Shaping San Francisco
Shaping San Francisco is a nonprofit digital history project operating FoundSF, a participatory MediaWiki archive of 2,400+ screens of San Francisco primary sources, public talks, and tours, serving citizens, historians, and educators under Creative Commons licensing.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded1997
- HeadquartersSan Francisco, United States
- Headcount1–10
- GTM typeB2C
- OfferingServices
What Shaping San Francisco does
Shaping San Francisco is a California nonprofit digital history project, operating as a program of Independent Arts & Media and co-curated by Chris Carlsson and LisaRuth Elliott for more than 18 years. Founded in 1997 as a Windows-based multimedia excavation distributed on CD-ROM and public kiosks, the project transitioned online in 2009 with the launch of FoundSF (foundsf.org), a participatory MediaWiki-based archive containing over 2,400 screens of essays, primary sources, images, and videos documenting San Francisco history, organized by decade, neighborhood, theme, and population. The archive intentionally diverges from Wikipedia's neutrality norm by publishing signed, cited essays and biased or provocative primary sources under the principle that 'history is a creative act in the present,' with all content released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license.
The organization extends its digital archive through an ongoing series of in-person Public Talks held 10-18 times per year on Wednesday nights (audio archived since inception, video since 2014 via the Internet Archive), as well as bicycle and walking history tours. Its product portfolio includes the Neighborhood Newspapers of San Francisco Digitization Project — a grant-funded collaborative effort with the Internet Archive and the San Francisco Department of Memory to digitize out-of-print neighborhood newspapers — and several published history books, including Chris Carlsson's 'Hidden San Francisco' (March 2020). Strategic partners include the Internet Archive (core technology and media-hosting partner), the SF Department of Memory collaborative (Acción Latina, Bernal History Project, Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project, Potrero Hill Archives, Western Neighborhoods Project, Noe Valley Voice), and the San Francisco Public Library (photo permissions). Headcount is reported at 1-10 employees with two core curators; no venture or private equity ownership is indicated.
Revenue is generated through a diversified nonprofit mix: recurring monthly subscriptions at $5 or $10/month processed via the Mazlo donation platform, Patreon patronage, one-time donations, project-based preservation grants (notably the Alice Ross Carey Preservation Fund and the SF Historic Preservation Fund Committee in 2019-2020), and book sales. The organization serves general San Francisco citizens, historians/writers/activists, and educators/students as its three primary persona-based segments, with no enterprise customer concentration. Geographic scope is San Francisco Bay Area only; international visibility is incidental via the Internet Archive.
Shaping San Francisco firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Shaping San Francisco
- Legal name
- Independent Arts & Media
- Website
- https://foundsf.org
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 1997
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 1–10 employees
- Short description
- Shaping San Francisco is a nonprofit digital history project operating FoundSF, a participatory MediaWiki archive of 2,400+ screens of San Francisco primary sources, public talks, and tours, serving citizens, historians, and educators under Creative Commons licensing.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Shaping San Francisco industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Public History Services
- NAICS
- Libraries and Archives (51921), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (519), Museums, Historical Sites, and Similar Institutions (712)
- SIC
- Miscellaneous Publishing (2741)
- akta.pro primary industry
- Digital Archives, Libraries & Institutional Access Platforms (MPAJAMAJ)
- akta.pro secondary industries
- Public Media Archives, Libraries & Content Preservation (MPABADAL), Local & City Guide Content Aggregators (MPACAKAJ)
Keywords
Where Shaping San Francisco is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- San Francisco
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Offices1 record
Markets served
Shaping San Francisco business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2C
- Offering type
- Services
- Cost components
- Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Others
Revenue model
- Monthly Subscriptions / Donations: Monthly subscriber contributions at $5 or $10/month help sustain both online and public projects. One-time and monthly online tax-deductible gifts accepted via Mazlo donation platform.
- Patreon Patronage: Patreon membership providing ongoing financial support from individual patrons.
- Grants: Work during 2019-2020 on the Neighborhood Newspapers digitization project was funded by grants from the Alice Ross Carey Preservation Fund of San Francisco Heritage and the San Francisco Historic Preservation Fund Committee.
- Book Sales: Shaping San Francisco produces several books of San Francisco history, generating revenue alongside the digital archive.
Pricing tiers
| Model | Billing | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Monthly | Public History monthly subscription at $5 or $10/month |
Go-to-market motion3 records
Distribution channels4 records
Marketing channels5 records
Shaping San Francisco product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Shaping San Francisco operates FoundSF, a participatory wiki-based digital history archive hosting over 2,400 screens of primary sources, essays, images, and videos documenting San Francisco history. The project supplements the archive with an ongoing series of free Public Talks (held 10-18 times per year), Bicycle and Walking Tours, a collaborative Neighborhood Newspapers Digitization Project, and several published books of San Francisco history.
Product overview
Shaping San Francisco operates a suite of public history offerings centered on the FoundSF wiki platform. FoundSF is the primary digital product — a participatory wiki archive (built on MediaWiki software) containing over 2,400 screens of essays, primary sources, images, and videos documenting San Francisco history. Supporting products include the Public Talks series (in-person Wednesday-night discussions with archived audio since inception and video since 2014, embedded via the Internet Archive), Bicycle and Walking Tours, the Neighborhood Newspapers of San Francisco Digitization Project (a collaborative digitization effort with neighborhood groups and the Internet Archive), and published history books. The FoundSF archive serves as the unifying platform through which all these offerings interconnect.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Products and services
- FoundSF Digital Archive A free participatory wiki-based digital history archive containing over 2,400 screens of primary sources, essays, images, and videos organized by decade, neighborhood, theme, and population. Open to the general public for reading and to community contributors for editing and uploading content.
- Public Talks Series In-person and recorded public discussions held 10-18 times per year on Wednesday nights at 518 Valencia Street (Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics) and CounterPulse, covering Art and Politics, Ecology, Historical Perspectives, Literary, and Social Movements themes. Audio-archived since inception and video-archived since 2014 via the Internet Archive.
- Bicycle and Walking History Tours Experiential guided bicycle and walking tours of San Francisco neighborhoods that extend the digital archive into physical community engagement and on-the-ground historical interpretation.
- Neighborhood Newspapers of San Francisco Digitization Project A collaborative project with the San Francisco Department of Memory and the Internet Archive to digitize and preserve out-of-print San Francisco neighborhood newspapers, including titles such as North Mission News, Potrero View, Glen Park News, Tenderloin Times, Noe Valley Voice, and Bernal Journal, made available as searchable digital archives.
- Shaping San Francisco Books Several published books of San Francisco history produced by Shaping San Francisco, including 'Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes, and Radical Histories' by Chris Carlsson, made available to the public as physical published works.
Quantifiable outcome
- Over 35,000 monthly visitors to the FoundSF archive, demonstrating sustained public engagement.
- +2 more outcomes
Companies that use Shaping San Francisco
Customer profileNamed customers2 records
Segments3 records
Ideal customer profiles4 records
Shaping San Francisco technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed No
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration3 records
Feature3 records
Shaping San Francisco partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.
- Independent Arts & MediacoreShaping San Francisco is a project of Independent Arts & Media, a California nonprofit corporation. Independent Arts & Media provides the organizational umbrella and nonprofit status under which Shaping San Francisco operates.
- Internet ArchivecoreShaping San Francisco works with the Internet Archive to digitize and make available collections of out-of-print neighborhood newspapers and to host video/audio content from public talks. The FoundSF wiki embeds media via archive.org's embed code system.
- San Francisco Department of MemorycoreShaping San Francisco is part of the San Francisco Department of Memory, a collaborative of SF neighborhood history groups including Acción Latina, Bernal History Project, Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project, Potrero Hill Archives, Western Neighborhoods Project, and Noe Valley Voice, united to share resources around local history gathering and dissemination.
Scale indicators5 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights4 records
Shaping San Francisco competitors and assessment
Company assessmentEmerging players
- Hidden City Philadelphia: An independent nonprofit producing reporting and public programming about Philadelphia's overlooked histories. It is a closely comparable emerging player that pairs local history publishing with public events and tours, mirroring Shaping San Francisco's editorial and event model.
- StoryCorps: A nonprofit oral-history project that records, preserves, and shares firsthand stories from Americans. It overlaps with FoundSF's oral-history and 'I was there' community-contributed content model, though at a much larger national scale.
- Atlas Obscura: A digital media and travel platform cataloguing unusual places, foods, and stories — including city-specific histories. It is an emerging player with thematic overlap to FoundSF's neighborhood storytelling and walking/bike tours, but at a global rather than hyper-local scale.
Direct peers
- HistoryPin: A community platform for crowdsourcing and geolocating historical photos and stories. Shaping San Francisco already integrates with HistoryPin via its 'Year of the Bay' project, making it a directly comparable participatory local-history platform.
- Internet Archive: A nonprofit digital library archiving web pages, audio, video, and digitized physical media. Internet Archive is both a direct infrastructure partner to Shaping San Francisco (hosting its video/audio content and digitized newspapers) and a mission-aligned peer preserving community-contributed historical materials.
Others
- Prelinger Archives: A collection of home movies, industrial films, and ephemera hosted within the Internet Archive. It is an adjacent archival/preservation project that shares infrastructure and community-contributed ethos with FoundSF but focuses on ephemeral film rather than place-based neighborhood history.
Regional players
- San Francisco Public Library — San Francisco History Center: The SFPL's history and archives division holds the SF Historical Photo Collection that FoundSF draws from under partnership. It is a regional institutional peer preserving and providing access to SF primary sources, with overlapping audience of researchers, educators, and residents.
- San Francisco Heritage: A San Francisco–focused preservation nonprofit that administers grant funds (including the Alice Ross Carey Preservation Fund that has supported FoundSF). It is a regional peer with overlapping preservation mission and shared SF audience.
Broad incumbents
- Wikimedia Foundation: Operates Wikipedia and sister wiki projects built on MediaWiki, the same engine used by FoundSF. It is the dominant community-edited knowledge platform and a broad incumbent against which FoundSF differentiates via its viewpoint-driven, primary-source-heavy, hyper-local editorial model.
- Digital Public Library of America: A nonprofit aggregator of digital content from libraries, archives, and museums across the U.S. It is a broad incumbent in the digital archive/library space and a potential partner or substitute for users seeking primary-source local history materials.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat3 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Shaping San Francisco social profiles
Digital presenceShaping San Francisco financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Shaping San Francisco leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles2 records
Shaping San Francisco funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Shaping San Francisco M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Shaping San Francisco
What does Shaping San Francisco do?
Shaping San Francisco operates FoundSF, a participatory wiki-based digital history archive hosting over 2,400 screens of primary sources, essays, images, and videos documenting San Francisco history. The project supplements the archive with an ongoing series of free Public Talks (held 10-18 times per year), Bicycle and Walking Tours, a collaborative Neighborhood Newspapers Digitization Project, and several published books of San Francisco history.
Is Shaping San Francisco a public or private company?
Shaping San Francisco is a private company. It is classified as nonprofit foundation owned and is currently operating.
When was Shaping San Francisco founded?
Shaping San Francisco was founded in 1997. It employs 1 to 10 people.
Where is Shaping San Francisco based?
Shaping San Francisco is headquartered in San Francisco, United States, in the North America region.
How does Shaping San Francisco make money?
Four revenue lines are on record. Monthly Subscriptions / Donations are the primary driver. The others are patreon Patronage, grants and book Sales.
Who are Shaping San Francisco's main competitors?
Emerging players on record are Hidden City Philadelphia, StoryCorps and Atlas Obscura. Direct peers are HistoryPin and Internet Archive. Prelinger Archives is listed as an others. Regional players are San Francisco Public Library — San Francisco History Center and San Francisco Heritage. Broad incumbents are Wikimedia Foundation and Digital Public Library of America.
Does Shaping San Francisco have an API?
No public API is recorded for Shaping San Francisco.
What industry is Shaping San Francisco in?
Shaping San Francisco's product category is Public History Services. Its primary akta.pro industry code is MPAJAMAJ, Digital Archives, Libraries & Institutional Access Platforms, with a secondary code of MPABADAL, Public Media Archives, Libraries & Content Preservation. Its NAICS code is 51921 and its SIC code is 2741.