking, and decision-making, as well as youth leadership and organizing efforts.