• Our Approach
• Our Philosophy
• Our Mission
• Our People

HSF adopts an integrated strategy to our work that combines grantmaking, leveraging and learning. The core of our work is making grants to help organizations achieve social justice for their constituents. Through our grantmaking we provide funds to help organizations do their work, learn about a range of issues impacting low-income families, and build relationships with leaders across the country. HSF also tries to leverage our position within philanthropy by strategically working with other funders to increase resources and opportunities for issues and organizations that are related to our interests. On occasion, HSF will lend our voice in support of efforts that advocate for specific policy and/or institutional practice changes. Finally, HSF sees itself as a learning institution and actively explores opportunities to advance our own learning, promote and enhance the understanding of our issues in the broader public and provide the space for our grassroots and funder partners to learn with and from one another.

We believe that all of our work begins with, rests on and is furthered by building strong and authentic relationships with our strategic partners (primarily grassroots organizing groups, related intermediaries and funders). We try to engage with our partners first on the level of values, vision and analysis and, then on strategy, capacity and outcomes. Direct, on-going and pro-active dialogue is key to our practice and growth. With our grassroots partners (we don’t use the term "grantees"), we recognize that the power dynamics between grassroots groups and foundations is a major barrier to developing authentic relationships. However, we believe that if we ground these relationships in building a broader political vision together, then we can traverse many of these barriers. With our funder partners, we also look for opportunities to share, partner, learn and collaborate. We try to be an accurate conduit of lessons and insights gleaned from our grassroots partners and seek to bring attention to critical opportunities, issues and ideas. Relative to the struggle for social justice, foundations have more to offer than a grant check, and grassroots groups have more to offer than campaign victories. It’s only through working together strategically and with an enhanced vision of our roles that we can create new opportunities to advance social justice overall.