Dot #1. Good Eggs is a fast-growing San Francisco start-up. Good Eggs delivers all the goodness of the farmers' market, direct to your door. Local farmers and producers pick your items the very next morning and they are delivered. 

Dot #2. Index Ventures is in the top tier of Silicon Valley venture capital firms. Of late, Index is starting to ask the seemingly un-VC-like question of "What does this company do for social good?" which led them to invest in Good Eggs.

Dot #3. Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation has been a non-profit provider of affordable housing in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco since 1981. The TNDC has bought 30 buildings in the Tenderloin and elsewhere in San Francisco over the years so that developers and gentrification cannot encroach on the neighborhood and there will be affordable housing in perpetuity. In addition to the buildings, TNDC provides support like social work and after school programs for kids.

 PVF is an activist connector, inspirer of ideas, and igniter of action. 

Tenderloin neighborhood residents working in TNDC's community garden. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Reiley Photography

Good Eggs is a mission driven company. Founders Rob Spiro and Alon Salant want to grow and sustain local food systems around the world and change the way we eat. Index Ventures is a venture capital firm that is working to encourage their companies to do some social good. TNDC is a grassroots organization that has been doing exemplary work on the frontline for decades.

What if these dots could be connected in the spirit of radical collaboration? What if we could eliminate food deserts by giving communities that don't have a grocery store daily access to fresh and healthy food? When the players above were connected, the answer that emerged was a food access service in one of TNDC's residential hotels. The building serves residents who were homeless or on fixed incomes. Food is a daily struggle; the Tenderloin is a food desert where residents are forced to roam numerous corner stores to find the cheapest prices, or ride buses across town to shop at large grocery stores, and if available at all, fresh food choices are unaffordable.    

We picked a single TNDC building to start with. Residents can order all of the fresh groceries available on Good Eggs and have it delivered to them daily. Orders are at a steep discount thanks to a grant set aside for this program by Index Ventures, which opened a donor advised fund at PVF. All of this happened in three weeks from first meeting to launch. We aspire to roll the program out to the rest of the TNDC buildings and across the nation to other Good Eggs cities. Stay tuned to this space.

From left to right: Rahmin Sarabi of Good Eggs; Liz Orlin, Chief Operating Officer of TNDC; Donald Falk, Executive Director of TNDC; and Cynthia Peterson, Communications Manager of TNDC

Think about this for a moment. A high-tech start up, a VC firm, a non-profit community organization, residents of the Tenderloin, and a community foundation, in a circle of radical collaboration to make a dent in the Inequality Gap. This embodies what is the very best of Silicon Valley's spirit: collaborate and innovate. We are humbled at PVF by the inherent goodness, openness, and willingness across all sectors of our communities to come together. We will always strive in this spirit to always be the ignitor and connector to demonstrate new paths to philanthropy.