Nonprofits found way forward in dire times

A decade ago, when the Great Recession sank the economy, nonprofit organizations struggled; foundations scaled back as their endowments shrank.

And yet, three San Francisco nonprofit groups — La Cocina, a culinary incubator for lowincome entrepreneurs; Voice of Witness, which publishes oral histories to illuminate human rights crises here and abroad; and San Francisco Public Press, a local news organization funded by donations from the public and community foundations — each are celebrating milestones this year.

At a time when the future of the city again seems to hang in the balance, I spoke with these organizations about how they persisted.

La Cocina had its start in 2005, and four years later the organization founded the San Francisco Street Food Festival because they had trouble placing their entrepreneurs in existing events. “They weren’t a priority. Their value wasn’t appreciated,” said La Cocina Executive Director Caleb Zigas. “The idea was to show the Bay Area that our entrepreneurs were the best at what they do.”

On Saturday, Oct. 12, the festival returns with more than 50 chefs and restaurants, including newcomers, as well as incubator graduates who have gone on to success.

“What kind of place do we want to live in? And how do we make that life possible?” Zigas said, reflecting on the challenges ahead, and the need for affordable housing and affordable restaurants in the Bay Area. “To make this the kind of a place that you want to live in, you just have to say that this is the kind of place that we want to live in, and then stand behind it.”

La Cocina also hosts an immersive storytelling project twice a year, is planning a food hall in the Tenderloin and in June published its first cookbook, “We Are La Cocina: Recipes in Pursuit of the American Dream.”

Around the time La Cocina was getting off the ground, editor, publisher and writer Dave Eggers and physician Lola Vollen sought to tell stories dedicated to listening at length and without judgment, and published 13 oral histories in “Surviving Justice: America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated.”

In 2009, a watershed year, Voice of Witness acquired its nonprofit status under cofounder and executive director Mimi Lok, with a continuing focus on the criminal justice system, migration and displacement. In projects led by people with deep ties to communities, the aim is to portray narrators not simply as victims of the issue addressed, but in all their human complexity. The narrators have full control and final approval of their stories.

“I have learned that my story is a form of activism. It’s a movement,” said Gabriel Mendez at the organization’s gala last month.

The story of how Mendez survived homophobia and sexual abuse in Honduras, and crossed the border at the age of 15, is featured in “Solita, Solita: Crossing Borders With Refugees From Central America,” published in April. Rep. Jackie Speier even read an excerpt of Mendez’s story in Congress. Now a student at UC Berkeley, Mendez dreams of becoming a lawyer to defend the rights of children.

“People are hungry for more indepth, more nuanced kinds of storytelling,” Lok said. “Once there’s a human point of connection, once you start identifying with someone with an experience completely different than yours, it’s hard to return to your previous way of thinking. It’s powerful for complicating people’s thinking about issues and the community — complicating in a good way.”

In 2008, as wave after wave of layoffs hit the journalism industry nationwide, Michael Stoll began hosting monthly meetings in San Francisco that would give rise to the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization with a website, a quarterly newspaper and, as of August, a radio station, KSFP 102.5 FM.

Stoll, the executive director and editor, recalled how its first foray into print in 2009 was in collaboration with Eggers and a special issue of his McSweeney’s literary magazine, titled “San Francisco Panorama” — a onetime only, Sundayeditionsize newspaper.

After Stoll mentioned they wanted to continue with their own print publication eventually, Eggers said, “Just do it. What’s stopping you?”

Within a few months, the press — which had acquired nonprofit status — put out its own print edition in 2010.

“Even though raising money in the downturn was more difficult, there were individuals who had been pushed out of journalism, who didn’t want to leave,” said publisher Lila LaHood. “They were willing to come to meetings and volunteer and participate in something new, because they thought, ‘This can’t be it. Where do we go from here?’ They wanted to see something come out of a moment that seemed like a dire situation.”

Words to live by, now and then.

“You that this just is have the kind to say of place that we want to live in, and then stand behind it.” Caleb Zigas of La Cocina