This is a pivotal decade for the environment and your support will make a difference.

As a trusted and nationally-recognized science institution, we help build consensus to support environmental decision making and policy outcomes. And we are poised to address the pressing challenges of climate change in our region and elsewhere. Your tax deductible gift will help leverage the outstanding science for which SFEI is known, enabling us to inform, engage, and empower the next generation of environmental leaders.

Your generous support will help us to

  • Be ahead of the curve by developing new ideas, such as understanding how sea level rise will force groundwater upward, bringing contaminants to the surface and inland from the Bay, often in disadvantaged communities.
  • Serve the communities hardest hit by environmental degradation by supporting them to design their own climate change solutions, using nature.
  • Make the Bay Area and California more resilient to climate change with clean water, green cities, and soft shorelines, then offer this adaptation model to be replicated throughout the country.
  • Make tools that can help deliver these results to more people, here and around the country.

In order to meaningfully leverage the ongoing scientific work of the San Francisco Estuary Institute and make sure it is used to best effect in this time of urgent need, we must have robust, independent donor support. We need new visionary donors to join our visionary leaders. We have established 2 new funds:

Elevate Environmental Equity Fund (E3 Fund)

This fund would help us to furnish technical support to all communities who are interested, working with them to create green, livable, healthy places to live that are resilient to climate change and helping their voices be heard in government processes.

Science-for-All Fund

This fund would allow us to provide our expertise to those who want and need it – elected officials, agency staff, local communities, journalists. This will help spur policies that incorporate our science much more quickly and also help launch many more and better projects on the ground that use nature based solutions.

Together, these two funding opportunities help close the gap between our resources and those who would benefit from them.

Our Superpower

We know from the science that restoring ecosystem health is going to help communities with flooding, heat, fires, and other natural disasters, as well as improving health and the daily quality of life.

Our deep knowledge of the area’s natural systems and decades-long relationships with decision-makers allows us to translate the science so that others, including frontline communities, can make better-informed decisions.

Other groups are working on aspects of climate change; we know how to work with nature to improve the place we live while also making it more resilient to climate change.

Giving to SFEI

The San Francisco Estuary Institute deeply appreciates the support of its donors, who are helping to expand SFEI’s impact on clean water, clean air, and healthy, resilient ecosystems. There are many ways to give to the Institute and every donation makes a difference. Thank you for being a partner in our mission to deliver visionary science that empowers people to revitalize nature in our communities.

​San Francisco Estuary Institute is a 501(c)(3) organization.
Our federal tax ID number is 94-2951373.

 

Other Ways to Give

Mail Your Check (payable to San Francisco Estuary Institute) to:

San Francisco Estuary Institute
Attn: Development Department
4911 Central Avenue
Richmond, CA 94804

Download a form and return it by mail:

 

To discuss legacy giving, or make a gift via a donor advised fund (DAF) or IRA, please contact us at 510-746-7334 or [email protected]

 

We are collaborative scientists and technologists who work with government agencies and communities to ensure healthy aquatic resources and to build climate change resilience for the Bay Area and its people.

Our place-based knowledge helps to identify nature-based, multi-benefit solutions (like wetland restoration and urban greening) that heal and revive our ecosystem, benefit people, and advance social justice.

The 75 scientists, landscape architects, GIS experts, programmers, designers, and data analysts at the San Francisco Estuary Institute are committed to this region; we raise our families here, and it is the source of our inspiration. Our home is our mission.

A center of excellence since 1993, SFEI delivers visionary science that empowers people to revitalize nature in our communities. Leading or partnering on over 100 projects each year, such as the landmark Sediment for Survival, SF Bay Regional Monitoring Program, Adaptation Atlas, and EcoAtlas, we provide essential science and technology that informs environmental policy decisions.

Learn more about our multi-disciplinary programs and legacy of work, or visit each program site below:

Clean Water

Leading collaborative science to improve bay water quality

Environmental Informatics

Creating tools to contextualize, disseminate, and apply data to decisions

Resilient Landscapes

Working with nature to foster ecological resilience

Our Partnerships

Collaborating with the private sector, environmental NGOs, academia, and public agencies throughout the Bay Area, SFEI helps communities adapt to a changing environment with policies and practices that work together - and with nature - for a healthy, resilient future. Through our partnerships, we provide opportunities for insight, growth, and progress. Here is merely a partial list of some notable partners:

 

 

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
Silicon Valley Community Foundation
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
US Geographic Survey (USGS)
US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
SF Public Utilities Commission (SF PUC)
Marin County
UC Berkeley
UC Davis
Sanford University
The Nature Conservancy
The Open Space Council
Point Blue Conservation Science
East Bay Municipal Water District (EBMUD)

 

The challenges faced by our region are complex and severe, but SFEI has some superpowers ready to go that could put us on a much better path.

  • The San Francisco Estuary Institute is an incubator of innovative solutions; testing and refining new applied science, management, and tools within our extensive network. The approaches we develop should be shared and scaled with others here and around the nation and world, as has frequently happened with California pushing the boundaries of environmental policy and management.
  • Sharing what we know and working together, we will restore natural resilience and support the development of healthy, green, equitable, and connected communities.
Measuring microplastics in Bay waters
Tracking the trash
Adapting the Bay shoreline to sea level rise

Together, we have the potential to provide a national model of how an urban region of eight million people, at the edge of the sea, overcomes these challenges and fosters resilient ecosystems where people and wildlife thrive.