Heising-Simons Action Fund

The Heising-Simons Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area

Our Work

The Heising-Simons Action Fund, established in 2020, is funded by the Heising-Simons family and is governed by a four-person Board. The organization is a separate legal entity from the Heising-Simons Foundation (a 501 (c)(3) private foundation) but focuses on many of the same issues, including the following areas:

Climate and Clean Energy

The Climate and Clean Energy program seeks to protect people from the worst impacts of climate change by supporting organizations that help advance policies to spur large-scale progress curbing pollution, and to ensure that a low-carbon future is a prosperous one for the most vulnerable communities.

2022 awards include:

  • National Wildlife Federation Action Fund for general support – $250,000
  • Partnership Project Action Fund for general support – $200,000
  • Solar United Neighbors Action for general support – $100,000
  • California Environmental Voters for general support – $100,000
  • BlueGreen Alliance for general support – $275,000
  • Sixteen Thirty Fund for the Climate Equity Action Fund – $500,000
  • Climate Jobs Action Fund for general support – $400,000
  • Fund for a Better Future for Climate Power – $400,000
  • EDF Action for general support – $400,000
  • Energy Action Fund for general support – $475,000
  • Advanced Energy Works for general support – $200,000
  • League of Conservation Voters for general support – $400,000
  • NRDC Action Fund for general support – $300,000
  • Bipartisan Policy Center Action for general support – $300,000
  • Center for American Progress Action Fund for general support – $250,000
  • Climate Cabinet Action for general support – $50,000
  • WE ACT 4 Change for general support – $200,000
  • Sunrise Movement for general support – $100,000
  • Tides Advocacy for the Green New Deal Network Action – $100,000

Community and Opportunity

The Community and Opportunity program focuses on bolstering civic engagement and community advocacy in the city of San Jose, as well as grassroots mobilization at the federal and state level to strengthen democracy and equitable representation, for example, in support of  democracy and redistricting reform legislation.

2022 awards include:

  • North Fund for Fair Representation in Redistricting Action Fund — $250,000
  • States United Action for general support – $700,000

Education

The Education program focuses on substantially increasing public financing of the early childhood education field at the federal, state, and local levels, with a special emphasis on California.

2022 awards include:

  • MomsRising Together for general support – $400,000
  • First Five Action Fund for general support – $500,000
  • Million Voter Project Action Fund for general support – $200,000
  • Our Kids Our Future for Our Kids Our Future Initiative – $225,000
  • Impact Fellows Action Fund for general support – $400,000
  • Center for Community Change Action for general support – $500,000
  • Care for Monterey County Kids for general support – $225,000
  • Care in Action for general support – $400,000
  • Children’s Funding Accelerator for general support – $400,000
  • Early Care and Education for All South San Francisco for general support – $25,000
  • Vote Yes for Kids for general support – $300,000
  • Stand for Children, Inc. for general support – $400,000
  • Save the Children Action Network for general support – $400,000
  • National Women’s Law Center Action Fund for general support – $300,000
  • Pomona Kids First for general support – $75,000
  • Parent Voices Action for general support – $100,000
  • Care for Monterey County Kids for general support – $25,000
  • Communities for A New California for general support – $100,000
  • Early Care and Education for All South San Francisco for general support – $24,999

Human Rights

The Human Rights program focuses on building the long-term power of communities of color most impacted by mass criminalization, in both the criminal legal and the immigration systems, so that they have increased collective power to change the structures that impact their lives.

2022 awards include:

  • Color of Change for general support – $400,000
  • Tides Advocacy for Sister Warriors Action Fund – $400,000
  • Equity Action for general support – $200,000
  • Tides Advocacy for Texas Black Civic Engagement Action Fund – $100,000
  • Siembra NC for general support –$100,000
  • Workers Defense Action Fund for general support – $150,000
  • North Carolina A Philip Randolph Educational Fund for general support – $150,000
  • Ella Baker Center Action Fund for general support – $100,000
  • Center for Empowered Politics for Oakland Rising Action – $100,000
  • Texas Organizing Project for general support – $250,000
  • Caldwell Hays Examiner for general support – $50,000
  • Advance North Carolina Inc for general support – $150,000
  • Tides Advocacy for Chispa – $75,000
  • OC Action for OCCET Action – $100,000
  • MOVE Texas Action Fund for general support – $150,000
  • Texas Freedom Network for general support – $150,000
  • Tides Advocacy to support Equity in Advance’s work on the Emerald New Deal initiative – $200,000
  • Tides Advocacy for La Defensa – $300,000
  • Poder NC Action for general support – $200,000
  • Asian American Advocacy Fund, Inc. for general support – $200,000
  • Mijente for general support – $200,000
  • Initiate Justice Action for general support – $100,000
  • GLAHR Action Network for general support – $100,000
  • Carolina Federation for general support – $200,000
  • New Left Accelerator for capacity building supports and technical assistance to Heising Simons Action Fund grantees – $325,000
  • Dignity and Power in Action for general support – $200,000
  • Forward Justice Action Network for general support – $100,000
  • Working Families Organization for United Fort Worth – $200,000
  • Yes on Measure A for general support – $100,000

The Heising-Simons Action Fund is committed to transparency. We will continue to share descriptions of our work as the Action Fund evolves, and we plan to post a list of the Fund’s grants and contributions on a regular basis. You can find past awards made by the Action Fund  here. You can find the Action Fund’s 990 Form for the year 2020  here , and for the year 2021  here. You can find the Action Fund’s Audited Financial Statement for the year 2020  here , and for the year 2021  here.

The Heising-Simons Action Fund does not accept unsolicited proposals in any of its areas of work. If you have been invited to submit a letter of inquiry or a proposal to the Action Fund, please contact your program officer for additional instructions.

Board

Liz Simons

Liz Simons is chair of the board of the Heising-Simons Foundation. She is also chair of the board of the Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that seeks to create and sustain a sense of national urgency about the U.S. criminal justice system. She is a founding pledger of One for Justice, and an advisory board member of Smart Justice California—in which she regularly lifts up her voice in support of bills and policies that systems-impacted youth are fighting for. Additionally, she volunteers at The Beat Within, a magazine by and for incarcerated youth.

A former teacher, Liz worked in Spanish-bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Liz earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s in education from Stanford University.

Liz Simons and her husband, Mark Heising, founded the Heising-Simons Foundation in 2007 and joined the Giving Pledge in 2016, publicly committing the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. You can read the letter they wrote about why they joined here.

Mark Heising

Mark Heising serves as a board member of the Heising-Simons Action Fund. In 2004, he founded Medley Partners, a private market investment firm. Previously he was the Founder of VLSI Cores, which designed and licensed cryptographic integrated circuits. He holds six U.S. Patents in cryptography, compression and data communications. Mark serves on the board of directors for the Heising-Simons Foundation and Sion Power, and as a trustee or board member for the nonprofits Environmental Defense Fund, the Institute for Advanced Study. Mark and his wife, Liz Simons, took the Giving Pledge in 2016, publicly committing the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. Mark earned a BS in Physics and a MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California at Berkeley.

Caitlin Heising

Caitlin Heising serves as a board member of the Heising‐Simons Action Fund. She received a Master of Public Administration at the London School of Economics (LSE) with a focus on social impact, graduating with distinction in 2020. Previously, she worked with Article 3 Advisors, a human rights and strategic philanthropy consultancy based in San Francisco. In 2014, she joined the board of the Heising‐Simons Foundation, where she has developed a grantmaking program focused on human rights and criminal justice reform in the U.S. She currently serves as vice chair of the Heising-Simons Foundation.

Caitlin serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch and is the vice chair of HRW’s U.S. Program Advisory Committee. She sits on the Advisory Council of the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice based in London. She is also a founding member of Maverick Collective, a global community of strategic philanthropists and advocates working to end extreme poverty by improving the health and rights of women and girls around the world. She was a 2016 Research Fellow at Institute for the Future, where she collaborated on research projects exploring the future of philanthropy and social innovation. Caitlin holds a BA in international relations from Brown University.

Sushma Raman

Sushma Raman serves as a board member of the Heising‐Simons Action Fund. She is an interdisciplinary and experienced philanthropic leader. Sushma brings over two decades of experience launching, scaling, and leading social justice and philanthropic programs and collaboratives, including helping build capabilities of grassroots human rights organizations and their leaders. She has also taught graduate courses in the public policy schools at UCLA, USC, Tufts Fletcher School, and Harvard Kennedy School.

Sushma is the President and CEO of the Heising-Simons Foundation, and a Board Member at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. Prior to joining the Heising-Simons Foundation in 2023, Sushma was the Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy since 2015. Her work prior to that included time as a program officer and program manager at the Ford Foundation, where she launched and managed a $100 million global initiative to support emerging human rights and women’s funds globally, and experience as a program officer at the Open Society Foundation, where she launched and coordinated a portion of a $50 million grantmaking program supporting immigrant and refugee rights and the impact of welfare reform. Sushma also led the Southern California Grantmakers association as its President from 2007 to 2012.