Where the church meets the street, Episcopal Impact Fund is there.
Episcopal Impact Fund Announces 2026 Poverty Relief Congregational Grants
"Our congregational poverty relief funding is a partnership with churches doing hands-on work and engaging directly with people experiencing poverty in their own communities. We give so they can continue to lean into relationship — so they can live church in the streets." –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.
This year, working with long-term partners across the Diocese, our Poverty Relief Congregational Grants provide $60,000 to support 28 congregations and ministries meeting urgent needs throughout the Bay Area. Grantee churches are running food pantries and meal programs that put fresh groceries and hot meals on the table for thousands of families each month; sustaining safety net services like laundry, showers, school backpacks, and household essentials; supporting early childhood and after-school education for at-risk students; and accompanying our most vulnerable neighbors — migrants building new lives, incarcerated individuals on Death Row, and isolated seniors — with dignity and compassion. Several grants also strengthen the infrastructure behind this work, from a food pantry's network upgrade to a new bilingual senior wellness program.
These congregations 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, migrant families, incarcerated individuals, isolated seniors, and children and youth whose access to basic resources helps break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.
Their work is a lifeline for our community, and we are honored to help make it possible.
Our 2026 Poverty Relief Congregational Grant recipients are:
All Saints Episcopal Church, San Leandro: All Saints runs its Food Pantry, which serves 300–400 households (nearly 1,000 people) monthly via a client-choice model. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
All Souls Episcopal Parish, Berkeley: All Souls runs the Open Door Dinner, a monthly community jambalaya meal serving about 120 people, plus deliveries to unhoused encampments and transitional-age youth housing. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
Christ Church Portola Valley & Woodside: Christ Church Portola Valley & Woodside provides monthly dinners, toiletries, and winter clothing to residents of a Half Moon Bay homeless shelter, a ministry running since 2022. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
Christ Episcopal Church, Alameda: Christ Church operates a winter warming shelter (Dec–April, 25+ guests nightly) with the city, plus a year-round weekly shower, laundry, meal, and clothing program for unhoused individuals. [Focus area: Housing insecurity]
Church of the Good Shepherd, Berkeley: Good Shepherd's Pan del Cielo Food Program provides weekly sack lunches to day laborers and unhoused neighbors and runs a weekly pantry serving dozens of households, sourced largely from Berkeley Food Network. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, San Francisco: Church of the Incarnation is launching a bilingual Senior Wellness Navigator program for isolated Sunset District seniors, especially Chinese American residents, offering wellness check-ins, medical companionship, and grief support. [Focus area: Safety net]
Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, Pleasant Hill: Church of the Resurrection sustains Hillcrest Congregational Church's food and clothing pantry (open three mornings weekly) with volunteers, supplies, and food drives. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco: The Community Preschool at Grace Cathedral offers year-round, full-day, play-based early childhood education with a 1:5 teacher ratio, an anti-bias curriculum, and an intentional commitment to socio-economic and racial diversity. [Focus area: Education]
Grace Episcopal Church, Martinez: Grace Episcopal’s Laundry Love with Grace provides free detergent, dryer sheets, and quarters twice monthly, serving about 35 people and 160 loads per event, mostly unhoused, working-poor, and senior residents. [Focus area: Safety net]
Holy Child & St. Martin Episcopal Church, Daly City: Holy Child & St. Martin operates a food pantry serving roughly 90 families in Daly City and 15 in Pacifica weekly. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
Holy Family Episcopal Church, Half Moon Bay: Holy Family Backpack Drive has, for 27 years, equipped Coastside students for school; in 2024 it outfitted 463 Cabrillo Unified students with backpacks, supplies, and books via Coastside Hope. [Focus area: Safety net]
Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, Concord: Holy Spirit supports students at an alternative high school with clothing, supplies, food cards, hygiene items, crisis assistance, and an on-campus thrift shop, reaching several hundred students annually. [Focus area: Education]
St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Albany: St. Alban’s leads Albany Thrives Together, an all-volunteer group providing weekly bag lunches, free showers, and laundry to unhoused and at-risk community members, reaching dozens weekly. [Focus area: Safety net]
St. Anna's Episcopal Church, Brentwood: St. Anna's supports Kimball Elementary, a Title 1 school, through its Mission Possible program, funding uniforms, supplies, and events over the past four years. [Focus area: Education]
St. Anne's Episcopal Church, Fremont: St. Anne's partners with a local shelter to serve monthly dinner to 30–60 residents, funded entirely by congregant donations. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
St. Francis Episcopal Church, San Francisco: St. Francis partners with INTO Street Outreach, a "One Meal One Jacket" event, and Safe Harbor Shelter to serve unhoused neighbors in South San Francisco. [Focus area: Safety net]
St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church, Novato: St. Francis of Assisi’s Community Pantry offers client-choice food, hygiene products, diapers, pet food, and clothing twice weekly with no eligibility requirements, serving nearly 3,700 individuals in 2025. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
St. James' Episcopal Church, Fremont: St. James runs a Blessing Bags ministry distributing essential supply bags to unhoused individuals across the East Bay, especially the Tri-City area, distributing 192 bags last year. [Focus area: Safety net]
St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, San Francisco: St. John the Evangelist hosts The Gubbio Project, offering unhoused neighbors daytime rest and services, and runs a monthly expanded coffee-hour meal for food-insecure parishioners, drawing 40–50 guests. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Oakland: St. Joyhn’s has, for five years, mobilized 50+ volunteers weekly to distribute over 2,000 meal bags and seasonal clothing monthly to unhoused neighbors, in partnership with Mission for the Homeless and Operation Dignity. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, San Francisco: St. Luke’s sponsors the Inter-Faith Food Pantry, supplying protein, rice, pasta, and volunteers to distribute a week's groceries to about 300 San Francisco families every Saturday. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Berkeley: St. Mark's has served hot meals and to-go lunches monthly for over 35 years, strengthening the parish's role as a neighborhood safety net. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Palo Alto: St. Mark's parishioners support Corrections Institutions Chaplaincy, providing spiritual care, writing and art groups, women's services, and visits to incarcerated individuals countywide, serving dozens weekly. [Focus area: Justice and Safety]
St. Mary the Virgin, San Francisco: St. Mary the Virgin’s Nueva Esperanza Accompaniment Team (NEAT) supports migrant families in San Francisco with housing, food, education, legal, and navigation help, currently serving multiple families. [Focus area: Justice and Safety]
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Oakland: St. Paul’s operates the Pantry of Hope, distributing fresh groceries to roughly 100 families twice monthly, mostly non-parishioners. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, San Rafael: St. Paul’s Death Row Ministry has, for 28 years, matched incarcerated individuals on Death Row with outside pen pals and provided yearly support packages of food, hygiene items, and supplies. [Focus area: Justice and Safety]
St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Redwood City: St. Peter's assembles and distributes monthly care kits with hygiene supplies to unhoused neighbors, largely through a local homeless services partner. [Focus area: Safety net]
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Belvedere: St. Stephen’s Meal Bag Ministry has delivered 100 meal bags weekly to St. Vincent's Dining Room since April 2020 (29,700+ meals to date), using 27 volunteers and in-kind donations to keep costs at $2.15/meal. [Focus area: Food insecurity]
