Our Mission
GrowSF is a non-partisan group of residents who want San Francisco to be safe, clean, affordable, and vibrant.
GrowSF prioritizes outcomes over ideologies. Our local leaders are not focused on actual progress, and residents feel under-informed about local issues and elections. We want to change that.
Our elected officials have failed us on the basics: housing, transit, schools, and public safety. We want common-sense solutions to the problems that regular people face. It’s time to fix San Francisco.
GrowSF supports solutions that embrace San Francisco values. We celebrate art and culture, value compassion, seek sustainability, and practice social justice. GrowSF supports a city government that is efficiently managed, responsive to quality of life issues, and above all follows common sense.
Our Goals
We have simple, but effective goals
- Educate on local issues
- By being better informed, we can be better citizens of our incredible city and work together to drive positive change.
- Share ways to get involved
- Getting involved can be signing a petition, Zooming into a public meeting, emailing, tweeting, and more. It's simple.
- Advocate for change through voting
- Voting is the ultimate civic act, and it matters! Many major elections in SF have been decided by fewer than 500 votes. Click to see our latest voter guide!
- Celebrate the beauty of San Francisco
- San Francisco is wonderful and we should seek to invest in it and make it even better. SF isn’t a museum — it's an ever-changing city full of amazing people!
Our Strategy
It's clear that so-called progressivism has failed San Francisco — it's time, instead, for anew liberalism.
GrowSF has a simple strategy: build a trusted and reliable brand by publishing unbiased and well-researched San Francisco voter guides, running political education events, supporting good reforms (like making outdoor dining permanent), and keeping voters regularly informed via the GrowSF weekly newsletter.
Our analysis has shown that most San Francisco voters are unhappy with the policies our elected officials are implementing, yet they keep re-electing those same politicians. This happens because voters lack robust and reliable research on what politicians actually believe, and a single-party city lacks the normal signals that voters use to make up their minds. Just voting for a Democrat means nothing when every candidate is a Democrat and they all believe different things.
The most important resource for voters to have is a clear, well-written, and concise explanation of the candidates and ballot propositions in every election. GrowSF is that resource.
GrowSF is not controlled by any political interest groups or political parties. We are, and will always be, independent. We are committed to giving you the best advice available and explaining the trade-offs of all of your choices.
Our Long Vision
We are setting off on a ten-year journey to fix San Francisco. Help us get there by donating today.
As we grow, we will run candidate training events to help first-time candidates run for office and win their election. We will build a bench of high-quality candidates that want to grow San Francisco.
We will run ballot measures to reform policies that can't be changed any other way, and especially to reform the City Charter in order to make San Francisco's rules less discretionary and corruptible.
We aren't looking to start our own political party — but you'll know that anyone we endorse believes in a safer, cleaner, more affordable, and economically vibrant city.