The St. Anthony Foundation is a nonprofit social service

organization An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived fro ...

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for "Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. They are best known for their operation of the St. Anthony Dining Room in the Tenderloin District. It was founded in 1950 by

Franciscan , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the o ...

Alfred Boeddeker Alfred Boeddeker, O.F.M. (August 7, 1903 as Anthony Boeddeker — January 1, 1994) was an American Franciscan friar who is best known for having founded humanitarian programs to aid the poor and marginalised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thes ...

to serve free meals to the poor in an ordinary restaurant-like setting. The Dining Room has served as many as 2,500 plates of food a day, and over thirty seven million meals since its creation. The foundation operates a residential drug and alcohol treatment program for men, the Father Alfred Center, whose residents provide volunteer labor for the Dining Hall. Other social services are provided. Local political figures honoring the foundation include Representative

Nancy Pelosi Nancy Patricia Pelosi (; ; born March 26, 1940) is an American politician who has served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since 2019 and previously from 2007 to 2011. She has represented in the United States House of ...

, who served the thirty five millionth meal in 2009. The Foundation's dining hall is scheduled to move to a new building in 2012.

References

Charities based in California Homelessness charities Organizations established in 1950 Social welfare charities Non-profit organizations based in San Francisco 1950 establishments in California Food and drink in the San Francisco Bay Area {{US-philanthropy-org-stub