The 2018 Fund for Change Grants
Liberty Hill is pleased to announce that our 2018 Fund for Change grants will invest $975,800 in 39 grassroots organizations throughout Los Angeles County. Thanks to the generosity of our donor-activists and foundation partners, we have been able to increase our Fund for Change grantmaking by $256,800 since 2016. The Fund for Change is Liberty Hill's primary competitive grantmaking program, with the goal of fueling community organizing that builds power to change policy and improve opportunities for all Angelenos. The Fund for Change supports models of organizing that create pipelines for leadership growth, strengthen membership bases, promote strategic campaign development, and build coalitions in low-income communities and communities of color. If you are familiar with the Fund for Change, you may also know Margarita Ramirez, Liberty Hill’s Director of Grantmaking. For the past 37 years, Margarita has been a vital part of Liberty Hill’s staff, playing an integral role in the foundation’s grantmaking strategy and social justice vision. With bittersweet emotions, we announce Margarita’s retirement from Liberty Hill Foundation this month, and extend our deepest gratitude to her. Although 2018 will be Margarita’s last grantmaking cycle at Liberty Hill, we are excited to welcome Joanna Kabat into the position of Director of Grantmaking and Capacity Building. Joanna has served as a key member of our grantmaking team for four years where she has driven our capacity-building work. Going forward, Joanna will lead Liberty Hill’s grantmaking efforts in pursuit of a more just L.A. The following organizations received grants from Liberty Hill’s 2018 Fund for Change:
- ACCE Institute - $40,000
To lead organizing for economic justice among low-income senior and working class homeowners and tenants who are impacted by the foreclosure and the current housing crisis.
- A New Way of Life - $15,000
For its project All of Us or None - Los Angeles Chapter to strengthen the movement of formerly incarcerated people fighting against discrimination and standing for their civil rights.
- Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles - $10,000
For its project Asian Pacific Islander Equality - LA to support continued work advancing API LGBTQ equality as part of a broader inclusive social justice movement.
- Californians for Justice Education Fund - $25,000
To ensure that youth of color in the Long Beach Unified School District are able to drive resources to the programs, services, policies and practices they need most.
- Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates of Southern California - $20,000
For its project CLEAN Carwash Initiative, which organizes car wash workers to work with dignity, have a voice in the industry and be a movement for political, social and economic change.
- Coalition for Economic Survival - $10,000
To empower, educate and organize tenants in low-income communities of color working to preserve affordable housing and prevent displacement.
- Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs - $20,000
For its project Coalition for Educational Justice to expand student organizing and transform its organizational capacity by increasing the number of staff and student organizers.
- Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights - $40,000
To engage, empower and mobilize immigrants through organizing, leadership development and membership base-building.
- Community Asset Development Re-Defining Education - $30,000
To support efforts to strengthen the solidarity between African American and Latino parents resisting the criminalization of youth in underserved schools.
- Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment - $40,000
To win policy and budget campaigns to rebuild local economies, schools and neighborhoods, and reduce the impact of mass incarceration on poor and working class communities of color.
- Dignity and Power Now - $20,000
To support groundbreaking work to organize formerly incarcerated people, their families and their communities, in order to end the violence of—and overreliance on—incarceration in Los Angeles County.
- East Los Angeles Community Corporation - $25,000
To expand base-building and leadership development capacity within the Los Angeles Street Vendor Campaign in Hollywood, Leimert Park and Downtown Los Angeles.
- East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice - $20,000
To pursue a safe and healthy environment for communities that are disproportionately suffering the negative impacts of industrial pollution in East Los Angeles, Southeast Los Angeles and Long Beach.
- Garment Worker Center - $10,000
To launch a pro-active organizing strategy to improve wage standards and conditions for 50,000 workers in the garment industry.
- Genders & Sexualities Alliance Network - $30,000
To support youth-led campaigns in Long Beach, South L.A. and Boyle Heights that aim to create school and district-level policy changes and improve school climates for LGBTQ youth of color.
- Community Partners - $20,000
For its project Gender Justice LA to continue leading campaigns to the end the criminalization of transgender communities and offer more spaces for public education and healing.
- Gente Organizada - $10,000
To grow its Community Union-Pomona Parents United, established primarily by mothers of color who seek to make strategic and systemic changes to the educational system in Pomona.
- Housing Long Beach - $20,000
To change the existing imbalance of power in Long Beach by promoting policies that assure housing preservation, affordable housing and living wage jobs.
- InnerCity Struggle - $40,000
To improve the quality of education for the Eastside and district-wide communities of Los Angeles through its United Students and Padres Unidos organizing components.
- Khmer Girls in Action - $40,000
To implement restorative justice and other positive alternatives to exclusionary school discipline policies, as well as school-based wellness centers.
- Korean Resource Center - $25,000
To build a municipal strategy in Los Angeles through a multiracial coalition that would prepare for institutionalizing rent control policies in 2019.
- Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates of Southern California - $40,000
To enforce new wage theft policies and fight gentrification and displacement among economically underserved Koreatown residents and low-wage workers.
- LA Voice - $40,000
To support congregation-based organizing efforts in key campaigns, including voter education, affordable housing, homelessness, criminal justice reform and immigration.
- Labor Community Strategy Center - $15,000
To support its Free Public Transportation/No Police on Buses and Trains/Stop MTA Attacks on Black Passengers campaigns, focused on building a Black and Latino alliance in South Los Angeles and L.A. high schools.
- Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs - $10,000
For its project Long Beach Residents Empowered which supports resident-led base-building and an intersectional housing justice coalition, with a focus on code enforcement and habitability, housing production and preservation.
- Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy - $40,000
To achieve effective enforcement of the Raise the Wage campaign, win a zero waste policy in Long Beach and build community support for truck drivers organizing at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach.
- Community Partners - $25,000
For its project Los Angeles Black Worker Center, which focuses on public works, and on policies and practices that impact quality workforce development in the African American community.
- Los Angeles Community Action Network - $30,800
For its economic and racial justice work in the areas of tenant rights, housing preservation, civil rights, economic development and healthy food access.
- Pacoima Beautiful - $10,000
To strengthen relationships with city officials in order to gain support for the organization’s goals around environmental justice, transportation, investment, water, clean energy and arts.
- People Organized for Westside Renewal - $25,000
To support its fight for the human right to housing, protect and expand workers’ and immigrants’ rights and make corporations pay their fair share for the common good.
- Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California - $30,000
To support organizing efforts to transform the domestic worker industry in California by organizing Filipina domestic workers to lead wage theft enforcement strategies.
- Pomona Economic Opportunity Center - $25,000
To support its core work with low-wage workers and immigrant residents in the City of Pomona and eastern Los Angeles County.
- Restaurant Opportunities Centers United - $25,000
For Restaurant Opportunities Centers of Los Angeles to launch workplace justice campaigns against low-road employers engaged in discrimination, exploitation and abuse in L.A.’s restaurant industry.
- Strategic Actions for a Just Economy - $25,000
To support efforts to eliminate slum housing, expand tenants’ rights, reform redevelopment, build community capacity in land-use planning, and improve jobs and income in the Figueroa Corridor.
- Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education - $25,000
To build grassroots power to advocate for jobs and equitable public investments in low-income communities through voter engagement strategies, strategic alliance-building and regional collaboration.
- Tenemos que Reclamar y Unidos Salvar la Tierra-South L.A. (T.R.U.S.T-South LA) - $25,000
To support organizing campaigns to revitalize the surrounding neighborhood with transportation, recreation, and food access to promote healthy living and economic vitality.
- Unión de Vecinos - $25,000
To support its work preserving local communities and reducing displacement, including strategies that protect the right to housing for low-income families of color.
- Warehouse Workers Resource Center - $10,000
To improve wages and working conditions of thousands of workers at multiple warehouses operated by California Cartage, a major warehouse and trucking company.
- Youth Justice Coalition - $40,000
To build a youth, family and prisoner-led movement to challenge the city, state and nation’s addiction to incarceration and race, gender and class inequality throughout the juvenile justice systems.