San Francisco Set Aside $120,000,000 for Black Youth. Prosecutors Say Its Chief Funneled Millions to a Nonprofit She Secretly Ran.

In 2021, San Francisco launched the Dream Keeper Initiative, a $120,000,000commitment to reinvest in the city’s Black community — much of it routed through programs for children, teenagers, and out-of-school youth. The official handed the keys to that money was Sheryl Davis, executive director of the city’s Human Rights Commission, appointed under then-Mayor London Breed (D).

On March 30, 2026, after an 18-month investigation, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins (D) charged Davis with 17 felonies and two misdemeanors, and charged the nonprofit executive she lived with — James Spingola of Collective Impact — with four felonies. The conflict-of-interest contracts at the center of the case are worth more than $8,500,000.

Prosecutors allege Davis steered millions in public youth-and-community money to a nonprofit she had founded, still controlled the bank account of, and shared a home, a car, and intertwined finances with its sitting director. Davis has pleaded not guilty. This page lays out what the city’s own audit and the charging documents say the money was supposed to do — and where prosecutors say it went instead.

• $8,500,000 — value of the city contracts at the center of the conflict-of-interest charges against Sheryl Davis · Source: SF District Attorney; ABC7; KTVU
• $4,500,000 — in Dream Keeper funds prosecutors say Davis directed to Collective Impact — the nonprofit she founded and stayed financially tied to · Source: SF District Attorney; Fox News
• $1,500,000 — of $3.1M in youth funds Davis allegedly steered to Collective Impact while advising the Department of Children, Youth & Their Families on how to distribute it, 'without input from DCYF staff' · Source: SF DA via ABC7
• $140,000 — paid to Davis's son by the Homeless Children's Network, a nonprofit she approved $3.5M in city contracts for · Source: SF District Attorney
• 17 felonies — charged against Davis (plus 2 misdemeanors); James Spingola of Collective Impact faces 4 felonies for aiding and abetting — both pleaded not guilty · Source: SF District Attorney
• $120,000,000 — size of the Dream Keeper Initiative, the flagship program of former Mayor London Breed (D) that Davis was tapped to lead · Source: Fox News; SF Standard

The Dream Keeper Initiative was born in the aftermath of the 2020 protests, when then-Mayor London Breed (D) pledged to redirect $120,000,000— partly reallocated from the police budget — into San Francisco’s Black neighborhoods. A large share of it flowed through the city’s Department of Children, Youth & Their Families (DCYF) and was earmarked for the kind of work that polls well and photographs well: after-school programs, mentorship, out-of-school youth services, and community centers like the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center in the Western Addition.

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To run it, Breed elevated Sheryl Davis, the executive director of the Human Rights Commission. Davis was, on paper, an ideal steward: a credentialed community advocate with deep ties to the neighborhoods the money was meant to serve. What the city did not flag — and what prosecutors now say disqualified her from the decisions she was making — was that before she ran the commission, Davis had founded the very nonprofit that would become one of Dream Keeper’s biggest beneficiaries.

The nonprofit is Collective Impact, a Western Addition organization that runs out of the Ella Hill Hutch Community Center. Davis founded it and led it before moving into city government. According to the Washington Examiner, Collective Impact has received more than $27,000,000 in city grants since 2021. The man who ran it until October 2025, James Spingola, was not, prosecutors say, an arm’s-length contractor. He was Davis’s domestic partner.

The charging documents describe finances that were, in the prosecution’s words, completely intertwined: the two lived together, shared bank accounts, traveled together, and shared a car. Davis remained a signatory on Collective Impact’s bank account even while serving as the city official approving its grants, and her rent was partially paid by Spingola from the account into which his Collective Impact salary was deposited — an arrangement she did not disclose across seven agreements between the Human Rights Commission and the nonprofit. In July 2021, the pair signed a single contract awarding Collective Impact $1,275,000in Dream Keeper money — Davis on behalf of the city, Spingola on behalf of the nonprofit.

This is where the “for the kids” framing of Dream Keeper collides with the receipts. Much of the money Davis controlled was routed through DCYF — the Department of Children, Youth & Their Families, the agency whose entire mandate is youth programming. According to the District Attorney, Davis advised DCYF on how to distribute its Dream Keeper allocation “without input from DCYF staff,” and steered $1,500,000 of a $3,100,000 pot to Collective Impact.

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The self-dealing did not stop at the nonprofit she founded. Prosecutors say Davis also approved more than $3,500,000in city contracts for the Homeless Children’s Network — another youth-focused nonprofit — which then paid her son nearly $140,000. A separate audit item flagged roughly $19,000in city money that went to her son’s tuition at UCLA. Money the city budgeted to serve children and homeless families, in other words, is alleged to have ended up paying a city official’s own son.

“We did find that a portion of this money was spent in a manner that was self-dealing and was for her benefit.”

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins (D), March 2026

The criminal case grew out of a joint audit by the City Controller and the City Attorney, whose findings the City Attorney summarized bluntly: Collective Impact “misappropriated public funds to provide gifts to Davis and her son.” The audit and charging documents catalog what those public dollars allegedly bought. It is not a list of after-school programs.

Among the items investigators flagged: a 30-night stay at a luxury San Francisco hotel, more than 500 San Francisco Giants tickets, over $350,000 in catering and events, and 700-plus gift cards worth more than $20,000. Prosecutors say Davis accepted flight upgrades, vacation rentals in Martha’s Vineyard and Beverly Hills, a portrait of herself, and other gifts totaling nearly $40,000 from nonprofits that held large city contracts. More than $75,000allegedly went to promoting Davis’s personal brand — including her podcast and her children’s book, “Free to Sing,” with public money used to buy roughly 1,500 copies. Some of the cash that paid her talent agency, GPS Speakers, came from a city grant intended for an out-of-school youth-programming contract.

None of this happened in a vacuum. San Francisco hands roughly $1,400,000,000a year to nonprofit contractors, and audit after audit has found the city does not seriously track whether the money buys the services it pays for. The Dream Keeper money was created, branded, and celebrated by a Democratic city government, administered by a Democratic mayor’s appointee, and is now being prosecuted by a Democratic district attorney — the political geography of this failure is San Francisco’s alone.

Accountability, so far, is partial. Davis resigned in September 2024 as the investigation closed in. Spingola stepped down from Collective Impact in October 2025. Both were arrested in late March 2026 and released within days — Spingola on his own recognizance, Davis on a $50,000bond — and both pleaded not guilty. Collective Impact lost city contracts in December 2024, fought its debarment through 2025, and at one point won a hearing officer’s ruling allowing it to seek public funding again, which the City Attorney’s office moved to appeal. No public dollars have been clawed back, and the case has not yet gone to trial.

A $120,000,000initiative sold to San Franciscans as an investment in Black children produced, by the District Attorney’s account, a city official charged with 17 felonies for routing millions to a nonprofit she founded and shared a bank account with. Prosecutors say youth and community money paid for luxury hotels, ballgame tickets, a children’s book, a podcast, and a city official’s own son. Davis is presumed innocent and has pleaded not guilty; the audit findings and the charges are the public record as it stands. We’ll track the trial, any restitution, and whether San Francisco ever recovers a dollar of the money its own watchdog says was wasted.

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