The Maui Strong Fund was created to provide community resilience with resources for disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. The fund is currently being used to support communities affected by the wildfires on Maui.
Since Jan. 7, Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the U.S., has been burning. Entire neighborhoods have been decimated, and Altadena, a community in L.A. County with a rich history of Black homeownership, has seen massive destruction.
There is a newer, emerging narrative about California’s future, and it goes like this: the future of California goes through the Central Valley.
A trust-based culture—one that prioritizes power-sharing, dialogue, transparency, and learning—is essential to cultivating relationships of trust within organizations. Simply put, being a trust-based organization requires there to be trust within your organization—among staff, between staff and board, and between the board and the CEO. When this trust is broken, or if it is never built to begin with, it can seep into the external aspects of your work with the potential of threatening your relationships, credibility, and reputation.
Trust-based philanthropy is anchored in an understanding of power and privilege, historical and systemic racism and structural oppression, and how these shape people’s realities in profoundly different ways. As grantmakers, we have a responsibility to confront the reality that philanthropy originated from and has often contributed to systemic inequities, both in the ways wealth is accumulated and its dissemination is controlled. While these discussions may be challenging and difficult, this type of self-reflection is fundamental to the work of trust-based philanthropy. As individuals and institutions, we must be willing to recognize historical trauma and systemic power, examine our own relationship to power and money, and be willing to give up some of that power and control in a spirit of service and collaboration with those who are closer to the issues at hand.
Trust-based philanthropy encourages us to rethink our notions of traditional philanthropic roles, which tend to prioritize transactions over relationships. In fact, a trust-based approach encourages us to understand our roles as partners working in service of nonprofits and communities. Traditional Philanthropy has institutionalized and perpetuated harmful tropes about funders as experts and nonprofits as needy people who need to be held accountable. This has been perpetuated institutionally through our grantmaking practices, but also in less obvious ways, such as job descriptions, theories of change, program descriptions, and the language we use to describe our work.
If 2018 was the year of the woman in politics, 2019 will be the year we seize on that momentum to accelerate gender justice by shifting culture.
We are reminded, as we close this year, that moments of disruption, such as those we're experiencing, are also moments to advance change.
With economic uncertainty looming and massive state revenue shortfalls, the California Policy Forum will turn its attention to the importance of tax-based safety net programs in supporting so many California families.
The changing demographics and political attitudes of the Central Valley - a traditionally conservative region of California - demand new strategies for community and civic engagement.
Californians will head to the polls to decide on a ballot measure that could drive more money to education.
In philanthropy, we sometimes overlook or deprioritize the interpersonal skills required to do this work well. This includes the ability to connect dots, show up in an emotionally intelligent way, listen actively and empathically, and know when to get out of the way. It also requires a clear understanding of power, and how power imbalances between funders and grantee partners are exacerbated by race, gender, and class inequities. Cultivating and advancing effective interpersonal skills requires practitioners to bring self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy, and willingness to take multiple perspectives into account.
Despite the Administration’s efforts to weaponize basic needs programs, the new public charge rule will not go unchallenged. Already legal challenges have been filed to prevent the rule from going into effect. Funders can play a critical role in protecting the health and well-being of immigrant families. We're sharing specific actions that funders should consider.
California United Ways have established a statewide relief fund to help those impacted by COVID-19.
The Community Foundation Santa Cruz County's COVID-19 Fund aims to protect the health of the public and giving to the most vulnerable in Santa Cruz County and will rapidly deploy resources to community-based organizations at the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak in Santa Cruz County.
Hosted by the East Bay Community Foundation, COVID-19: A Just East Bay Response Fund will rapidly deploy resources to organizations addressing the economic impact of the broader COVID-19 outbreak, including the immediate needs of communities and organizations affected by coronavirus-related closu
As the nation responds to the coronavirus pandemic, United Way of Greater Los Angeles has announced the creation of the Pandemic Relief Fund to support L.A.