Applications for Boundless San Francisco closed this month, and the Crankstart competition now moves into a peer review that will narrow the field to as many as seven finalists next year.
The deadline has passed, and now the judging begins.
Boundless San Francisco, the $150 million competition funded by Crankstart, the family foundation of the former Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz and the writer Harriet Heyman, stopped taking applications on Oct. 15. The contest asks a question that is simple to pose and very hard to answer: What would make San Francisco a better place to live?
Up to three winners will each receive $10 million to $50 million to carry out their ideas, according to the competition’s rules. The contest is open to organizations anywhere in the world and to proposals in any field, as long as the work primarily benefits the city. Crankstart called it “the largest-ever private philanthropic competition focused on a single city” in an essay announcing the contest on Aug. 5.
Neither Crankstart nor Lever for Change, the nonprofit managing the competition, has said publicly how many applications were submitted or who sent them.
How the money will be decided
The process runs through most of 2027, according to the published timeline. Lever for Change staff are now screening applications for eligibility. Starting in November, each valid applicant will score four rival proposals in what the organizers call participatory review. Those reviews are due Dec. 9.
The top-scoring entries then go to an evaluation panel of outside experts. Each proposal will be judged on four criteria: transformative ambition, viability, evidence of results and durability. Informed by those scores, Crankstart’s team will pick three to seven finalists. The finalists will split $1 million to $3.5 million in development grants and receive technical help, then submit an investment prospectus in August 2027. Awards are expected in the fall of 2027.
The rules leave the final decision with the donor. Under the official competition rules, the sponsor makes its choice “in its sole discretion” and may weigh “considerations beyond the Evaluation Panel’s reviews.”
Applicants can also ask for below-market capital, such as a low-interest loan, on top of a grant. The rules set no fixed cap on those program-related investments. No more than 25 percent of a project’s activities may be aimed at the Bay Area outside the city.
Open to almost anyone
The eligibility rules are broad. Nonprofits, universities, government agencies and U.S. tribal governments can apply as lead organizations. So can for-profit companies, subject to federal rules on how charitable money is spent. Individuals and 501(c)(4) advocacy groups cannot lead a bid, though they can serve as contractors or subgrantees. Current and past Crankstart grantees are eligible.
The money also cannot go to politics. Award funds may not be used for lobbying or to fund political organizations, the rules say.
“San Francisco’s history shows the power of connecting people and possibilities from around the world, and Boundless San Francisco is designed to help surface those ideas,” Missy Narula, Crankstart’s chief executive, said when the contest was announced.
Kristen Molyneaux, the president and co-founder of Lever for Change, said the organizers hoped “by inviting bold ideas from unexpected places” to “identify solutions that create enduring change for San Francisco and the people who call the city home.” Lever for Change says it has run 18 open calls and influenced more than $2.6 billion in giving.
A ‘wicked problem’ by design
The contest’s openness is deliberate. In the Aug. 5 essay, Crankstart’s leaders drew on the work of two UC Berkeley academics, Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, who in the early 1970s described “wicked problems.” These are social challenges that resist clear definition and have “no stopping rule,” no point at which anyone can declare them solved.
“Ask five different San Franciscans what it might mean to ‘improve San Francisco,’ and you might well hear five different answers,” they wrote. They said they hoped to learn as much from how applicants define the problem as from the solutions themselves.
Crankstart says it has awarded more than $1.8 billion in grants since its founding, with over half going to the Bay Area. Its essay pointed to past local projects, including work in the Sunnydale neighborhood and the transformation of a former industrial site.
The donor behind it
Moritz, a Welsh-born former Time magazine correspondent, became one of Silicon Valley’s best-known investors at Sequoia, where he backed Google, LinkedIn and PayPal. He left the firm in 2023 after 38 years, according to Forbes. Forbes estimated his net worth at $7.5 billion on Oct. 27, 2026. He was knighted in 2013 for his philanthropy.
He is also one of the biggest givers in this fall’s city election. San Francisco Ethics Commission filings show Moritz has given $3.47 million to local ballot committees, more than any other individual, most of it to Mayor Daniel Lurie’s campaign for Propositions D, E and F.
Moritz and Heyman were profiled in The Inquirer’s Oct. 23 ranking of the 100 families who hold the city’s wealth. Through Crankstart, they are also the principal funders of The San Francisco Standard. Boundless is a bet of a different kind: an attempt to find the next big local idea by asking the whole world for it.
Finalists are expected to be named between March and June 2027.
Pilar Ashcombe covers San Francisco society and the public lives of its billionaires, from galas, museum and opera boards and art collections to landmark homes and the city’s old and new fortunes, for the Inquirer’s Billionaires desk. More from Pilar Ashcombe
