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Updates from The Weingart Foundation May 2023

2023 Weingart Planning Conference

Weingart Board Members and Staff

Our board and staff recently came together for our 2023 Weingart Planning Conference, an annual gathering where we build on the momentum and learning of our past work together to reaffirm our shared commitment to advancing racial justice. The Planning Conference took place at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture where we were inspired by its mission to promote the Chicano/Latino experience from the perspective of the community through art.

We also had the opportunity to connect with our Inland Empire partners and learn more about how they are building power and advancing on intersectional issues impacting BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities of color including health access, immigrant rights, BIPOC-leadership building, civic engagement, and inclusive economic development. In this bulletin, we are shining a light on TruEvolution and the Palm Springs Section 14 survivors, two organizations that were part of our planning conference.

TruEvolution

TruEvolution staff showed us the plan for a future housing development, Project Legacy

TruEvolution staff showed us the plan for a future housing development, Project Legacy

During our Conference, we toured TrueEvolution an organization that provides HIV care and prevention services, emergency housing, and mental health services advancing health equity and racial justice for LGBTQ+ people in the Inland Empire. We were inspired by Gabriel Maldonado, founder and CEO of TruEvolution, whose lived experienced motivates him to advancing the quality of life and human dignity of people of color in the LGBTQ+ experience.

Palm Springs Section 14 Survivors

Palms Springs Section 14 Panel

Palm Springs Section 14 Panel with Weingart Board and Staff

As part of our Conference, we heard from the Palm Springs Section 14 Survivors Advisory Group. Section 14 in Palm Springs was a one-square-mile, predominantly African American, working-class community that thrived in the 1900s at a time in California where racially restrictive covenants forced people of color out of certain communities. In the early 1960s, the City of Palm Springs enacted a plan to demolish Section 14 to build more lucrative commercial enterprises. Without proper notice or compensation, the city burned and bulldozed homes, violently displacing residents in what the California Attorney General’s office described in 1965 as a “City-engineered holocaust.”

The Palm Springs Section 14 Survivors Advisory Group was established in 2021 to advocate for the survivors of the city-led destruction with the goal of having the City of Palms Springs repair some of the harm caused to them and their descendants. The Los Angeles Times recently featured the efforts of the Palm Springs Section 14 Survivors.

Learn more about their efforts here: https://vimeo.com/755339911

The Weingart Foundation Honors the Legacy of Pioneering Leader Gloria Molina

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 - 1

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. Read our statement about Supervisor Gloria Molina.

Impact Investing Highlights

Dr. Gina Merritt, Owner & Principal of Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, a developer that is a part of LIIF’s Black Developer Initiative

In addition to grants, impact investing is a powerful tool we increasingly utilize to support communities. Our goal is to use all of our assets to advance our racial justice mission and we are making meaningful progress in this regard.

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.

We are also actively pursuing opportunities towards our goal of achieving 100% mission-alignment in our investments. We 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. Many 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.

Read About Our Latest Round of Funding

We recently awarded over $7.6 million to 43 nonprofit organizations advancing racial justice across Southern California. 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. Learn more about our latest round of funding here.

ICYMI: Weingart Social Highlights

We hope you are already following us on social media across platforms Linked-In, Facebook, and Twitter. In case you missed it, here are some tweets we invite you to view and share:

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