Mimi and Peter Haas Fund

Mimi and Peter Haas Fund

The Mimi and Peter Haas Fund was established in 1982 by the late Peter E. Haas, former Chairman of Levi Strauss & Co. and great-grandnephew of the company's founder, and his wife Mimi L. Haas. The foundation's endowment is built on wealth generated by the iconic San Francisco apparel company, and Mimi Haas remains its President, actively directing its operations more than four decades after its founding. Two of her sons, Daniel Lurie — elected Mayor of San Francisco in 2024 — and Ari Lurie, a professional artist, serve as Trustees. The foundation operates as a model of geographic and programmatic focus, directing its full grantmaking capacity toward early childhood education in San Francisco. It exclusively targets children from birth to age five in low-income families, funding organizations that deliver center-based and home-based early care and education. The Fund also collaborates with public agencies and other nonprofits to shape local early childhood policy, amplifying its impact beyond individual grants. Its portfolio includes support for organizations such as the Children's Council of San Francisco, a respected early education resource and referral agency, and the San Francisco Early Childhood Community of Practice, reflecting a strategy that blends service delivery with systems-level reform. The Fund maintains a deliberately lean operational structure typical of a focused private family foundation, with no additional offices beyond its San Francisco headquarters. While precise staffing numbers are not publicly disclosed, its grantmaking volume is anchored by an estimated endowment in the $175 million to $200 million range (Altss estimate). Beyond the foundation, the Haas family's broader institutional footprint includes Mimi Haas's leadership roles at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she serves as Vice Chair, and her membership in the Council on Foreign Relations and the Global Philanthropists Circle — networks that signal engagement with national arts and policy communities. In early 2025, Daniel Lurie assumed the mayoralty of San Francisco following a November 2024 election victory, an event that places a Fund Trustee at the helm of the city the foundation serves (per the Associated Press, November 2024). The Fund's structure as a place-based, single-issue foundation is its differentiator. Unlike diversified or cause-agnostic family philanthropies, it deliberately forgoes broad mandates to pursue depth in one geography and one age cohort. This restriction concentrates risk but also concentrates expertise and relationships within a contained ecosystem, making the foundation a significant actor in San Francisco's early childhood sector despite a modest endowment relative to its wealth-origin peers.