The Jenifer Altman Foundation
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Our lives are touched by those who lived centuries ago, and we hope that our lives will mean something to those who will live centuries from now. It's a great 'chain of being,' someone once told me, and I think our job is to hope, to dream and to do the best we can to hold up our small segment of that chain.
-- Dorothy Day
 

About Us


THE JENIFER ALTMAN FOUNDATION is a private foundation dedicated to the vision of a socially just and ecologically sustainable future through program interests in environmental health and mind-body health. Jenifer Altman was a Senior Research Associate at Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, California. She established the Jenifer Altman Foundation shortly before her death in 1991.

In addition to our own grants program, the Jenifer Altman Foundation (JAF) staff manage the Barbara Smith Fund and the Bet Lev Foundation, and provide advisory services to the StarFire Fund and the Marisla Foundation’s Environmental Health and Justice work in the Global South.

Given our small staff and the breadth of organizations we manage and support, we no longer accept unsolicited proposals.

The Gulf Coast Fund
In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Jenifer Altman Foundation expanded its work with grantees and colleagues in the region, and continues to play an active role in the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health (the Fund). The Fund is a collaborative grant making effort that engages, empowers and benefits displaced and returning residents, and promotes the sustainable and just rebuilding of neighborhoods, cities and ecosystems throughout the Gulf Coast. The Fund, housed at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, engages with an Advisory Group comprised of local and state community leaders from the Gulf Coast region.  The Advisory Group informs the grant making process and identifies both the issues of greatest concern to the affected communities and the organizations capable of providing the necessary leadership to address these key areas of need.  The Fund has been designed to support projects that help to strengthen and amplify local organizing, address justice concerns and build movement through community-driven philanthropy.

The Jenifer Altman Awards Program
This program honors outstanding commitment and service in promoting and protecting human and ecological health. 2005 PRESS RELEASE

 

The Jenifer Altman Foundation, Thoreau Center for Sustainability, Presidio Building 1016, First Floor, P.O. Box 29209, San Francisco, CA 94129 USA. 415.561.2182 info@jaf.org