DrawBridge has always been supported by people and organizations who believe that every child deserves access to creative expression. Here are some of the partnerships that make our work possible — and what they look like in action.

When people ask how a 37-year-old nonprofit keeps showing up every week at shelter sites across the Bay Area with high-quality art materials and skilled facilitators, the honest answer is: we don't do it alone. Behind every DrawBridge session is a network of community partners — foundations, businesses, and neighbors — who invest in children's creative expression because they've seen what it makes possible.

Here are a few of those partnerships that have helped us bring resources and champions to our mission - and the stories behind them.

Genesis Inspiration Foundation

In 2025, the Genesis Inspiration Foundation visited DrawBridge to see our programs firsthand — and presented us with a $25,000 grant to continue our work.

Genesis Inspiration Foundation is a national nonprofit committed to improving educational outcomes for children through the arts. Founded in 2018 and supported by Genesis Motor America, the foundation has awarded over $13 million in grants to museums, schools, and community arts organizations across the country. Their belief is simple and powerful: when a child has access to the arts, they are inspired to become creative thinkers and engaged learners.

For DrawBridge, this grant represents something extremely meaningful. It is support from a national funder that what we've built — free, trauma-informed expressive arts delivered directly in the communities where children live — is the kind of programming that truly matters. And it's a reminder that the work happening in our small corners of the Bay Area is part of a much larger movement to ensure every child has access to the transformative power of creative expression.

Blick Art Materials

Anyone who's spent time in a DrawBridge session knows that materials are part of the experience of experimentation and exploration. Rather than just handing children broken crayons and copy paper, we bring high-quality art supplies — because the materials themselves communicate something to a child about how much their creative voice is worth.

Blick Art Materials has been a consistent partner in making that possible, donating supplies to our programs year after year. But the partnership goes beyond donations.

When we hosted our Corporate Volunteer Day at The Embarcadero Center in 2025, Blick was right there with us — providing the supplies, and the team also showed up in person to lead a paper flower making workshop for participants. It was one of those moments where a corporate partners, and volunteers, become more like our creative collaborators and champions.

Corporate Volunteer Day at the Embarcadero

For our Corporate Volunteer Day in 2025, we partnered with BXP and invited tenants of Embarcadero Center to come to the gallery and assemble art kits for children across our shelter sites, using supplies generously donated by Blick Art Materials. Teams from offices throughout the building spent their afternoon packing kits with the same high-quality materials our facilitators bring to every session — and learning about the children and communities those kits would reach.

Blick also facilitated a hands-on paper flower making activity for the tenants — a chance for adults to experience a small taste of the kind of creative engagement our children experience every week. It's one thing to hear about what DrawBridge does. It's another thing entirely to sit down with art materials and make something with your own hands. For many participants, that was the moment the mission clicked.

These volunteer days embody something we believe deeply: that the adults in our community benefit from creative engagement just as much as the children we serve. When corporate professionals step away from their desks to make something beautiful for a child they've never met, both lives are enriched. We are excited to have our corporate partners, and volunteers, continue to become our creative collaborators and champions. Thank you BXP! Look out for our next official corporate volunteer day in 2026!

A Community Mural with Oakland Highschool Kids

As part of our Community Artist Program, we collaborated with Joaquin, a muralist from Oakland, on a mural project that brought DrawBridge highschool youth together to create a public work of art - that is now displayed in our Embarcadero Art of San Francisco exhibit. For our young participants, this was a chance to see their creative expression move beyond the shelter walls and into public space — working alongside an artist who understands what it means to use art as a voice in your own community.

Projects like this reflect something central to the DrawBridge philosophy: creative expression isn't something that only happens in our sessions. It's a capacity that grows, travels, and finds new forms. When a young person who's been creating at a DrawBridge site helps paint a mural right in their neighborhood, that's community cultural wealth made visible.

Why These Partnerships Matter

Every one of these stories — a foundation grant, a supply donation, a volunteer day, a mural — represents a different way that community shows up for children and youth experiencing housing instability - the core communities we serve. There's no single model. There's no one-size-fits-all partnership. What connects them is a shared belief that children deserve access to creative expression, and a willingness to act on that belief in whatever way makes sense.

We're always looking for new partners who share that commitment. Whether you're a foundation, a business, a community organization, or an individual with an idea — we'd love to explore what we could build together.

Become a partner → info@drawbridge.org