San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium (SF DVC)

Our Mission

The San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium and its members dedicate themselves to eliminating domestic violence and ensuring the basic rights of safety, self-determination, and well-being to victims and survivors of domestic violence and their children. The alliance between the Consortium, its members and the community at-large is a model for coordinating the public, private, and corporate communities with domestic violence service providers in San Francisco, thus bringing together the diverse resources of the City in response to this tragic issue.

The DVC is comprised of 17 programs that have come together to create a well-coordinated network of services to maximize resources, advocate for social change, work collaboratively and transcend turf issues, and reach the diverse populations of San Francisco.

The San Francisco Domestic Violence Consortium (SFDVC) was founded in 1982 and for 44 years, member agencies have been providing high quality, comprehensive services to San Francisco's survivors of gender-based violence, specifically to those from communities whose needs were not being met by mainstream systems and domestic violence service providers. The DVC emerged from the movement to end violence against women whose findings in the 1980s revealed a San Francisco that had turned its back on domestic violence as a public health and public safety issue, resulting in an average of 9-10 domestic violence homicides per year. Every year the majority of women being killed were from marginalized communities (FVCR 2020). Seeking a permanent end to this trend, a collaborative of organizations that encompassed non-profit service providers, culturally specific organizations, government and enforcement agencies, community development organizations and faith-based organizations was founded.

Members of the DVC provide services and advocacy for victims and survivors of violence for those who are from historically marginalized communities including immigrant, refugee, and limited-English proficient (LEP) communities, Black communities, LGBTQ+, gender non-conforming and gender non-binary communities, and Indigenous communities. Services are provided in a culturally and linguistically responsive manner with and focus on providing multiple entry points to health and safety for low income women and LGBTQ+ people of color. Culturally specific DVC member organizations hold decades of expertise working as, and for, Asian and Pacific Islander (API), Black/African American, Middle East and North African (MENA), Jewish, and LGBTQ+ communities.

Over the last 40 years, the DVC has advocated for those at the margins of society, lobbied to increase financial investment to end violence, implemented training programs for people across all sectors, and advocated for new laws and policies protecting victims and survivors of domestic violence – all while continuing to show up every single day for survivors and their families, providing safety, service, healing and opportunity.

Because survivors of domestic violence come from all communities, the DVC believes it is important to address other forms of oppression survivors may experience as they seek to escape the violence in their lives. The DVC opposes violence and abuses of power and control of all kinds. The Members of the DVC work as a collective to continually challenge ourselves, our programs, and society at large to eliminate oppression in our midst, to eradicate the power imbalances embedded in our communities, and ultimately to end domestic violence.

Our community must hold abusers accountable for their actions. Domestic violence is not caused by anger management problems, “loss of control,” substance abuse, or cultural background. Batterers use domestic violence in a deliberate attempt to maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Because our society has historically condoned abuses of power that perpetuate domestic violence, our society must take responsibility for holding abusers accountable for their actions. We must not blame victims for the abuse perpetrated against them, minimize the violence and its impact on women and children, or allow batterers to abuse social systems to continue exercising power and control over their victims. In short, we must not collude with the batterers. Our community must offer a means for abusers to change their behavior and must hold them accountable when they choose not to do so. In each of our agencies, DVC Members provide services that are survivor-centered and that promote and prioritize the survivor’s safety and empowerment.