Bay Area Community Services (BACS) is community-based in the deepest sense of the word.

In 1953, our founders heard the call of the community, and stepped up to respond to poverty and institutionalization – what held back people with mental illness and frail elders. For nearly seven decades, BACS has created community centers and employment programs, crisis mental health programs, and programs determined to end homelessness, pulling together advocates, experts, and innovators to break down these barriers.

We are grassroots, from deep East Oakland to Vallejo to Richmond to San Francisco. We are embedded, engaged, and listening. We have a responsibility to hear the call of our vulnerable community members.

To create this Strategic Plan, BACS’ participants, board members, funders, staff, and community supports partnered together to understand systemic gaps, individual needs, and agency strengths and opportunities. As we set our strategic priorities, we heard from thousands of community members of their struggles – generational poverty, policing, racism, disability, injustice, trauma. 99% of BACS clients are extremely low income; more than 80% are people of color; more than 80% are experiencing behavioral health challenges.

Systemic oppression prevents the people BACS serves from being healthy, safe, and housed. Our community is calling out for freedom – this strategic plan is our response.

We are proud to be a part of the fabric of the Bay Area – to be an agency that has grown and adapted alongside social changes, that has worked constantly to reach more people, and has opened services in the areas that need them most.

Over the next three years, BACS will respond to the community calling for freedom by breaking barriers, building and strengthening neighborhoods, and empowering community justice.

Read our full Strategic Plan for 2021-2023 here.