GiveBetter x SF

California Walks

Conditional whole-organization value of a $100,000 unrestricted gift

Research time: ~19 min on GPT-5.6 Sol Medium
  • Research — organization and evidence review.
  • Modeling — cost-effectiveness analysis.
  • Historical estimate for research done before time tracking.

Published: September 8, 2026.

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Summary

What do they do? California Walks combines training, planning, policy work and local organizing. Current pages identify donor-supported no-cost assistance and publicly funded CPBST with implementation follow-up. This model quantifies only hypothetical future support that changes implementation of refuge-island-equivalent crossings. More

Why this approach interests us

  • California Walks provides donor-supported technical assistance and implementation follow-up. FHWA refuge-island guidance supplies a matching physical safety mechanism.

Our main reservations

  • Package cost, additional implementation, site injury exposure, displaced health and residence shares are unmeasured priors. A crash reduction is not directly a fatality reduction.

What do you get for your dollar?

Central donor estimates are $6.32M per 10 US QALYs, $23.2M Bay and $632M SF. A favorable joint case reaches $29,137 US and $63,737 Bay, but its $1.748M net resource numerator raises US cost to $509,315/10 QALYs. Inspect formulas, inputs and sources.

central donor cost / 10 qalys
$632M SF / $23.2M Bay / $6.32M US — Same $100,000 unrestricted gift; 0.001583 SF, 0.04317 Bay, 0.1583 US QALYs. All modeled health assumed California residents.
whole gift
$100,000 — 50% to all-in future implementation packages; other portfolio health unquantified and all gift cash retained.
favorable donor / net resource us
$29,137 / $509,315 — Joint favorable scenario, not a confidence bound or calibrated expected value. Bay donor $63,737; SF donor $1.46M.
recipient
California Walks · EIN 81-0618523 — Official statewide donation page; EIN corroborated by IRS-derived extract and historical primary grant schedule. No current IRS-status audit.

1. What do they do?

California Walks combines training, planning, policy work and local organizing. Current pages identify donor-supported no-cost assistance and publicly funded CPBST with implementation follow-up. This model quantifies only hypothetical future support that changes implementation of refuge-island-equivalent crossings.

Buy additional support

Half the gift at $25,000 per all-in package buys two nominal packages. Existing agency/foundation support remains baseline.

Change implementation

50% funding additionality and 20% incremental change probability produce 0.2 expected changed projects, conditional on agency and coalition activity.

Bring crossings into operation earlier

Six nominal crossings per project and 80% realization produce 0.96 expected target crossings. The alternative loses 0.30 health-equivalent crossings.

Count finite net health

Three years of earlier operation after two-year delay; fatal and serious nonfatal events get separate finite tails. Displaced health persists if target implementation fails.

Scope of this review. Distinct recipient from Walk San Francisco and other road-safety advocates. Never sum their full attribution for the same crossing, funding decision or injured person. Bay includes SF, with separate target and alternative residence shares.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

California portfolio or implementation context

California Walks CPBST and current implementation follow-up. Joint SafeTREC program funded by OTS/NHTSA; current page seeks up to three follow-up communities. Existing funded assistance is baseline.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

California portfolio or implementation context

California Walks consulting and assistance. Foundation partners and individual donors support no-cost services. No posted price or unmet gift-ready queue. Prior /tamenu URL returned 404.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

California portfolio or implementation context

Walk San Jose. A California Walks project, not a separate charity; establishes Bay activity but no next-gift resident distribution.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

California portfolio or implementation context

California Walks official donate page. Supports statewide general giving; no restricted offer validated.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

Pedestrian crashes at marked crossings

FHWA Safety Benefits of Raised Medians and Pedestrian Refuge Areas. 46% pedestrian crash reduction at marked crossings. Historical guidance, last modified 2013; not a fatality-specific causal estimate or CalWalks result.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

California portfolio or implementation context

FHWA current medians and refuge islands countermeasure page. Identifies suitable multilane urban/suburban locations and references CMF 175; not project readiness.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

California portfolio or implementation context

CTC Active Transportation Program. Program is oversubscribed; publicly supported technical assistance already exists. 2027 guidelines adopted March 19, 2026. No assumption that past application deadlines remain open.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

California portfolio or implementation context

ProPublica IRS-derived FY June 2025 extract. EIN 81-0618523; revenue 933001, expenses 723270, assets 539005, liabilities 68160. Raw filing/XML fetch failed; extracted values only, no functional spending split verified.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

California portfolio or implementation context

American Heart Association 2019 Form 990 Schedule I. Search-indexed primary grant schedule pairs California Walks with EIN 81-0618523. Historical recipient corroboration, not current tax-status audit.

Our assessment. See model input labels for distinction between source findings and analyst priors.

3. Qualitative assessment

California Walks provides donor-supported technical assistance and implementation follow-up. FHWA refuge-island guidance supplies a matching physical safety mechanism.

Key reservations

  • Unverified incremental implementation, target-site exposure, complete project cost and forgone alternatives dominate the result.
  • Fatal and nonfatal QALY tails are transparent assumptions, not injury-specific clinical estimates.
  • FY2025 finance values are an IRS-derived extract; raw filing retrieval failed and no functional allocation was independently reconciled.
  • No complete value estimate for the other half of the unrestricted portfolio.
  • The highest-value next evidence is a funded-baseline-adjusted queue, site injury history, actual counterfactual schedules and public cost ledger.

Benefits not included in our estimate

  • Walking-activity and physical-fitness health gains
  • Climate and air-pollution benefits
  • Other injuries outside the fatal and serious pedestrian-injury branch
  • Community programs and statewide policy benefits outside modeled crossing implementation
  • Other unrestricted portfolio benefits; half of central gift retains cost with unquantified health

4. What do you get for your dollar?

Added implementation capacity → finite net crossing safety

All marginal quantities are judgments. Evidence supports the organizational work and engineering mechanism; it does not identify actual next-gift crossings or QALYs.

A better life is our comparison unit of 10 additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), potentially spread across people. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.

How we calculate the estimate

Whole-gift causal bridge: N = gift × implementation fraction / package cost × funding additionality × incremental project-change probability. Target = N × crossings × realization. Alternative = N × health-equivalent displaced crossings. Regional Q = (target × target residence share − alternative × alternative share) × crash reduction × severity/site transfer × (fatal event rate × finite survival Q + serious nonfatal event rate × finite disability Q) × discounted earlier-operation years − independent harm.
Central 2 nominal packages → 0.2 changed projects → 0.96 target versus 0.30 displaced crossing-equivalents → 0.1583 US QALYs.

Model inputs and assumptions
Implementation allocation / all-in package
50% / $25,000 (range: 30–60% / $15,000–$40,000). Includes research, engagement and shared operations. No posted package quote; revenue and historic expense ratios do not define the margin. Analyst whole-gift budget.
Funding additionality / incremental project change
50% / 20% (range: 20–80% / 5–50%; null cases retained). Separate displacement of existing support from contribution conditional on other advocates and agencies. One distinct project per package. Unmeasured causal priors.
Crossings per project / realized earlier operation
6 / 80% (range: 3–20 / 30–90%; zero implementation). Operational refuge-island-equivalent sites, not applications or training attendance. No current project queue established. Hypothetical project archetype.
Displaced health-equivalent crossings per project
1.5 (range: 1.5–4; equal-benefit stress 4.8). Independent of target realization. May represent another kind of safety investment on the same finite health scale. Public opportunity-cost prior.
Fatal / serious nonfatal events per crossing-year
0.01 / 0.10 people (range: 0.002–0.02 / 0.02–0.20). Prospective long-run baseline rates, not observed selected-site counts. Fatal and serious nonfatal categories disjoint. Requires matched-site empirical Bayes or controlled exposure analysis to address regression to the mean. Unmeasured target-site judgments.
Pedestrian crash reduction / severity-site transfer
46% / 70% (range: Transfer 40–90%; zero-effect stress). Historical refuge/median guidance for marked crossings. Fatal and serious injury proportionality is unverified; not a CalWalks treatment effect or a claim for every project design. FHWA mechanism plus judgment.
Earlier-operation years / delay
3 / 2 years (range: 1–5 / 1–4). 3% discount; no-gift baseline catches up. No current claim that the 2027 ATP application window is open. Finite counterfactual prior.
Survival utility / mortality / tail
0.8 / 2% yearly / 30 years (range: Favorable 0.85 / 1% / 40; short tail 10). Central 12.156 QALYs at prevented fatal event. Finite annual survival and discounting; one tail per unique person. Analyst health prior.
Serious-injury disutility / duration
0.2 / 10 years (range: Favorable 0.3 / 10; short duration 3). Central 1.537 QALYs per nonfatal event after mortality and discounting; assumes persistent average deficit, not validated injury mix. Mortality-only sensitivity retained. Analyst health prior.
Target Bay/SF and displaced Bay/SF
Target 25%/1%; displaced 20%/1% (range: Favorable 40%/2% versus 20%/2%; zero SF and SF harm). San Jose activity supports Bay relevance but does not identify resident incidence. All modeled health in California; Bay includes SF. Independent residence priors.
Target / alternative public and private PV
Public $600k/$300k; private $20k/$10k per decision (range: Favorable public $2M/$1M; private $50k/$20k). Gift-date incremental PV relative to each project's no-gift timing. Includes construction/capital timing and maintenance; transfers and publicly financed private assets excluded. Unpriced real-resource judgments.

Same $100,000 gift in fourteen scenarios

  • central: SF donor: $631,800,965/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.158278 / 0.0431666 / 0.00158278. US/Bay donor: $6,318,010 / $23,166,035. Net resource numerator $162,000; gross target $224,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: $10,235,176 / $37,528,977 / $1,023,517,564.
  • favorable joint: SF donor: $1,456,849/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 34.3206 / 15.6894 / 0.686413. US/Bay donor: $29,137 / $63,737. Net resource numerator $1,748,000; gross target $3,380,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: $509,315 / $1,114,125 / $25,465,725.
  • pessimistic harm: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: -0.0000399021 / -0.00000498776 / -3.99021e-7. US/Bay donor: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio. Net resource numerator $102,325; gross target $104,650. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio.
  • no additional funding: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.00000 / 0.00000 / 0.00000. US/Bay donor: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio. Net resource numerator $100,000; gross target $100,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio.
  • no decision change: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.00000 / 0.00000 / 0.00000. US/Bay donor: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio. Net resource numerator $100,000; gross target $100,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio.
  • no target implementation: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: -0.0719444 / -0.0143889 / -0.000719444. US/Bay donor: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio. Net resource numerator $162,000; gross target $224,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio.
  • equal health displacement: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.00000 / 0.00000 / 0.00000. US/Bay donor: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio. Net resource numerator $162,000; gross target $224,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio.
  • no sf benefit: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.158278 / 0.0431666 / 0.00000. US/Bay donor: $6,318,010 / $23,166,035. Net resource numerator $162,000; gross target $224,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: $10,235,176 / $37,528,977 / No finite positive ratio.
  • sf net harm: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.158278 / 0.0431666 / -0.00143889. US/Bay donor: $6,318,010 / $23,166,035. Net resource numerator $162,000; gross target $224,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: $10,235,176 / $37,528,977 / No finite positive ratio.
  • short health tail: SF donor: $1,501,281,321/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.0666098 / 0.0181663 / 0.000666098. US/Bay donor: $15,012,813 / $55,046,982. Net resource numerator $162,000; gross target $224,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: $24,320,757 / $89,176,110 / $2,432,075,740.
  • extra public resources: SF donor: $631,800,965/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.158278 / 0.0431666 / 0.00158278. US/Bay donor: $6,318,010 / $23,166,035. Net resource numerator $342,000; gross target $404,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: $21,607,593 / $79,227,841 / $2,160,759,301.
  • independent harm: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: -0.0100000 / -0.00200000 / -0.000100000. US/Bay donor: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio. Net resource numerator $100,000; gross target $100,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio.
  • common engineering effect null: SF donor: No finite positive ratio/10 QALYs. Shared crash-reduction coefficient is zero for target and alternative alike: an all-project engineering null, not target-only failure. Target-only operational failure retaining alternative harm appears separately. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.00000 / 0.00000 / 0.00000. US/Bay donor: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio. Net resource numerator $162,000; gross target $224,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio / No finite positive ratio.
  • mortality only: SF donor: $1,430,490,607/10 QALYs. US/Bay/SF QALYs: 0.0699061 / 0.0190653 / 0.000699061. US/Bay donor: $14,304,906 / $52,451,322. Net resource numerator $162,000; gross target $224,000. US/Bay/SF net resource per 10 QALYs: $23,173,948 / $84,971,142 / $2,317,394,783.

Uncertainty. Joint scenarios are not probability-weighted or confidence intervals. Favorable US/Bay donor prices cross $100,000 per 10 QALYs, while all favorable total-resource prices remain above it. Missing clinical/exposure, causal and cost data prevent high-expected-value inference.

5. Funding and previous grants

Independently checked conditional research model. No demonstrated marginal package or high-expected-value donation; favorable joint threshold crossing does not establish a recommendation.

Official giving supports the statewide organization. Current consulting recognizes foundation/donor support and public CPBST support; neither establishes an unfunded offer. Existing assistance and adopted projects are baseline. Displacement is necessary because ATP is oversubscribed.

This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.

Donate

Opens the organization’s giving page. A general donation may not fund the specific activity modeled here; confirm allocation with the recipient.

6. Sources

  1. California Walks CPBST and current implementation follow-up. California Walks. Primary official webpage. Published: Undated/current page; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  2. California Walks consulting and assistance. California Walks. Primary official webpage. Published: Undated/current page; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  3. Walk San Jose. California Walks. Primary official webpage. Published: Undated/current page; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  4. California Walks official donate page. California Walks. Primary official webpage. Published: Undated/current page; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  5. FHWA Safety Benefits of Raised Medians and Pedestrian Refuge Areas. Federal Highway Administration. Primary official webpage. Published: Historical guidance; last modified February 1, 2013; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  6. FHWA current medians and refuge islands countermeasure page. Federal Highway Administration. Primary official webpage. Published: Undated/current page; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  7. CTC Active Transportation Program. California Transportation Commission. Primary official webpage. Published: Undated/current page; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  8. ProPublica IRS-derived FY June 2025 extract. ProPublica / IRS-derived extract. Secondary IRS-derived extract; raw filing retrieval failed. Published: FY ended June 2025; filing listed August 15, 2025; retrieved: September 8, 2026.
  9. American Heart Association 2019 Form 990 Schedule I. American Heart Association. Primary historical grant schedule; search-indexed text only. Published: 2019 tax return; retrieved: September 8, 2026.

Annual expenses: years and sources

Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): Not available. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.

California Walks

Three years of organization-level expenses have not yet been verified for this report. No other organization or fiscal sponsor budget has been substituted.