The Creative Work Fund is a grantmaking program for San Francisco Bay Area artists that bring artists and nonprofit organizations together for collaborations on new works. The program says it celebrates the role of artists as problem solvers and the making of art as a profound contribution to intellectual inquiry and to the strengthening of communities. Important and also very ambitious goals, for which they have had a profound history of success with some very distinguished participants.

The Creative Work Fund has awarded 186 grants since 1994 within the artistic categories of literary arts, media arts, performing arts, traditional arts and the visual arts. Some of the city's great artists, poets and writers have been past recipients of the fund's grants; Genny Lim, David Meltzer, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Eric Kupers, Michelle Tea, to name just barely a few. Nonprofits collaborating with artists have included San Francisco Cameraworks, The Media Alliance, The African American Coalition for Health Improvement and Empowerment, Brava! for Women in the Arts, Intersection for the Arts, and almost all of the rest of the city's major arts and cultural non profit organizations. The Creative Work Fund was started in response to years of declining support for the arts by the Columbia Foundation, the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, Miriam and Peter Haas Fund, and Walter and Elise Haas Fund, awarding more than $6 million in grants since its inception. Grant Applications and more information can be found here.