Lasting change begins with communities. Across Southern California, people are organizing, preserving culture, rebuilding neighborhoods, and creating new pathways for opportunity. Our latest round of grantmaking invests $9.4 million in nonprofit partners strengthening the conditions communities need not only to respond to today’s challenges, but to shape their own future.
“This moment calls for innovative approaches rooted in partnership, trust, and a belief that communities hold the solutions to our most urgent challenges,” said Joanna S. Jackson, President and C.E.O. “Our role is to listen, learn, and invest alongside community leaders as they shape a future where every person belongs, every community has the opportunity to thrive, and everyone can share in a more just and prosperous future.”
Recovery Rooted in Community Ownership
This docket reflects the Weingart Foundation’s integrated approach to the long-term recovery of Altadena following the Eaton Fire. Through $2.25 million in grants and an additional $5 million in program-related investments, we are using every tool at our disposal to strengthen community ownership, deepen pathways to long-term economic recovery, and support an ecosystem of organizations advancing three interconnected priorities: resident stabilization, grassroots power building, and shared prosperity. Together, these investments help ensure recovery is not only informed by community, but shaped and led by community.
Each organization plays a distinct role in that ecosystem. Legacy Land Project helps stabilize residents by addressing both immediate and often overlooked barriers to recovery through comprehensive, people-centered support. Its work focuses on preventing displacement, protecting families from exploitation, preserving generational homes, and connecting residents to trusted partnerships and wraparound services. Pacific Community Ventures is helping drive long-term economic recovery by expanding access to affordable capital, business advising, and technical assistance for small business owners rebuilding after the Eaton Fire. Through its Restore LA Fund and partnership with the Los Angeles Urban League, the organization is helping entrepreneurs, particularly Black-owned businesses in West Altadena, overcome barriers to financing, prevent displacement, revitalize neighborhood businesses, and strengthen the local economy. Altadena Earthseed Community Land Trust is helping advance long-term community ownership by building the capacity to preserve affordability and prevent displacement, with a strategy focused on keeping land in community hands as Altadena rebuilds.
“Recovery is strongest when local entrepreneurs have the resources and power to lead it,” said Bulbl Gupta, President and C.E.O., Pacific Community Ventures. “Weingart’s partnership allows Pacific Community Ventures to support Altadena’s small businesses and those impacted by the Eaton Fire, with the capital and high-touch expertise they need to restore opportunity, advance economic growth, counter further displacement, and help chart a path toward a stronger, more resilient Los Angeles community.”
Reclaiming Voice, Culture, and Community
Advancing justice requires changing the stories that shape how we understand our history, one another, and what is possible. This docket invests in organizations working to strengthen narrative power by reclaiming histories that have too often been erased, preserving cultural memory, elevating lived experience, and expanding whose voices shape our collective future.
Through support of organizations such as Black Land Loss Narrative Project and Pop Culture Collaborative, Weingart Foundation is investing in complementary approaches that build on one another. The Black Land Loss Narrative Project documents and preserves the histories of Black land ownership, displacement, and resilience, ensuring these stories remain visible and inform future generations. Pop Culture Collaborative works alongside artists, organizers, cultural strategists, and philanthropy to reshape cultural narratives that advance racial and social justice and build the narrative power needed for a thriving multiracial democracy. Together, these investments recognize that lasting change depends not only on shifting systems, but also on transforming the stories that shape culture, belonging, and our collective imagination.
“With Weingart Foundation’s support, the Pop Culture Collaborative is able to invest in the people, projects, and infrastructure that build narrative power at scale, including supporting cultural leaders and storytellers who are shaping national conversations and inspiring social action to advance race, gender, disability, and immigrant justice and belonging,” said Bridgit Antoinette Evans, C.E.O., Pop Culture Collaborative. “Together, we are supercharging strategies and ecosystems that reach millions of people and expand whose stories and experiences are centered in mainstream culture. By strengthening the field and helping them coordinate around a shared vision of a more just and pluralist America, Weingart is investing in the cultural conditions needed for multiracial democracy and collective thriving.”
Seeding New Leadership and Expanding Opportunity
Advancing justice requires long-term investment in emerging leaders and movement-building ecosystems driving grassroots solutions. Forty-three percent of organizations funded this cycle are first-time grantees, reflecting our commitment to seeding new leadership, expanding our reach, and supporting emerging organizations rooted in the communities they serve. Investments in organizations such as Bold Vision, Dynasty United Youth Association, and Educating Students reflect our commitment to cultivating the next generation of leaders and strengthening the relationships and infrastructure needed to create lasting impact.
Together, these investments reflect our belief that justice is about more than responding to crisis. It is about ensuring people have the power, relationships, and resources to remain rooted, shape their futures, and flourish.
To learn more about the organizations supported through our latest round of funding, click here.