Our mission is to expand access to financial services, savings and investment opportunities for low-income and immigrant residents of San Francisco's Mission District so that they can build a more secure economic future for themselves, their families and community.
Mission Action | Contact the SF Board of Supervisors Today!
Immigrant families make up more than one-third of San Francisco’s population. Low-income working immigrants are especially vulnerable in these tough economic times. They are dealing with extreme economic hardships which are made worse still by being turned away from many federal safety net programs in their time of need. Legal immigrants - regardless of income or need - are restricted for 5 years from participating in social safety net programs like CalWORKs, Food Stamps, and SSI. Undocumented immigrants are categorically ineligible to receive public assistance with only a few exemptions like emergency medical care.
Without access to safety net programs, immigrant families can only turn to community-based organizations for help. Indeed, they are going to soup kitchens, community food banks, senior nutrition programs, community health clinics, and any group that may actually lend a helping hand. And these are precisely the programs now in danger of sever budget cuts.
Community organizations answered the call to help immigrant families. Now it's our turn to help them ensure that they have the funding and capacity to continue their much needed work.
RED | Matching People to Resources
MAF launches La RED | Matching People to Resources, an online screening and referral system that is revolutionizing the way community based organizations assess and refer clients to services.
Simply put, La RED works by matching a client’s socio-economic profile against eligibility criteria from an array of different community services, government programs, and financial products. La RED then produces a list of matching services, sorted by a 5-star rating system to signal the best matches for that specific client. At which point, clients can ask for referrals to services that they are most interested in or they can even complete applications for a select number of services online. Cool, right?
In the Mission District, we are fortunate to have over 60 nonprofit organizations that provide critical services to low income families. It is a difficult task, however, to learn of all of the services that these organizations provide. It’s even more daunting to learn of the actual eligibility criteria for each of those services. But that is precisely what we – and every service provider has to do in order to assess where to refer clients.
