Where the church meets the street, Episcopal Impact Fund is there.

Episcopal Impact Fund Announces 2025 Poverty Relief Congregational Grants

“For nearly 50 years, Episcopal Impact Fund has partnered with organizations that provide food, shelter, healing, and hope. We are grateful to support their vital work serving our neighbors most in need.”–Christina Alvarez, Episcopal Impact Fund Executive Director

Episcopal Impact Fund has a rich history of supporting communities in need. For almost 50 years, the Impact Fund has been committed to funding programs that alleviate poverty for Bay Area residents. In the current climate, low-income households are in economic distress and have less money to spend on necessities such as food, healthcare, and education. Our Poverty Relief Congregational Grants provide a safety net to families seeking stability and a path to self-sufficiency. 

Most recently, working with long-term partners, we have focused our Poverty Relief Congregational Grants on organizations supporting our neighbors by providing food security, education, mental health, and safety net services. We support early childhood education and at-risk students, fund food pantries and meal programs for unhoused and low-income neighbors, strengthen safety net services like laundry, school backpacks, and household essentials, and accompany migrants, incarcerated people, and other vulnerable communities with dignity and compassion. Our Poverty Relief Congregational Grants have a broad and deep impact.

These organizations are at work throughout the Bay Area, serving local communities that are especially at risk — neighbors who are food insecure or experiencing homelessness, people exiting the justice system, women escaping domestic violence, asylum seekers, as well as organizations providing vital services to children and youth that help break the cycle of intergenerational poverty in the Bay Area.

We are grateful and humbled to support their indispensable work.

Our 2025 Poverty Relief Congregational Grant recipients are:

• All Saints Episcopal Church, San Leandro: All Saints operates a robust twice-monthly food pantry that distributes three large bags of groceries per household to local neighbors. Each food pantry is currently frequented by nearly 400 households per month. [Focus area: Food insecurity]

• All Souls Episcopal Church, Berkeley: All Souls’ Open Door Dinner program combats food insecurity by preparing and delivering a hot jambalaya meal each month to about 130 unhoused neighbors in Berkeley. In addition to meals, the program provides essential supplies such as cooking fuel, tents, clothing, and hygiene items, ensuring consistent support for people living in poverty.  [Focus area: Food insecurity]

• Bayview Mission, San Francisco: Bayview Mission is a neighborhood hub in San Francisco, providing safety net items and summer camp resources to members of the Bayview community. [Focus area: Safety net]

• Christ Episcopal Church, Alameda: Christ Church Alameda provides shelter, showers, toiletries, meals, and a network of support to individuals experiencing homelessness in Alameda. [Focus area: Housing security]

• Church of the Resurrection, Pleasant Hill: The Episcopal Church of the Resurrection provides critical volunteer hours, supplies, and food drives to sustain Hillcrest Congregational Church’s long-running food pantry, which served more than 6,300 people with food assistance in 2024 alone. [Focus area: Food insecurity]

• Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Berkeley: Pan del Cielo, a ministry of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in West Berkeley, directly addresses food insecurity by providing weekly sack lunches to about 120 unhoused and day laborer neighbors and operating a Friday food pantry. [Focus area: Food insecurity]

• Grace Cathedral, San Francisco: The Community Preschool at Grace Cathedral provides a full-day, year-round early childhood program for children ages 3–5, preparing them for kindergarten and lifelong learning.  [Focus area: Education]

• Grace Episcopal Church, Martinez: Laundry Love with Grace provides a critical safety net for people living in poverty by covering the high cost of doing laundry—an essential but often unaffordable need for unhoused neighbors, low-income workers, and seniors.  [Focus area: Safety net]

• Holy Child and St. Martin Episcopal Church, Daly City: Holy Child and St. Martin Church operates a twice-weekly food pantry in Daly City, providing essential groceries to as many as 280 families each month.  [Focus area: Food insecurity]

• Holy Family Episcopal Church, Half Moon Bay: For 27 years, Holy Family Episcopal Church’s Backpack Drive has provided a vital safety net for Coastside children, ensuring that students from low-income families start school prepared and on equal footing with their peers.  [Focus area: Safety net]

• Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Concord: Holy Spirit Episcopal Church provides a vital safety net for at-risk students at Olympic High School, an alternative school where more than 80% of students are economically disadvantaged and many face homelessness, unstable home situations, or the challenges of young parenthood. [Focus area: Education]

• St. Aidan’s Episcopal Church, San Francisco: St. Aidan’s anchors its neighborhood outreach in food ministries, including a weekly food pantry that serves 150–200 families in a farmer’s market style, as well as community meals like the monthly Diamond Diners luncheon, an annual Thanksgiving dinner, and seasonal holiday gatherings.  [Focus area: Food Insecurity]

• St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Albany: St. Alban’s Episcopal Church partners with Albany Thrives Together to provide essential safety net services for unhoused and low-income neighbors in Albany. Through food, hygiene, and advocacy, they help ensure that vulnerable neighbors have access to the basic necessities that sustain health and dignity.  [Focus area: Food Insecurity]

• St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church, Novato: St. Francis Community Pantry provides free food, hygiene products, diapers, pet food, and seasonal clothing to anyone in need, without eligibility requirements. The Pantry serves unhoused individuals, low-income families, seniors, and others experiencing food insecurity.  [Focus area: Food Insecurity]

• St. Francis Episcopal Church, San Francisco: St. Francis Episcopal Church partners with local ministries to serve unhoused neighbors. In collaboration with INTO Street Outreach, they helped provide 600+ winter jackets, scarves, and meals at a December 2024 “One Meal One Jacket” event.  [Focus area: Safety net]

• St. John’s Episcopal Church, Oakland: St. John’s VISION Program has, for five years, built steady relationships with unhoused individuals by preparing and sharing weekly meal bags and seasonal clothing.  [Focus area: Food Insecurity]

• St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, San Francisco: St. Luke’s is a sponsor congregation of the Inter-Faith Food Pantry, which provides a critical neighborhood food source for San Francisco families in need, distributing a week’s worth of groceries to around 300 households each Saturday. [Focus area: Food Insecurity]

• St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley: Hot Meals for the Hungry at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church has provided freshly prepared, nutritious meals to community members in need for over 35 years.  [Focus area: Food Insecurity]

• St. Mary the Virgin, San Francisco: Through their Nueva Esperanza Accompaniment Team (NEAT), St. Mary’s accompanies migrant families in San Francisco, helping them establish independent, dignified lives while providing support for housing, food, education, legal services, and navigation of local systems. [Focus area: Justice and safety]

• St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Palo Alto: St. Mark’s Palo Alto parishioners are actively involved in Corrections Institutions Chaplaincy, which provides spiritual and therapeutic support to incarcerated people in Santa Clara County, many of whom are disadvantaged and living in poverty.  [Focus area: Justice and safety]

• St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, San Rafael: St. Paul’s Death Row Prison Ministry develops ongoing, nonjudgmental relationships between St. Paul’s volunteers and individuals on Death Row in California. [Focus area: Justice and safety]

• St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Belvedere: St. Stephen’s Meal Bag Ministry provides weekly food to neighbors facing food insecurity in Marin County. Volunteers deliver 100 meal bags to St. Vincent’s Dining Room, fresh bread and produce to low-income families. [Focus area: Food insecurity]

• St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Danville: Parishioners at St. Timothy’s work with Contra Costa Interfaith Coalition (CCIC), which provides critical safety net services by supplying supplemental food and essential household items to individuals and families transitioning from homelessness, shelters, or hospitals. [Focus area: Safety net]