Bay Area Community Impact Grant Program
After 5 years of investment, the Cisco Foundation is sunsetting this community-focused grant program as we celebrate our final cohort of grantee partners. As the next iteration of our longtime commitment to locally focused grants, the Foundation launched a new Regional Solution Grants Program (RSG), which develops and enhances local or regional partnerships between Cisco employees and public charities in communities where employees live, work and/or give. RSG focuses on digital, tech-enabled solutions that support vulnerable and/or underserved people. Cisco volunteers nominate eligible organizations through an internal, employee-driven process.
Program strategy and impact
CIG program goal
Our goal is to close the education achievement gap for students from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade (pre-K–5) who come from underserved and under-resourced communities in the Bay Area.
Program investment opportunity and model
The achievement gap in foundational literacy and numeracy begins at an early age, and the gap follows many of these students throughout their educational and career journey. The issue is particularly acute for students who are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, students who are English language learners, and students of color who are from low-income families in high-need communities, are not performing at proficiency level, or are at risk of falling behind. Students have also been adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and disrupted instructional time. This disruption has resulted in lack of access to basic needs, a steep learning loss, isolation, and lack of social-emotional learning opportunities.
It is never too early. Studies have shown that return on investment for education is optimal when efforts are made to support children at an earlier age. "Early skills breed later skills because early learning begets later learning." (Source: "The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children" by James J. Heckman and Dimitriy V. Masterov, 2007.)
Through CIGs, Cisco invests in nonprofit partners who are equipping low-income pre-K–5 students with the literacy and numeracy skills necessary to be successful early in their educational pathway. The goal is to provide a strong foundation for future learning and access to higher education and career opportunities, including science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects and fields.
- We offer annual cash grants to selected direct-service nonprofit partners that are diverse in size, leadership, and service offerings to foster a local ecosystem consisting of organizations addressing the challenge at hand.
- We seek to fund promising program models with potential for replication and scaling across communities, as well as new innovations that have potential to close the achievement gap.
- We use other corporate resources to offer integrated support to grantee partners, including employee volunteerism, Cisco technology donations, advisory support, and networking opportunities.
Applying this approach for deeper engagement over multiple years, we invest and partner with service organizations to help strengthen their organizational capacity to take their program/service to the next level in order to position them for long-term viability and impact on the students and their families.
Focus area
Pre-K–5 education: Foundational literacy and numeracy, along with integration of social-emotional learning in instructional support
Past and current CIG grantee partners
826 Valencia (Bay View, San Francisco)
Bay Area Tutoring Association (San Jose)
Catholic Charities CYO of the Archdiocese of San Francisco (East Palo Alto)
Chapter 510 (Oakland)
Children Rising (Oakland)
Girls Inc. of Alameda County (Oakland)
Jamestown Community Center, Inc. (Mission District, San Francisco)
Olimpico Learning (Santa Clara County)
Partners in School Innovation (Bay View, San Francisco)
Project Read (Redwood City)
Raising a Reader (Bay Area)
Reading Partners (Bay Area)
Safe Passages (Oakland)
San Jose Grail Family Services (Alum Rock School District, San Jose)
San Jose Public Library Foundation (in support of the social-emotional learning evaluation work under development by the Extended Learning Community of Practice)
Silicon Valley Education Foundation (Santa Clara and San Mateo counties)
Think Together (San Jose)