Save the Arlene Francis Center

Dear Friends of the Arlene,

Like many community-based non-profit organizations representing the cultural arts, due to the pandemic, we’ve had to close our doors and programming, resulting in zero revenue for months, and dramatically impacting the Arlene Francis Center. Heading into this fall and winter, with the anticipated continued closure of gathering spaces like The Arlene Francis Center, we are in need of your help to continue our mission of integrating spirit, art and politics, and linking cultural activism to changing the world.

The Arlene has impacted many souls near and far and has been a magnificent representation of Sonoma County’s diverse micro-communities, producing a variety of music showcases, fundraisers, festivals and weekly classes. The Arlene has provided a space for various community groups to meet and engage in conscious activism such as C.O.L.E. (Citizen Oversight of Law Enforcement - the group the Evelyn Cheatham Effective IOLERO ordinance came out of), La Familia, The Sunrise Movement and the Graton Day Labor Center.

Covid 19 has limited everyone’s ability to connect with other people in the ways we normally would do. The Arlene is currently exploring the best way to develop the capacity to live stream and continue connecting to our community, at least virtually if not in person.  For us to be able to live stream from the cafe, classroom, theater, and courtyard, we need your support.  

So comrades, with your help, together we can continue this important work and reach our goal of $30,000 to enable us to get through the coming year until it's safe for us to re-open, expand our ability to connect with you by developing our livestream capabilities, and continue our efforts to synthesize Spirit, Art, and Politics!


Thank you, 
The Arlene Francis Foundation Board 


The Arlene Francis Center is a non-profit, community-centered cultural hub with a vision of a better world, a new way of being. Situated in Santa Rosa’s historic Railroad Square and West End Districts, the Center produces nonprofit and charitable cultural, educational, social, ethical and ecological activities united by a common purpose—the development of a theory and practice that will foster the creation of a better world, one in which human beings will come to see one another as the source of each other’s completion, as inherently good and caring social and ecological beings who seek to fully recognize each other’s common humanity and interconnectedness with all of life, and to create a world based upon justice, kindness, love, and respect for the earth.