Launched in 2023, Civic Joy Fund has been reported and labeled as a non-profit organization, but has yet to file the necessary tax forms required for its tax-deductible status.
San Francisco’s boom loop is strong, [oscillating from] the proverbial chandelier. Downtown First Thursdays (DFT) — an outdoor street festival mixing live music and food trucks into a serotonin-soaked combination — has injected new vitality. Free weekend concerts in front of City Hall featuring big star power (think Shaboozey and the surprise rave spun up by Fred Again and Skrillex) are a refreshing development, albeit bubbled with controversy. More public art is going up. Sidewalks are somewhat cleaner. You can hear birds chirping from the windowsills of recently leased office buildings.
One of the organizations connected to San Francisco’s newfound exuberance, particularly in the downtown sector, is Civic Joy Fund: the $2 million brainchild birthed in 2023 by cafe owner and District 8 Supervisor hopeful Manny Yekutiel and Daniel Lurie, the current Mayor of San Francisco, who founded the “poverty-fighting” nonprofit Tipping Point SF in 2005 before transitioning out of the organization entirely in 2023.
The organization, which at publishing reports Luke Spray as its executive director, though recent news reports and Yekutiel’s own LinkedIn profile link him with the role, has nine public programs under its wing. Five of them — Downtown First Thursdays (DTF), Clean Up the City, Paint the City, Summer of Music, and Night Markets — are the most active and remain mentioned in their social media bios.
For over two years, the organization’s monetary contributions remained elusive. Civic Joy Fund lists 22 fiscal contributors under its “Funders” page; a donation portal is found on the upper right corner of the website, prompting a minimum contribution of $50; Yekutiel’s April proclamation that DFT is fully funded until December of 2025 remains one of the few public mentions of the fund’s financial solvency.
The project’s lack of economic transparency created perplexity around its taxation details — notably in relation to its self-described non-profit designation on social media and widespread reporting of it as a non-profit entity.
Secret San Francisco, Riff Magazine, Urban Land Institute, and others noted Civic Joy Fund as a nonprofit; GLIDE referred to Civic Joy Fund as an “apolitical non-profit organization” in at least one blog post; Civic Joy Fund received well-documented backlash in June of 2024 for its prominent financial support among tech figures and conservative donors, creating even more confusion around the organization’s taxation status and overall objectives.
The bafflement, which at this moment seems almost intentional, circles further.
Civic Space Foundation was founded in 2022 with the Civic Joy Fund in mind, but it wouldn’t be until May of 2023 that Civic Joy Fund launched. The two organizations share an identical mission: to invest in projects supporting “healthy, vibrant communities” in San Francisco and eventually elsewhere around the United States.
In Civic Space Foundation’s sparse web copy — only the organization’s opening webpage contains operational specifics — Civic Joy Fund is considered an initiative, but fails to specify its exact financial and operational relationship with Civic Space Foundation, e.g. if it receives funding and donations as a separate entity or receives explicit funding from Civic Space Foundation, by way of allocated funds through direct transfers to Civic Joy Fund.
Alas, the headscratching continues. Deeper online sleuthing begins to paint a disingenuous picture.
Civic Space Foundation hasn’t reported any 990 tax filings since 2023. Per ProPublica, the Pulitzer-winning, nonprofit newsroom organized around investigative journalism in public interest spaces, reports that Civic Space Foundation received its tax-exempt status as a 501(c)(3) that same year. In that distinction, its nonprofit Employment Identification Number (EIN) remained solely attached to tax-deductible donations, contributions, corporate or otherwise, government grants, etc., made directly to Civic Space Foundation. No other sister, partner, or other organizational entity is listed under its designated EIN.
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) details released for the 2022 tax period — the single one filed for Civic Space Foundation since launching — confirm this, revealing it must exclusively be “doing business as” itself, verbatim: Civic Space Foundation. No mention of doing business as “Civic Joy Fund” is found. Any financial assistance or gift given under the Civic Joy Fund moniker would, therefore, be perceived as a monetary offering for an entirely separate organization with no relationship with Civic Space Foundation and would not be eligible for tax exemption.
The IRS’s final determination letter approving Civic Space Foundation’s 501(c)(3) status contains no mention of Civic Joy Fund, either; the “www.civicspacefoundation.org” is listed as the nonprofit’s official website URL; “www.civicjoyfund.org” has no filed association with Civic Space Foundation; Civic Space Foundation and Civic Joy Fund share different listed headquarters addresses, one at 760 Fell Street and the other at 446 Valencia Street, respectively.
Furthermore, Yekutiel is listed as the nonprofit’s Principal Officer. The organization itself has not filed for termination and remains, per the IRS, active.
All social media links featured on Civic Space Foundation are attached to Civic Joy Fund, regardless of its identification as a non-relational organization. (There is at least an Instagram page associated with Civic Space Foundation, but it appears it was actively replaced and later abandoned; the last public post on the Instagram page was October 11th, 2023; Civic Joy Fund’s first Instagram post was published on May 8th, 2023.)
Yes, Civic Space Foundation, now almost three years behind on its annual 990 tax filings, which could serve as grounds for termination of its 501(c)(3) status, is a nonprofit; only 11 of the 22 Civic Joy Fund funders are listed as contributors; there is no active online donation portal “doing business as” Civic Space Foundation.
No, Civic Joy Fund, an organization with no registered tax-deductible EIN (meaning it hasn’t filed any 990 tax forums) or proper designation as non-profit by ProPublica (or any nonprofit navigator, for that matter), is not a nonprofit; its explicit online donation portal means contributions do not qualify for any tax deduction; any listed funder contributing to Civic Joy Fund directly would not be eligible for any tax deductions.
The signs were all there that Civic Joy Fund was not a nonprofit, despite describing itself as one on social media.
There’s no EIN number attached to Civic Joy Fund; nonprofit navigator search tools on ProPublica, and even the IRS revealed no data for Civic Joy Fund; all 501(c)(3) must disclose in written statements that donations are eligible for tax deductions before they’re made — Civic Joy Fund has no such declaration at the base of the donation portal — and designate themselves as a nonprofit in their website’s footer, which is absent on http://www.civicjoyfund.org; Civic Joy Fund’s operational inconsistencies (e.g. who *is* its executive office, presently?) and financial ambiguities didn’t just write on the wall, they smeared it with phosphorescent paint.
Ironically, Civic Joy Fund’s informal designation as a nonprofit greatly benefited Yekutiel this week. Verified sources close to Underscore shared that Yektuiel used an email address from Civic Joy Fund to send an announcement about his campaign for District 8 supervisor; this was delivered in tandem with a campaign newsletter sent from an email address affiliated with his business, Manny’s.
If Civic Joy Fund was, in fact, a nonprofit organization … Yekutiel would be in hot water.
A nonprofit provision referred to as the Johnson Amendment states that nonprofits may “not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements) any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” Assets, including those not directly donated to a non-profit but campaigned through its channels, cannot be used as contributions to a candidate for public office. The result of doing any of the above results in the revocation of any charitable non-profit status.
Those surrendering their hard-earned money to Civic Joy Fund should think long and hard about their donation. Its most vocal co-founder almost committed political suicide if it wasn’t for a spate of incompetent serendipity.
Feature image: Courtesy of Civic Joy Fund
