About Us
We work to help others access the opportunity and connectedness that our family has been extremely fortunate to enjoy, and we work to strengthen systems to make that possible. We are drawn to difficult challenges and to big ideas, particularly those being overlooked by others. We are not afraid to take on seemingly intractable problems, to explore uncharted territory, or to support projects that cut against the conventional wisdom. We like to be able to see and feel the issues we’re working on. Proximity offers us a more authentic understanding of the challenges and opportunities and an ability to roll up our sleeves to be part of the solutions. We approach our work with a deep sense of empathy, humility, and determination. We listen. We participate. We lead. We follow. We play well with others.
Grantmaking
Our foundation invests in Mental Health and Healthcare, Democracy and Civic Health, Jewish Life, and the Arts.
We are fortunate to work with a robust set of grant partners, some of whom you can read about below. Out of respect for your time and ours, we do not accept unsolicited proposals.
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The John Pritzker Family Fund seeks to promote wellbeing by sustaining and enhancing health care provision for the most at-need people in our community.
Having experienced mental health conditions first-hand in our own family, the John Pritzker Family Fund is committed to reducing stigma and discrimination and to ensuring care is available to those who need it. Historically, people have been reticent to discuss their emotional and mental wellbeing; we aspire to break through this situation so that people feel comfortable seeking proper care and do not hold themselves back from their full potential. We support efforts to reduce stigma at the individual, interpersonal, and structural levels. Through our investments in this area, we aspire to elevate conversations about mental health across different sectors and settings, normalize the dialogue around mental health, and advance mental health treatment, to ultimately drive positive change in people’s lives and across the system.
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The John Pritzker Family Fund believes that citizens have a responsibility to their local communities and to one another. We invest in the civic health of the San Francisco Bay Area through programs that support critical community needs and civic infrastructure, that seek to make the area more livable for all residents, and that help create an informed and engaged citizenry. In California and across the world, we support communal recovery from, and resilience to, humanitarian and environmental disasters. And we invest in organizations at the local and national levels that fight for the rights of vulnerable populations, expand democratic participation and social cohesion, and defend the core principles and institutions of democracy and the rule of law.
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Motivated by the culture and tradition of the Jewish people, as well as that of our own family, the John Pritzker Family Fund supports a vibrant Jewish future in the United States, Israel, and around the world. With a primary emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area, we invest in vital institutions that serve the Jewish and broader communities. We also support work in, and related to, Israel, including educational experiences, social services, and civic projects that illuminate the rich history of the Jewish people.
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The John Pritzker Family Fund believes that the arts provide essential outlets for creativity, imagination, and outside-the-box thinking, and are key to unleashing human potential. The foundation also believes that the arts can elevate the human spirit and deepen human understanding and compassion. We are primarily focused on the visual arts.
Select projects
UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building
The foundation made a leadership gift to the University of California, San Francisco to design and build the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building, the new home of UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences as of Summer 2022. The building is the culmination of a long-standing vision to integrate physical and mental health at UCSF. It is designed to optimize patient care, drive collaborative research across disciplines and disorders, and destigmatize mental health care through intentional design.
India Basin
Waterfront Park
One of the foundation’s proudest investments, the India Basin Park Project is an ambitious environmental justice and open space initiative to build a new, accessible, and contiguous waterfront park for San Francisco’s Bayview community. In addition to design and partial construction of the park, the foundation’s grant is supporting a vital environmental clean-up of the former ship-building site at the center of the future park. The India Basin Park Project is a joint venture of the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department, the Trust for Public Land, and other community organizations.
Bluff Collaborative
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Bluff Collaborative for Research on Dada and Surrealism is an interdisciplinary initiative at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that brings together the museum, archive, and studio to advance fresh scholarship, perspectives, and conversations on the power of art and ideas in society today. Through study, lectures, performances, and more, the Bluff Collaborative inspires artists, scholars, and Museum visitors to find new meaning in history and to approach the uncertainties and challenges of contemporary times with curiosity, experimentalism, and a spirit of emergent collaboration. For its inaugural year, the Bluff Collaborative program is dedicated to the artist Man Ray in conjunction with the exhibition Man Ray: When Objects Dream (September 14, 2025 – February 1, 2026).
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To help defend the core principles and institutions of democracy and the rule of law, the foundation supports the Protect Democracy Project. Protect Democracy’s nonpartisan mission is to prevent American democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government. The organization works on six key areas that concern scholars of autocracy: corruption of elections, executive power grabs, delegitimizing vulnerable communities, politicizing independent institutions, spreading disinformation, and quashing dissent. Protect Democracy deploys a range of tools in its work, including litigation, policy advocacy, and communications. Click here for more information.
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The foundation supports the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC)’s vital work representing the Jewish community in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. In addition to general support, our grant making helps underwrite the JCRC’s Israel Study Tour program, which brings influential Bay Area civic leaders to Israel with the goal of exposing them to a deeper understanding of Jews, the Jewish community, and Israel; and its Advancing Democracy Initiative, through which the organized Jewish community employs advocacy, education, and coalition-building to fight for a strong, healthy democratic and civil society in the United States. Click here for more information.
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The foundation supports Bring Change to Mind (BC2M)’s critical work to end stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness. Through their evidence-based, peer-to-peer high school and undergraduate programs and Public Service Announcements (PSAs), BC2M offers platforms to share, connect, and learn about mental health. Click here for more information.
