About the Fund: From the Executive Director

September 2007

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

On behalf of the Board and staff of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, it is my pleasure to take a moment to share news of some of our most recent activities. 

At the Fund, we strive to continuously reflect upon and assess the effectiveness of our work.  One example is our recent participation in a comprehensive grantee survey evaluating our performance as a funder.  We have also solicited input on our performance from colleagues and knowledgeable observers in philanthropy and other parts of the nonprofit sector.  We will soon share a summation of these findings on our web site.  In addition, we consistently internally evaluate our work and our guidelines to ensure that our grantmaking strategies clearly and effectively address the key issues in the sectors in which we’re working.

Today, we are excited to share our revised education guidelines, which you can view here.  The trustees and staff of the Fund, after considerable review and analysis, have refined our guidelines to better align the program goals with our overarching desire to improve the quality of public schools and raise the academic achievement of students. The revised guidelines build on what we have done and learned over the past few years, and continue to reaffirm our longstanding belief that public schools play an important role in helping to equalize opportunity for all young people. 

We remain grateful to the late Akiyu Hatano, the Fund’s former program officer for education, who helped us understand the importance of building school communities.  Our current program officer, Anu Greenlee Cairo, has ably built upon the foundation Akiyu established. Most critically, the guidelines now explicitly acknowledge that the quality of public education can only be improved if principals, teachers, parents, students and the community work together, and have an increased focus on the roles that principals and teachers play. Thus, the revised guidelines give priority to programs that build leadership and instructional skills and foster connections and collaboration among the key constituents within school communities.  To accomplish these results, the Fund has reframed the three strategic funding areas in this program area to be:  School Leadership, Teacher Quality, and Partnerships for School Improvement.

With the start of another school year, the Fund is pleased to reaffirm our commitment to the young people who are starting another year on their educational journey, and to the adults supporting them.  We know that the promise of quality public education for all has not yet been realized. We look forward to working with the educational communities in the San Francisco Bay Area to improve our public schools, and create more opportunity for the current generation of students and all those to follow.

Best regards,


Pamela H. David
Executive Director

NOTE:  We also want to let you know that Akiyu’s family and friends have established Blossoming Leaves: The Akiyu Hatano Memorial Fund, to continue the educational work that Akiyu began.