In 1986, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund co-founder, Walter A. Haas, Jr., and the Fund’s President, Ira Hirschfield, approached the San Francisco Chronicle with an idea: the Bay Area needed a charitable fund to help individuals and families in crisis. Since our founding, we have distributed more than $185 million – $156 million in housing and critical needs assistance and $29 million in food assistance – to help prevent homelessness and hunger throughout the nine counties of the Bay Area. Chronicle Season of Sharing Fund is one of the leading providers of emergency financial assistance for residents in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano and Sonoma counties. In our many years of service, more than 175,000 households have received vital emergency assistance.
