Their volunteer program began in 1963, when Gretchen de Baubigny visited a classroom in San Francisco’s Western Addition to read aloud to students. Not long after, she was walking through a park and a young boy ran up to her exclaiming that she had visited his class and asking when she was coming back.

Gretchen founded San Francisco School Volunteers, our city’s first nonprofit dedicated to engaging community members as partners in public schools. Theycontinue to provide a path for caring adults to volunteer with students through an array of classroom programs.

In 2009, School Volunteers merged with the original San Francisco Education Fund, which was founded in 1979 in response to the decimation of public school funding brought on by Proposition 13.