📣Join our leadership team!

Can you volunteer 1 hour a week for student safety?

Email us at contact@safebears.org to explore joining our board

Hi, parents,

The SafeBears board offers a warm Congratulations to the recent Cal grads and to the incoming freshmen and transfer students! 🎉 My own student, entering her senior year, is doing a summer internship on the East Coast.

In fact, every SafeBears officer – Steve (president), Melissa (secretary), Ingrid (treasurer) and Victoria (me, vice president) – has a rising senior student. And just as our students are approaching the end of their UC Berkeley undergraduate educations, we will soon say goodbye to SafeBears.

✅ SafeBears was formed as a nonprofit corporation to ensure parents had an enduring voice as advocates for student safety at UC Berkeley. The vision and hard work of the founding leaders – Sagar, Elena and others – has blossomed into the respected organization that is SafeBears, Inc. today. But a nonprofit needs board members, and that’s where YOU can help. SafeBears by-laws require board members to be parents of current or very recently graduated students.

✅ The SafeBears mission – student safety – is not static. The original focus was crime. While that’s still important, the mission can encompass other safety topics, from drugs & alcohol to mental health to safe streets for pedestrians/cyclists. As a SafeBears board member, you will help define the organization’s priorities and bring about meaningful improvements to student safety.

✅ Time commitment? That’s really up to the new board members, but we’ve found it is typically no more than 1 hour per week.

Interested? Let's talk! Email contact@safebears.org

Go Bears! 🐻

-Victoria

SafeBears welcomes new board member Devan Pala! Message from Devan:

I’m incredibly proud and grateful to have been given the opportunity to join SafeBears as a board member!

Being a Bay Area local, and with our family preparing to send our daughter off to UC Berkeley as a rising freshman this fall, campus safety has naturally become top of mind. Joining this board is deeply personal for me.

I’m honored to bring my experience, collaborating with dedicated parents, community members, UCPD, the city of Berkeley, and BPD to make a real, lasting impact. My goal is simple: to help ensure a safer, more secure environment where the entire Bear community can truly thrive. 

-Devan

The SafeBears organization at a glance:

• The mission is student safety, broadly defined.

• Board members are volunteers; there is no paid staff.

• Most SafeBears activity is safety-related engagement and education – with parents, students, campus administrators, law enforcement, and local businesses and community members. SB has also funded programs and events, such as self-defense classes at RecWell and new-parent mixers during move-in.

• By design, SafeBears focuses on practical, local solutions. For example, because trespassing in dormitories has been a persistent problem over the years, SafeBears has advocated for things like gates, expansion of the lobby monitor program, and, most recently, a comprehensive security assessment for Clark Kerr Campus. SafeBears doesn’t get involved in complex policy debates, like, for example, how to solve homelessness.

• From time to time SafeBears advocates before the Berkeley City Council or the UC Regents. As a nonprofit, SafeBears can do some lobbying of legislative bodies, but lobbying cannot be a substantial part of the organization's activity.

• SafeBears is strictly prohibited from engaging in political activity, which means it cannot support or oppose candidates for office, or any ballot questions.

• Leadership has Zoom meetings with campus administrators approximately monthly.

• We communicate with our Facebook group members as needed, typically at least a few times a month. We also send email newsletters and strive to keep our website updated; our platform is beginner-friendly Squarespace.

• Nonprofits have annual filing requirements, including federal and state tax returns. While SafeBears has to date hired an accountant to file our returns, it would be helpful for at least one board member to have an accounting background.

• “Keeping the lights on” for a small nonprofit requires about $5,000 a year, the bulk of which goes to insurance and tax preparation. (Other items include Zoom and Squarespace.) The new board will determine how much the organization fundraises.