Working with the Weingart Foundation’s housing and homelessness partners, Jiménez will advance the Foundation’s housing justice strategy.

August 16, 2023 (Los Angeles, CA) – After an extensive search, the Weingart Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial justice, welcomes Diana Amparo Jiménez (she/they) as Program Officer for Housing Justice. In the newly created position, Jiménez will foster grantmaking, convening, public/private partnerships, advocacy, and communications to advance racial justice in the housing landscape in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura Counties. Jiménez will also work closely with the Foundation’s impact investing team to support housing justice opportunities.

“Diana Amparo Jiménez brings deep expertise and housing leadership that will help us advance lasting solutions to our region’s housing needs,” said Miguel Santana, President and C.E.O. of the Weingart Foundation. “Her professional background, lived experience, and deeply rooted commitment to social justice make her a valuable addition to our team as we continue to build power for systemic change across Southern California.”

Most recently, Jiménez served as Program Associate for the Homelessness Initiative at the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, where she supported the implementation of its five-year strategy aiming to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring. Before that, Jiménez was a Project Manager at T.R.U.S.T. South LA’s Community Land Trust, where she established partnerships with community development financial institutions, commercial banks, and philanthropy for viable loan products and grants to secure creative financing for the purchase and rehabilitation of multifamily buildings through the implementation of LA County’s community land trust pilot.

“My personal experience as a child of migrants, growing up amidst housing insecurity, propelled me to pursue a career that invests in Black, Indigenous, and communities of color which have long been extracted from,” said Diana Amparo Jiménez, the Weingart Foundation’s incoming housing justice program officer. “I am looking forward to working with my colleagues and the Weingart Foundation’s partners to continue to serve communities most impacted by systemic racism.”

Jiménez is a first-generation graduate and holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Policy, Planning, and Development – Sustainable Planning Emphasis from the University of Southern California, Sol Price School of Public Policy. Jiménez is a descendant of the Nahua and Raramuri-Tarahumara nations and remains rooted in their ancestral practices of land, housing, and environmental justice.

ABOUT THE WEINGART FOUNDATION

The Weingart Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial, social, and economic justice for all. Our vision is a dynamic and effective social change sector that is creating equitable systems and structures needed to achieve justice. Founded in 1951, the Foundation has to date granted over $1 billion to organizations, strengthening their efforts in human services, housing, health, education, and community power building. In addition, the Foundation builds networks and collaboratives with philanthropic, public sector, and community leaders to advance equity and justice together.

AUGUST 8, 2023 (Los Angeles, CA) — Miguel A. Santana, President and CEO of the Weingart Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial justice, released the following statement.

“We applaud the decision by the Los Angeles County Board Supervisors to establish a regional governance structure for homelessness. Further, the Weingart Foundation along with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, commits to support the creation of a leadership table that brings together the County, City of Los Angeles, Council of Governments, service providers, key civic leaders, and people with lived experience, to further regional alignment.

“We’ve invested in understanding the best practices in creating a regional approach for homelessness in Los Angeles, including sponsoring the report commissioned in September 2020, authored by Dr. Raphael Sonenshein at the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State LA. The report underscores the necessity of a stronger regional strategy to address the homelessness crisis.

“The regional governance structure that the Board of Supervisors approved today can help operationalize the unprecedented cooperation between the City and County of Los Angeles under the leadership of the Board and Mayor Bass.

“We thank the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for taking this critical and important step towards advancing solutions to our region’s housing and homelessness crises.”

ABOUT THE WEINGART FOUNDATION

The Weingart Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial, social, and economic justice for all. Our vision is a dynamic and effective social change sector that is creating equitable systems and structures needed to achieve justice. Founded in 1951, the Foundation has to date granted over $1 billion to organizations, strengthening their efforts in human services, housing, health, education, and community power building. In addition, the Foundation builds networks and collaboratives with philanthropic, public sector, and community leaders to advance equity and justice together.

Utilizing a racial justice framework, the Weingart Foundation supports nonprofits and investments working on intersectional issues from meeting essential needs to community organizing and policy advocacy.

July 13, 2023 (Los Angeles, CA) — The Weingart Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial justice, committed more than$10 million in impact investments and awarded $9.4 million in grants to organizations working on critical social issues including economic, housing, immigrant/refugee, and disability justice. Over 72% of the funds awarded provide unrestricted operating support to nonprofits that deliver direct services, advocacy, and multi-sector or multi-ethnic collaboration to address multiple issues impacting communities of color.

In addition to grantmaking, the Weingart Foundation advances its mission through impact investments that support its commitment to equity. The Weingart Foundation committed $5M to Primestor Urban Vision Fund, managed by Primestor, a Latino-owned real estate firm. The funds will help develop mixed-use real estate including housing, healthcare facilities, community gathering spaces, and retail in underserved communities. Weingart also committed $5M to Female Founders Fund IV, which aims to bridge the gender gap women entrepreneurs face. Additionally, Weingart is providing a program-related investment loan of $500K to iimpact Capital Holdings, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment company focused on providing equity financing to women real estate developers of color creating affordable housing.

“At a time when efforts that celebrate inclusion are under attack, we stand firmly committed to our partners and their pursuit of social and racial justice,” said Miguel A. Santana, President and CEO of the Weingart Foundation. “This includes directing our investments to support those who make the work possible. We’re proud to invest in nonprofit capacity needs geared towards building long-term sustainability.”

The Weingart Foundation, as part of its grantmaking, awarded $250,000 to the Immigrants are Essential Fund, a pooled fund which aims to support the resilience of immigrant rights organizations in LA and surrounding counties. The fund will pilot wellness and sustainability grants to grassroots immigrant rights organizations for programs and activities such as self-care, therapy, wellness stipends, and coaching for staff.

Twenty-seven percent of grant dollars this cycle, totaling $2.45M, are directed to immigrant/refugee justice efforts including support to organizations that advance economic and worker justice on behalf of low-wage workers that are predominantly immigrant and/or people of color. Over the past year, the Weingart Foundation has invested $3.67M in worker centers like Restaurant Opportunities Center of Los Angeles, Warehouse Worker Resource Center, and Inland Empire Black Worker Center. Additionally, new partners include Democracy at Work Institute and the Safety Net for All Coalition, each focused specifically on excluded workers such as those shut out of pandemic relief funds due to their immigration status.

The Weingart Foundation intentionally invests in BIPOC-led organizations that have been historically underfunded. Eighty-three percent of the organizations that received unrestrictive funding support are BIPOC-led and more than half are Black-led. The Weingart Foundation granted $1M to the Black Equity Collective, a community-public-private partnership focused on strengthening the long-term capacity and infrastructure of Black-led and Black-empowering social justice organizations in Southern California.

Consistent with the Weingart Foundation’s commitment to systems change, $1.05M (8%) of this round of funding supports organizations engaged in disability rights efforts that incorporate community organizing, advocacy, and leadership development, led by people with lived experience. Examples include Integrated Community Collaborative, an organization that trains parent and self-advocates to help peers access resources, and LA Spoonie Collective, composed of disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill LGBTQIA+ community members offering workshops and training at the intersections of race, gender, and disability justice, feminist theory, and more. The Weingart Foundation is strengthening movement building in the disability community through support of the Disability Inclusion Fund, RespectAbility, and Disability Voices United, which led efforts to pass three important disability justice laws in California.

“Movement building is critical to achieving the full inclusion and empowerment of people with disabilities,” said Judy Mark, President of Disability Voices United. “Partners like Weingart that support the infrastructure of organizations building community power are essential to helping us move our disability justice work forward and to strengthening our collective voice to effect change.”

For a full list of the Weingart Foundation’s June partners, click here.

ABOUT THE WEINGART FOUNDATION
The Weingart Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial, social, and economic justice for all. Our vision is a dynamic and effective social change sector that is creating equitable systems and structures needed to achieve justice. Founded in 1951, the Foundation has to date granted over $1 billion to organizations, strengthening their efforts in human services, housing, health, education, and community power building. In addition, the Foundation builds networks and collaboratives with philanthropic, public sector, and community leaders to advance equity and justice together.

June 29, 2023 (Los Angeles, CA) — Miguel A. Santana, President and C.E.O. of the Weingart Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial justice, released the following statement related to the release of the report by the California Task Force to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans (Task Force).

“On the day the Supreme Court rules against affirmative action in higher education, the Weingart Foundation strongly affirms its support for the California Task Force to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans (Task Force). As Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor stated today, we live in an “endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.” The data in the Task Force’s report clearly demonstrates this point.

“The Weingart Foundation’s commitment to racial and socioeconomic equity is grounded in our understanding of this country’s history of Indigenous genocide, theft of land, enslavement, and the subsequent decades of government practices that not only excluded Black Americans from equal and meaningful participation but also inflicted generational harm that continues to this day. Today we also recognize that the source of the wealth that we steward benefited from racist policies and practices.

“As a Foundation committed to addressing structural racism and the legacy of anti-Blackness, long-term investment in Black leadership and organizing in Black communities is a core part of our grantmaking to individual nonprofits and through collaborations like our $5 million commitment to the California Black Freedom Fund. However, this does not and cannot replace the transformational power of government sponsored reparations for the generations of state sponsored harm to Black Californians.

“We applaud the Task Force’s research and report that outlines in great detail the compounding and ongoing harms specifically experienced by Black Americans in California including enslavement, exclusion from political participation, racist housing policies, prohibiting education, racial terror, disproportionate justice system involvement, exclusion from employment, and the racial wealth gap. This history, including the specific role of California’s state and local government, is not fully taught and not well known – such as its support of enslavement, even as a free state. We simply cannot achieve true racial justice if we are not honest about the legacy of racial injustice that led to the harmful conditions so many Black and other Americans face today.”

Read the Foundation’s letter endorsing the Task Force’s study.

ABOUT THE WEINGART FOUNDATION
The Weingart Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial, social, and economic justice for all. Our vision is a dynamic and effective social change sector that is creating equitable systems and structures needed to achieve justice. Founded in 1951, the Foundation has to date granted over $1 billion to organizations, strengthening their efforts in human services, housing, health, education, and community power building. In addition, the Foundation builds networks and collaboratives with philanthropic, public sector, and community leaders to advance equity and justice together.

May 14, 2023 – (Los Angeles, CA) — Miguel A. Santana, President and C.E.O. of the Weingart Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial justice, released the following statement.

“Today, we join all Angelenos in mourning the loss of a tremendous pioneering leader, Supervisor Gloria Molina.

“As the first Latina in the California State Assembly, the Los Angeles City Council, and the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, she not only opened doors for others to follow, she transformed lives. Many within our Weingart community have had the privilege of working alongside Supervisor Molina over her decades of service on behalf of vulnerable communities.

“The values she modeled continue to inform and inspire many of us including putting community first and always doing the right thing, no matter how difficult. She reminded us that we are not done fighting for equity until the community sees and feels the difference. She always fought the Good Fight with the ganas, ethics, and integrity that would make the community proud.

“As we advance the Foundation’s mission of building equity and justice, we may ask, ‘What would Gloria do?’ The answer is never to take the easiest path forward or the most popular, but to always fight for what is most impactful for the communities we are committed to serve.

“On behalf of the Weingart Foundation, thank you, Gloria, for your vision, example, and for being our community’s voice and champion.”

ABOUT THE WEINGART FOUNDATION
The Weingart Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial, social, and economic justice for all. Our vision is a dynamic and effective social change sector that is creating equitable systems and structures needed to achieve justice. Founded in 1951, the Foundation has to date granted over $1 billion to organizations, strengthening their efforts in human services, housing, health, education, and community power building. In addition, the Foundation builds networks and collaboratives with philanthropic, public sector, and community leaders to advance equity and justice together.

The funds support Southern California organizations working to create a more equitable future for historically excluded and underserved communities.

April 26, 2023 (Los Angeles, CA) — The Weingart Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial justice, awarded over $7.6 million to 43 nonprofit organizations and made a $10 million investment to a mission-aligned fund. More than half of the grants provide unrestricted operating support to organizations that serve historically marginalized communities. The Foundation is operationalizing its racial justice mission with BIPOC leaders at the helm of 84% of the nonprofit partner organizations receiving unrestricted grants.

The Foundation is strategically transitioning its approach to grantmaking by providing larger grants to organizations that closely align with one or more of the Foundation’s strategic priorities: strong and healthy communities; building civic power; and advancing just systems.

“We’re proud to support our grant and investment partners and know together we form a broader movement for racial justice and systemic equity,” said Miguel A. Santana, President and CEO of the Weingart Foundation. “Our partners know best what it takes to serve their communities and address inequities. We are making deeper investments so they can continue to build on their transformative work.”

The Foundation intentionally partners with coalitions that are building political power in communities impacted by institutional racism. For example, the Los Angeles Worker Centers Network, that includes Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance, CLEAN Carwash Worker Center, Garment Worker Center, and Pilipino Worker Center, is an important network that operates at the intersection of economic, immigrant, and racial justice. Together, these groups have achieved notable policy and legal victories in recent years as they work towards creating meaningful solutions for the lowest-paid workers in the region.

A quarter of the grants in this cycle are Strategic Opportunity Funds that can serve as catalysts that sustain nonprofits and coalitions. For example, the Weingart Foundation is providing seed funding to Pomona United for Stable Housing (PUSH) Coalition, a grassroots coalition of tenants, community members and nonprofits advancing housing justice. PUSH Coalition successfully organized for emergency rent stabilization in Pomona, protecting vulnerable families from losing housing.

“Our partnership with the Weingart Foundation will further our ability to promote policies that protect tenants and strengthen communities,” said Yesenia Miranda Meza, President and co-Founder of Pomona United for Stable Housing. “We’re looking forward to strengthening our administrative infrastructure and investing in contract management, board development, and communication capacities to achieve broader impact.”

The Foundation is expanding its support to nonprofits that serve individuals transitioning out of the criminal justice system, and that advocate for criminal justice reform. This includes two new partners in the Antelope Valley, Paving the Way and Timelist Group, that each provide direct services to justice-involved people while playing a critical role in systems change coalition efforts. These organizations are key partners in Cancel the Contract, a local power-building coalition pushing for school safety through police-free campuses.

The Foundation also recently committed $10 million dollars to Kah Capital Mortgage Credit Fund II, a fund managed by Kah Capital Management, a leading investment management firm focused on mortgage credit and led by people of color. The investment will support distressed borrowers utilizing Kah Capital Management’s technology driven servicing oversight strategy to restructure their mortgage loans and prevent foreclosures, prioritizing home retention. The majority of the borrowers assisted through Kah Capital Management’s strategy are people of color living in low-income communities. This investment advances the Foundation’s housing justice work.

Additionally, the Foundation pledged $5 million, as part of a consortium of funders, to the Community Investment Guarantee Pool (CIGP). CIGP recently provided a $2 million loan guarantee for affordable housing to Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), a Community Development Financial Institution that invests in communities of opportunity, equity, and well-being. Specifically, Weingart’s commitment will support LIIF’S Black Developer Capital Initiative (BDCI) which provides pre-development lines of credit to emerging, Black housing developers who face challenges in accessing flexible, early-stage capital.

“It is inspiring to see the passion and dedication that our nonprofit and investment partners demonstrate each and every day,” said Aileen Adams, Board Chair of the Weingart Foundation. “Beyond financial support, we are committed to supporting meaningful, long-term change that advances racial, social and economic justice for all.”

For a full list of the Weingart Foundation’s partners, please visit: https://weingartfnd.org/march-2023-grants-and-program-related-investments/

ABOUT THE WEINGART FOUNDATION
The Weingart Foundation is a private, nonprofit grantmaking foundation that partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial, social, and economic justice for all. Our vision is a dynamic and effective social change sector that is creating equitable systems and structures needed to achieve justice. Founded in 1951, the Foundation has to date granted over $1 billion to organizations, strengthening their efforts in human services, housing, health, education, and community power building. In addition, the Foundation builds networks and collaboratives with philanthropic, public sector, and community leaders to advance equity and justice together.