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No Going Back: Policies for an Equitable and Inclusive Los Angeles

September 9, 2020

Prior to the stay-at-home public health directive, civic boosters promoted Los Angeles as a metropolis that was confronting its problems and making progress. Local and state governments enjoyed budget surpluses, unprecedented investments were committed by Angelenos to respond to homelessness, and access to health care and high school graduation rates were at historically high levels, while unemployment and crime rates were at celebrated lows. But behind this glossy view of LA, a closer look at the data would have revealed a very different reality, where decades of structural and systemic racism resulted in significant social, economic, and racial inequality. Just a few months into a global pandemic, the cracks in the broken systems have become gaping holes, widening each day. Today, the calls for systemic change are loud, consequential and urgent.Early in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ten foundations wisely convened a diverse group of community, civic, non-profit, labor and business leaders to identify the systemic issues emerging from the crisis and to offer up a blueprint for building a more equitable and inclusive LA. Their past philanthropic work had made it clear that Los Angeles was becoming increasingly inequitable, and they feared the acceleration of disparate impact centered on income and race. The Committee for Greater LA was formed, and for the past five months, it has steered the analytical work completed by two of LA's leading institutions, UCLA and USC, supported by a team of consultants. The report that follows reflects our discourse, analysis and discovery.

When Your Best Friend Is Murdered: Experiences of Grief and Trauma with Crew-involved Youth

July 14, 2017

Trauma and Grief are two critical drivers of violence, yet these elements are often missing in discussions concerning youth violence, especially how we understand crews - building-based groups of youth whose conflicts revolve around turf and reputation rather than criminal enterprised.  Understanding the role of trauma and grief offers critical insights into how and why violence is sustained in crew-involved youth. Losing someone to murder is uniquely difficult to process and, disturbingly, crew-involved youth face this life experience frequently.  Death through murder is especially traumatic because death is sudden, horrific, and caused by another person.  Further, youth involved in crews often experience a variety of traumas and stressors throughout their lives.  When trauma symptoms and grief combine, it can lead to an experience known as complicated grieving, which is associated with worse health outcomes and prolonged distress.

Update on the Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative

September 1, 2016

The hope is that the NSI will help to further normalize the dialogue and activity around mergers and collaborations in the sector. The NSI's definition of success is: "By the end of the active NSI effort, Strategic Restructuring will be normalized in LA County's nonprofit ecosystem. This ecosystem understands, supports, and engages in SR as a tool for enhanced impact and sustainability." Part of the NSI's measure of success is whether we have helped to create an environment where nonprofits are more comfortable discussing strategic partnerships with their boards and with funders, where funders are more receptive to funding this type of work, and nonprofits have the tools and professional support needed to effectively engage in the work. The funders and the evaluation team believe that attitudes and perceptions around mergers and strategic partnerships within the local nonprofit and philanthropic sector have begun to shift since the launch of the initiative. However, the funders also recognize that beyond the life of the NSI, there may continue to be a need for education in the sector on the range of strategic partnership possibilities as well as training for consultants on facilitation of strategic restructuring and partnership work. Discussions are taking place among the funders now around what entity/entities might be best to carry that work forward.This project has brought together funders and nonprofits in Los Angeles to focus on long-term sustainability issues in the nonprofit sector in a systematic way. The NSI continues to garner attention from nonprofits and funders throughout the country and is already being looked at as a model to support strategic restructuring within the nonprofitsector.

Evaluation of the California Community Foundation's BLOOM Initiative Year Three Evaluation Report, 2014-2015

December 1, 2015

The Building a Lifetime of Options and Opportunities for Men (BLOOM) Initiative was designed with the goal of redirecting Black male youth, ages 14-18-years-old involved with the Los Angeles County probation system, toward improved educational and employment opportunities and outcomes. Through strategic partnerships with three community-based organizations, the BLOOM Initiative seeks to redirect the paths of probation-involved young Black men, away from adult incarceration and towards meaningful education and employment opportunities. Utilizing a process and outcomes-focused evaluation, this report documents the successful progression of BLOOM youth participants, highlighting the development of a holistic model and best practices for serving probation-involved youth. Specifically, through two focus groups and depth interviews with 10 participants, BLOOM youth describe their experience with BLOOM partner organizations as having a deep and profound impact on their lives. The sum total of the data captures a comprehensive look of where the BLOOM program is after year three.

Black Minds Matter: Supporting the Educational Success of Black Children in California

October 26, 2015

"Black Minds Matter: Supporting the Educational Success of Black Children in California," examines how the nearly 1 million Black youth in California are faring from preschool through college and reveals the distressing disparities that newly released state and national data show persist at all levels of their educational journey. The report also highlights the groundbreaking efforts underway to reverse these trends in California and close achievement and opportunity gaps for African American students.The report calls on policymakers, education leaders, and all Californians to prioritize the equity-based changes that California's Black students deserve and have been waiting far too long for. If we believe California is a land of opportunity, we must acknowledge that the current rate of progress we see is unacceptable.

Overhead Madness: A Look at Grantmaking Policies and Practices in Funding Real Costs in California

August 25, 2015

The Real Cost Project is a joint statewide initiative of Northern California Grantmakers, Southern California Grantmakers and San Diego Grantmakers. The goal of the Real Cost Project is to increase the number of funders that provide real-cost funding and to build the skills and capacity of all those engaged in grantmaking, including foundations, corporations, individuals, and government. The critical first step of the project was to collect information and baseline data on the spectrum of current funder and sector practices that relate to real cost funding. From February to May 2015, research was conducted through qualitative methods, including an environmental scan of research and studies related to funding of overhead and one-on-one interviews with practitioners in the field statewide. Interviews were conducted with Board Members, Executive Directors, and Program Officers, representing a variety of funder types, including corporate foundations, family foundations, community foundations, giving networks, public endowments and individual donors.

Real Cost Project: Barriers to Change

January 1, 2015

The Real Cost Project is a joint statewide initiative of Northern California Grantmakers, Southern California Grantmakers and San Diego Grantmakers. The goal of the Real Cost Project is to increase the number of funders that provide real-cost funding and to build the skills and capacity of all those engaged in grantmaking, including foundations, corporations, individuals, and government. Representatives from more than 150 different foundations as well as government agencies and individual philanthropists participated in the Regional Forums. The following report reveals common themes that surfaced from these forums and reflects the issues that participants viewed as the most relevant and urgent.

A Portrait Of California 2014-2015: California Human Development Report

November 30, 2014

This report takes a dramatically different approach to assessing the state's performance. Instead of relying on traditional economic analysis, Measure of America's A Portrait of California uses the human development approach to tell us how people are doing. Three dimensions -- a long and healthy life, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of living -- are examined in detail and presented along a simple ten-point scale: the American Human Development (HD) Index. A Portrait of California brings together data, innovative analysis, and the American HD Index methodology to enable "apples-to-apples" comparisons of California's counties, major cities, 265 Census Bureau -- defined areas, women and men, and racial and ethnic groups. It provides a gauge of how different groups of Californians are doing in comparison to one another and a benchmark for tracking progress over time.

Ready for ACA? How Community Health Centers Are Preparing for Health Care Reform

May 15, 2014

Community health centers (CHCs) are a cornerstone of the health care safety net. They are the primary source of care for many low-income populations, including both those newly insured under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and those who were left out and will remain uninsured. The ACA provides challenges and opportunities for CHCs, which will require significant changes in infrastructure and care delivery approaches to meet those challenges. This policy brief assesses the progress made by CHCs in Los Angeles County in meeting a number of key indicators of ACA readiness in early 2014. The authors find that 39 percent of CHCs are well prepared, 23 percent have made some progress, and the rest are at the initial phases of preparation and/or lack adequate resources to meet the requirements. CHCs in the latter group will require help to embark on strategic improvements in infrastructure and care delivery

Evaluation of the California Community Foundation's Building a Lifetime of Options and Opportunities for Men (BLOOM) Initiative: One-Year Evaluation Report, 2012-2013

June 30, 2013

The BLOOM Initiative was designed with the goal of redirecting black male youth involved with the Los Angeles County probation system toward improved educational and employment opportunities and outcomes. This report is an assessment of the first year of the Initiative, using qualitative and quantitative methods to measure process and outcomes.

What's at Stake for the State: Undocumented Californians, Immigration Reform, and Our Future Together

May 9, 2013

Building off a methodology originally pioneered by co-author Enrico A.Marcelli (Demographer, Department ofSociology, San Diego State University) to estimate the unauthorized, this is the first report to estimate undocumented Californians at this breadth and level of detail. One in six California children has at least one undocumented parent and 81% of those children are citizens. Nearly half (49%) of undocumented Californians have lived here more than 10 years. Undocumented Californians comprise nearly 7% of the state's total population, 8% of all adults and 9% of the state's workforce.However, achievement of these gains will require a clear and quick roadmap to citizenship. To succeed, federal immigration reform needs to take immigrant integration seriously, and the state and local governments will need to invest in programs to raise education levels, increase English fluency and improve job skills as a way to maximize the potential of undocumented Californians and build a stronger state.

The Future of Philanthropy in Los Angeles: A Wealth of Opportunity

December 2, 2011

Examines economic factors shaping the projected transfer of wealth in Los Angeles County and, in turn, the future of philanthropy and the nonprofit community. Outlines how to prepare donors and nonprofits to maximize philanthropic opportunities.