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 [...]

The Sierra Club

Founded by legendary conservationist John Muir in 1892, the Sierra Club is now the nation’s largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization — with more than two million members and supporters. Our successes range from protecting millions of acres of wilderness to helping pass the Clean Air Act, Clean Water [...]

Environment|

Theatre Bay Area

Theatre Bay Area – Causing a Scene since 1976 Believing the arts to be essential to society, we invest in the Bay Area’s creative community. The result— our region is one of the most vibrant & unique cultural destinations in the world. Now engaging millions of arts participants each year, [...]

Edgy Arts|

Vida Verde

Providing free, overnight, environmental learning experiences for students who don’t otherwise get the opportunity. V.V. was born from the need to offer inner-city kids the opportunities and experiences that can ignite imagination, link classroom lessons to reality and boost self-confidence. These very experiences are birthrights of most children of the [...]

Human Resilience|