Focus Areas

Edgy Arts

We focus our arts-funding on providing Bay Area audiences relevant, enlightening, intimate and high-quality arts experiences. We partner with creative leaders in the Bay Area, supporting their missions to bring diverse, under-represented, emerging artistic talent to audiences and to the public eye. RHE Charitable Foundation shares these organizations’ goal of increasing audiences attending and participating in the arts.

Human Resilience

We partner with nonprofits that provide for our challenged community members. Human Resilience is empowered through education, housing and social services, mental health and addiction-recovery services, and self-esteem building partnerships and mentorship. Our Executive Director witnessed remarkable human resilience when serving as a counselor for Swords to Plowshares housing program.

The Environment

We support a selected number of Northern California’s stewards of the environment. These leaders and their nonprofit organizations deftly watch after and advocate to preserve our region’s natural treasures through habitat preservation, conservation research, partnership-building and environmental advocacy, environmental science and environmental education. Our future depends on kids and families getting outdoors today.

Mission Statement

RHE Charitable Foundation’s Mission is to extend the legacy of compassion and generosity created by its founder, Richard Henry Epstein.

We provide grants to organizations whose work we admire.

We are particularly interested in:
– Protection of lands and waters that serve to enrich the lives of all creatures, including us.
– Restoration of human resilience
– Cultivation of edgy arts

Partnerships

Swords to Plowshares
When Their Service Ends, Our (or Their) Mission Begins: War causes wounds and suffering that last beyond the battlefield. Swords to Plowshares’ mission is to heal the wounds, to restore dignity, hope, and self-sufficiency to all veterans [...]
The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy is the leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. The mission of The Nature Conservancy is to conserve the lands and [...]
Playwrights Foundation
Playwrights Foundation is one of RHE’s first grantees. As a center for new play development that supports and champions contemporary playwrights in the creation of new works to sustain theater as a vital, dynamic art [...]

Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund

SV2 is a high-impact giving circle. Our donors (“Partners”) pool their skills, energy, ideas, and money ($5-25K annually) to make a bigger, more meaningful difference than any one person could make alone. Our 180 Partners together decide which cutting‐edge nonprofits will receive SV2’s 3-year grants ($100-150K each)  in the areas [...]

Environment|

Soulographie / Playwright’s Foundation: “Dogsbody”

Intersection for the Arts, Playwrights Foundation, and Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project present Dogsbody by Erik Ehn. Directed by Rebecca Novick, Choreography by Erika Chong Shuch. Performed by Catherine Castellanos*, Rami Margron* and Reggie D. White*A Member of the Actors’ Equity Association. Ehn takes us deep into a meditation on [...]

Edgy Arts|

Starr King Elementary School

Located on the southwestern slope of Potrero Hill in San Francisco, Starr King Elementary School serves students from the immediate Potrero Hill neighborhood as well as San Francisco at large. Honoring the spirit of our school’s namesake, Thomas Starr King, our diverse student body of 360 students comes from all [...]

Human Resilience|