More Good News About GLIDE
More Good News About GLIDE:
A letter from our President and CEO
Dear Friends,
I am excited to share some good news about GLIDE for the coming months! While we’ve been innovating and adapting during COVID-19, we’ve also been making headway on our plans to deepen and expand GLIDE’s impact and provide sustainable solutions to the growing challenges facing San Francisco. Below are a few highlights of what’s coming up in 2022:
Doubling our Reach
GLIDE is planning to expand its reach by bringing integrated services to under-resourced neighborhoods across San Francisco to help more people off the streets for good. We will increase our mobile fleet of vans, pop-up service hubs, and community-based partnerships to bring expanded services, referrals, and linkages to South of Market (SOMA), Potrero Hill, Bayview Hunters Point and more areas of the Tenderloin. For both families and individuals, we will provide essential stabilizing services and resources to address immediate needs as well as those needs inherent in building stable, healthy lives, avoiding homelessness and building pathways out of poverty.
Modernizing our Facilities
GLIDE’s longstanding leadership in the Tenderloin and our commitment to provide hope and solutions for the community remain a top priority. To deepen our impact in the Tenderloin and across the city, we have begun exploring opportunities to upgrade our outdated headquarters at 330 Ellis. In March, GLIDE submitted a Real Estate Preliminary Project Assessment (PPA) to the City of San Francisco to examine the feasibility of upgrading our building into a new community services hub. This will allow us to remain an anchor in the Tenderloin with expanded service space in an enhanced, equitable, and more modern facility. This is a preliminary step to explore the feasibility of a multi-year development process with collective community input.
Updating our Governance
GLIDE has established a new structure that separates the governance and management of the GLIDE Foundation from Glide Memorial Church. GLIDE Foundation has updated its non-profit legal status to a 501(c)(3) public benefit corporation to reflect the foundation’s longstanding – and growing – body of work on direct services, systems change and equity. Glide Memorial Church is now a legal subsidiary of GLIDE Foundation and designated as a non-profit religious corporation with its own board of directors. While we continue to operate with many shared values, this distinction between GLIDE Foundation and Glide Memorial Church provides long-needed clarity for our community and aligns with best practices on separation of religious from non-religious activities.
Expanding Equity & Inclusion
This year, to expand our efforts to evolve and influence institutions of power, we’re planning another transformative Justice Pilgrimage to Alabama. We begin the journey with a curated experience by GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice to open eyes and minds to our collective history of slavery and its modern manifestations. This sojourn adds forceful testimony to how racism is woven throughout our country via oppressive and unjust systems, policies, and laws – as well as within business models and practices. Along with our empathy-building programs with police, district attorneys, and healthcare workers, these initiatives create change agents who – upon returning to their professional alliances – drive more progress towards equity and inclusion.
“From expanded integrated services to modernizing outdated facilities and governance structures to transformative racial justice work, these innovative efforts reflect how we are building the next generation of GLIDE.” ~Karen Hanrahan, GLIDE President & CEO
From expanded integrated services to modernizing outdated facilities and governance structures to transformative racial justice work, these innovative efforts reflect how we are building the next generation of GLIDE. We remain rooted in our values and are steadfastly committed to helping more people off the streets, out of poverty, and bringing lasting change to our city.
I look forward to keeping you updated and engaged as a supporter and thought partner as GLIDE progresses. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with ideas and questions in the coming months.
With gratitude,
