IP Briefing: What’s Going on with Philanthropy in Southern California? — Inside Philanthropy

In a sentence: Southern California is huge and sophisticated — its philanthropic panorama is, too.  

What’s happening 

Southern California — together with not solely larger Los Angeles but additionally Ventura, Santa Barbara, Orange, and a number of other different counties in addition to San Diego — is a big, advanced and numerous area. It’s famously costly and residential to nice fortunes, and it’s additionally residence to ever-increasing earnings inequality, a homelessness disaster and formidable local weather challenges. 

Throughout the area, the problem receiving probably the most philanthropic {dollars} is well being, adopted by arts and tradition, Okay-12 schooling, and neighborhood and financial growth, we present in our State of American Philanthropy report.   

The organizations receiving probably the most grant cash in Southern California are typically giant establishments just like the Salk Institute for Organic Research, Cedars-Sinai Medical Care Basis, Kids’s Hospital of LA, and LACMA. However the area’s core group of regionally centered foundations have a tendency to provide to smaller nonprofits, notably together with social-justice-minded, community-based teams just like the Neighborhood Coalition of South LA and Homeboy Industries. 

From its very geography to the problems it’s going through, Southern California is huge and diverse. Its philanthropic panorama is as nicely. 

By the numbers

Los Angeles receives the lion’s share of giving within the area — $11 billion from institutional grantmakers from 2014 to 2018, in comparison with $2.47 billion in grants to San Diego, the second-most-funded SoCal county, in that interval.   

Key funders 

A secure core of foundations, usually working collectively, are a dominant pressure in Southern California philanthropy and still have a big voice within the civic sphere. These embrace the California Endowment and the Ahmanson Basis, Annenberg Basis, Parsons Basis, Weingart Basis,  and Eli and Edythe Broad Basis. Different grantmakers which can be making an impression embrace the Herb Alpert and David Geffen foundations. 

A few of the nation’s largest neighborhood foundations are key gamers in Southern California, together with the California Neighborhood Basis, San Diego Basis, and the Orange County Neighborhood Basis. The Jewish Neighborhood Basis of Los Angeles can also be a number one grantmaker within the area.   

Among the many area’s many high-capacity main donors, a couple of standout names embrace Will and Cary Singleton, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, Carolyn Powers, Ernest and Evelyn Rady in San Diego, and Patrick Quickly-Shiong, [one of] the richest males in Los Angeles. L.A. County is one in all three focus areas of Steve and Connie Ballmer, whose Ballmer Group is one of many high funders addressing poverty within the U.S. proper now. 

New and notable 

• Fairness-focused initiatives within the area have attracted main funding. California Funders for Boys and Males of Shade, as an example, is a bunch of 16 main grantmakers together with the California Endowment, the Weingart Basis, the Liberty Hill Basis and others. The California Black Freedom Fund launched in 2021 with preliminary funding offered by CalEndow and the Annenberg and Weingart foundations, amongst others.  

• Miguel A. Santana is the brand new chief of the LA–centered Weingart Basis. He stepped up after longtime president and CEO Fred Ali retired final 12 months. 

•  The Latino Neighborhood Basis has raised an preliminary $10 million for its new Latino Energy Fund, which can assist Latino-led grassroots organizations in California. 

• What began as a philanthropy-backed pilot mission to supply authorized companies to individuals going through deportation has been adopted as a everlasting L.A. County program: the Los Angeles Justice Fund.

Meals for thought

Surprisingly to some, leisure cash just isn’t a dominating pressure within the area’s philanthropic neighborhood — although it’s current. Nevertheless, fortunes made in actual property, land growth, healthcare, tech, finance, and power have extra considerably formed Southern California philanthropy to this point. 

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