The Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, one of the Bay Area’s biggest and best-known family foundations, is officially on a countdown clock. The Haas family says the fund will wind down and close at the end of 2028, a move that sets a schedule for distributing roughly half a billion dollars in philanthropic assets and that could force immigrant-rights groups, college-access programs and democracy-focused organizations to rethink their long-term budgets. Family directors say the decision reflects a generational handoff as younger relatives branch out into new giving efforts.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the fund’s board, made up of three children and three grandchildren of founders Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr., voted to sunset the foundation over the next two years. Board chair Wally Haas told the paper the choice was meant to share the joy and experience of philanthropy with their children. While the clock is ticking, the board says it will keep making grants as it carries out the wind-down plan.
Fund Size And Grantmaking By The Numbers
Financial filings show the Haas, Jr. Fund controls hundreds of millions in assets and sends out tens of millions of dollars to nonprofits each year. ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer lists total assets at roughly $484 million in the fund’s most recent filing and records charitable disbursements of nearly $30 million in 2024. The fund’s 2023 financial statements state that it has awarded about $719.6 million in grants since its founding in 1953 and report roughly $24.4 million in grants paid in 2023.
Local Legacy And Who Stands To Lose Funding
Over seven decades, the Haas, Jr. Fund has become a major backer of civil rights and immigrant rights organizations, as well as high-profile civic projects in the Bay Area. Past recipients include the ACLU of Northern California, the California Immigrant Policy Center and the California State University Foundation. The family has also supported the Chronicle’s Season of Sharing fund, the restoration of Crissy Field and UC Berkeley’s Haas Pavilion, cementing its name across local institutions.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that those long-running commitments mean the next few years will be closely watched by groups that rely on multi-year Haas, Jr. grants, since a careful exit could help soften the blow when that funding eventually disappears.
Leadership Changes And What Comes Next
The transition is not only financial. The fund’s longtime president and CEO, Cathy Cha, announced in April that she would step down to join the Freedom Together Foundation, a move the Haas, Jr. Fund confirmed in a staff letter. Haas, Jr. Fund communications say Cha will transition out at the end of May and that board chair Wally Haas will lay out a transition plan along with a search for new leadership. Even as the leadership shuffle plays out, directors say they intend to keep backing work on democracy, immigrant rights and college success while the foundation winds down.
Why Some Foundations Choose To Sunset
Setting an expiration date is a deliberate strategy some foundations use so they can concentrate their giving, speed up impact or hand off philanthropic responsibility to the next generation rather than run in perpetuity. Philanthropic organizations have documented spend-out strategies and lessons on how to prepare grantees for an eventual exit, and the Beldon Fund’s own spend-out materials look at how a fixed timeline reshaped that foundation’s strategy. Coverage of high-profile spend-down plans, including reporting on the Gates Foundation’s announced timeline, shows that these sunset decisions are relatively rare but can ripple across entire sectors that have grown to depend on long-term funding, as Devex has reported.
The next two years are expected to be a period of advance planning for the Haas, Jr. Fund and the nonprofits that have come to count on it. Family directors say they want an orderly wind-down. Nonprofits and Bay Area civic institutions will be looking for concrete transition steps, detailed timelines and clarity on what happens to marquee projects and long-term partnerships after 2028. Materials from The Beldon Fund and other reporting provide context on why some funders choose to sunset and how they try to cushion that landing for grantees.
