21Sep

[VIDEO] F4ICA Statewide Convening: Gathering and Grounding In Community-Led Strategy

September 21, 2022 F4ICA 0

Representing the diverse communities and interests across the five California regions of the Fund, the eight member Strategy Working Group shared an initial draft of the strategic plan which was a product of several strategy meetings, going through notes from 40 one-on-one meetings with Community Advisors, one cross-regional Strategy Conversation, and a series of conversations with each of the five regions in the F4ICA. At this statewide convening, the Strategy Working Group shared how they integrated the information and analysis as well as the logic behind the draft plan and framework. They reflected how this process has been a powerful example of community and philanthropic partnership that centers the voices of those base-building organizations.

It was affirmative for our team to hear direct feedback and guidance from Community Advisors who have been partners for years, and who we continually center in decision-making for the fund. Community Advisors and members of the Strategy Working Group expressed feeling seen and heard in the strategy documents as well as process.

They said we would drive the strategy creation. Lo and behold, that is actually how it is,” one Strategy Working Group member shared. Another Community Advisor shared, “This strategy document shows you have really been listening to us around how we think about our work and what we aspire to do.

The cultural opener, Felcia ‘Fe’ Montes of Mujeres de Maiz, as well as our emcees Derek Steele of Social Justice Learning Institute, and Dana Ginn Paredes, F4ICA Lead Consultant, set the tone for the day. We were able to breathe collectively and acknowledge the land we were on and call in the original caretakers of the land.

This convening powerfully advanced the strategic planning conversation. Community Advisors and key funder allies became clearer and more aligned around the vision for F4ICA 2.0. There was general resonance with the draft framework, goals, and strategies shared on F4ICA 2.0. A few of the main approaches that we all dove deeper into include:

— The broad category of Community Driven Affordable Housing Innovations including the various sub-components such as social housing, community land trusts, and TOPA / COPA.

— Continued capacity building and infrastructure building work, particularly at the regional level, with civic engagement and communications capacities named as important focus areas

— Discussing housing work intersectionally, particularly incorporating criminal justice and climate intersections.

We are excited to share more about the strategies the Strategy Working Group, Community Advisors and funder allies discussed, including leveraging foundation influence in public and philanthropic spheres as we finalize and adopt the approved plan in late 2022.

Professor Ananya Roy from UCLA Luskin Center for Democracy and Power ignited folks’ desire to build relationships with academia and figure out how to bridge those connections and use academia as a tool for their own campaigns. In her inspirational keynote she shared research and examples of power building and efforts on the horizon of housing justice.

The term “racial banishment” stuck with us as she explained that we are past gentrification, and are at a place where city officials and police are making staying in place illegal by so many means. Professor Roy and Community Advisors shared how urgent, and life and death, the situation is around housing for low-income people of color in California. They foreshadowed the need for more direct action as well as use of eminent domain and occupations to stop business as usual of evicting, incarcerating and banishing people from their homes and communities. Funders need to wrestle with how they support communities they work with in these moments.

We gained valuable insights and grounding in the regional context across all five geographic areas where we have focused. The conversations around community-driven affordable housing innovations and funder organizing resonated across regions and with funder partners.

We facilitated full group and break out sessions to gather information on the strategies put forth by the Strategy Working Group – to ground them in the lived experiences and context of each region and for funders aligning with this work. In regional groups, Community Advisors voted on which strategies and outcomes were high and medium priority. This prioritization exercise illuminated how regions feel about the relative priority of these goals as well as which strategies and outcomes are most important in which region. The Strategy Working Group is also looking for themes across the regions to inform the final goals, strategies, and outcomes of F4ICA 2.0.

There is enormous potential for F4ICA in our next phase, grounded in the experience and relationships of our last five years of work. The statewide convening filled us all with great hope and put us on a path to ensure that the next iteration of the fund is completely supportive of what front line communities are asking for. The second phase is taking shape – with fuller details ready to share in December and into the new year.

We’re full of gratitude, excitement and determination to see through this community-driven vision and strategies for permanent affordable housing, stewardship, and thriving neighborhoods across California.

11Dec

Invest in Equity to Meet California’s Housing and Community Needs

December 11, 2021 F4ICA 1

Fund for an Inclusive California supported the funding of our campaign to end financial speculation in land and housing,” said Rae Huang, Senior Organizer with Housing Now!. “Our coalition members often ask: what can we do to transform the situation we’re in? Communities are looking for bigger structural changes, and one path is to follow the money to understand where the power lies. We want to reclaim our own land, and create housing for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors.

California has the opportunity to lead the nation in housing justice and thriving communities. For this to become a reality, we at F4ICA are committed to joining with fellow funders to strengthen statewide leaders’ capacity for advocacy paired with increased investments in stronger local organizing infrastructure that will add up to a powerful and lasting statewide coalition that works to meet the needs of communities across the state.

^{¹ These principles were adapted from a sign-on letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon; dated June 17, 2021.}

11Dec

Los Angeles Moves Toward Its Housing Justice North Star

December 11, 2021 F4ICA 0

All poor, working class, and people of color in LA County live in high quality housing that is affordable and within stable, healthy, resilient, accessible, and vibrant communities.” The vision includes the need to address root causes: “to transform the causes of the housing affordability crisis, it will be necessary to craft, refine, and advance scaled strategies to decommodify housing.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, these established relationships and existence of the north star positioned LA groups to respond with greater coordination and a bold, big-picture vision to increased health, economic, and housing challenges.

In 2020, LA groups came together to advocate for Project Roomkey, which allowed Californians made vulnerable by the pandemic to access affordable housing in hotels and motels. In 2021, some of these LA groups established the Los Angeles Acquisition/Rehabilitation Working Group in partnership with Los Angeles Community Land Trust Coalition (LACLTC), affordable housing developers, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and Enterprise Community Partners.

The working group secured $14M in public funding to resource social housing strategies focused on community land trusts, received additional philanthropic funding, and successfully advanced policy changes to work toward tenant ownership through the CLT model.

Many of these groups also joined in a recent 2021 campaign to ‘Keep LA housed’ which included advocating for the extension of COVID-19 eviction protections and urging the County Board of Supervisors to enact debt relief for renters hit hard by multiple crises.

Moving beyond the immediate response to the current crisis,” said Cynthia Strathmann, SAJE Executive Director and an F4ICA Community Advisor, “we are expanding just recovery efforts and leveraging relationships between F4ICA grantees to develop communications and organizing infrastructure. These relationships enhance our organizing and communications capacity and strengthen our ability to run a well-developed, collective campaign to de-commodify housing.
“A lot of the conversation we had at the cabin retreat still stands but is even more important now,” reflected Laura Raymond, ACT-LA Director and an F4ICA Community Advisor. “We are building a long-term movement and staying grounded in grassroots community needs, while working towards the north star around housing and transit justice.

We directed funds to Community Advisors and their organizations to ensure they had necessary resources during a time of heightened need and urgency. The Fund recognized the importance of convenings, facilitating relationship building, and activating pooled funding to ensure leaders and organizations successfully scaled organizing, advocacy, and power building.

We will keep listening to Community Advisors and share our lessons with philanthropic peers across LA and statewide.

¹ Final Report, Fund For An Inclusive California Los Angeles Grantee Cohort Planning Retreat, December 2019.

09Dec

Central Valley Builds Power to Guarantee Homes for All

December 9, 2021 F4ICA 1

In addition to pushing for expansive eviction protections, Central Valley leaders launched the Homes Guarantee campaign in early May 2021 that “looks like every person across the Central Valley having a safe, secure, accessible, and deeply affordable home. It looks like racial equity, community ownership, and keeping families whole.”¹

Community Advisors across the region note that F4ICA’s investment of resources and convening infrastructure in response to their needs has helped groups build relationships and power to advance housing policy wins.

“There’s definitely been more collaboration across housing organizations in the Central Valley because of the Fund for an Inclusive California,” said Trena Turner, Executive Director of Faith in the Valley and an F4ICA Community Advisor.

Turner went on to put forward a clear call to action for the Fund and its peers in philanthropy.

We encourage you to develop strategies with your philanthropic peers not only to fund the organizing,” said Turner, “but to create lasting resources that will enable us to branch off into new areas and to push policymakers further in service to our communities. We also call on philanthropy to explore opportunities to leverage private resources to match public funds.

¹ https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article253224683.html

09Dec

What’s ahead for the Fund for an Inclusive California

December 9, 2021 F4ICA 1

01Sep

New Report: Insights and findings from three years of partnership for housing justice

September 1, 2021 F4ICA 0

Their vision is to shift the current paradigm of housing as an extractive tool for investment in the financial market, to housing recognized as a basic human need and human right. It is a vision where communities are stewards of the land they live on and determine how that land is used, not for profit, but for the well-being of the people that live there.

It is envisioning a future where people of color, particularly Black and Indigenous people most harmed by systemic racism, can live and thrive in California. Our work is to align and mobilize resources to support this vision.

Over the last three years we have developed deep relationships and learned immeasurably from and with our organizing and funding partners. Through this work we have experienced humility in listening and knowing that our role in philanthropy is to show up as a partner, organize resources, to lift community voices and amplify the vision and demands of grassroots power-building organizations.

As more foundations step into supporting systems change and power-building strategies, it is imperative that as a sector we do our own work to shift power to communities, and continue to dismantle harmful philanthropic practices that perpetuate injustice. The recent influx of funder interest in power-building should not come with a boom of top-down philanthropic solutions that distract from the voices and priorities of people who are most impacted.

This is a historic moment that calls for us to take bold action, leverage our resources towards systems change and invest to win. After all, we have a mandate from communities we partner with to use all points of leverage that we have in philanthropy to pursue transformative approaches that will achieve housing for all in California.

We are excited to join growing efforts that reimagine a world in which all communities, particularly those who have historically faced racism and discrimination, have the power to lead and experience joy, justice, equity and well-being in neighborhoods where they have access to an affordable, safe and stable place to call home.

In community and solidarity,

Jazmin Segura
Director, Fund for an Inclusive California

Download Full Report

Download Executive Summary

In community and solidarity,

Jazmin Segura
Director, Fund for an Inclusive California

Download Report

Download Executive Summary

22Jul

Power to the People: Amplified Community Voices Drive Equity in California

July 22, 2020 F4ICA 1

The CZI team interviewed Jazmin to hear about her story coming into philanthropy, community organizers as first responders to community, and the early impacts of the pandemic.

21May

Invest in Equity to Meet California’s Housing and Community Needs

May 21, 2020 F4ICA 1

Behind a Collaborative Funding Push to Build Movements and Organizing Power

Philanthropy has become increasingly comfortable with funding community organizing and movement building to advance racial and economic equity, particularly in response to threats to democracy, civil rights and community life since the 2016 election. At the same time, funders have given growing attention to land use and affordable housing challenges in many communities. This is especially true on the West Coast, where leading funders in California have come together to support grassroots organizing to address the root causes of long-term housing challenges that are squeezing low and middle-class households as well as driving a surge in homelessness.

Coming Together

The Fund for an Inclusive California was launched in the fall of 2017 after a couple of years of meetings and planning among foundations concerned about increasing displacement and gentrification in communities of color across the state. Several of the funders had supported grassroots organizing and had noticed that these strategies were not typically part of philanthropy’s efforts around housing, which has tended to support direct services and affordable housing production.

The funders engaged in a “learning journey” to better understand the causes of displacement and what policy and organizing could do to address it. For Alexandra Desautels of the California Endowment, the joint learning about root causes of displacement in communities that funders were working in was vital to getting them on the same page. The group quickly realized that by pooling funding and efforts they could better coordinate to support policy advocacy and community-driven solutions.

The fund is part of a larger effort by Neighborhood Funders Group to mobilize philanthropic support for movement- and power-building through its Amplify Fund. Organizers of the fund learned from philanthropic collaboratives like Native Voices Rising and Climate Equity Action Fund in supporting grassroots organizing and movements.

In addition to Amplify, funding partners include public and community foundations (East Bay Community Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, California Community Foundation and Liberty Hill Foundation), private and family foundations (Akonadi Foundation, the California Endowment, the James Irvine Foundation, Weingart Foundation, Sunlight Giving), as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. To date, it has mobilized nearly $11 million for efforts in four regions (Bay Area, Central Valley, Inland Empire and Los Angeles), as well as statewide.

Sharing and Building Power

The backbone of the Fund for an Inclusive California is Common Counsel Foundation, a social justice funder with 30 years of experience working with donors and activists to build community leadership. Common Counsel’s staff is well-versed in organizing and social justice work. Jazmin Segura, program officer for the fund, has a background in immigrant rights organizing. As she says, “We believe that low- income communities and communities of color who bear the brunt of unjust housing policies and the negative impacts of profit-driven development should have decisionmaking power to determine what development looks like in their local neighborhoods.”

The funding partners serve as the steering committee for the fund, and they oversee the budget and work of the backbone. What is unique about the fund is that the funders share power with a group of 35 community advisors, made up of the core grantees in the regions who are directly involved in organizing and movement building.

According to Jazmin, “it was important for us to lean on the process and relationship-building” in setting up the fund. The funders determine which regions to focus on and select the core grantees that receive core operating support. The community advisors provide input into priorities and values for the fund and develop strategies for grantmaking to support capacity-building and organizing infrastructure in each region. According to Tony Samara, a community advisor representing the Regional Tenant Organizing Network in the Bay Area, these funds support meetings, assemblies and grants to grassroots organizing groups.

The steering committee and community advisors have created a table for shared learning, planning and decision making, and they work from a common project budget. At one of their joint meetings, a community advisor declared that it was the first time in her 35 years of working in the nonprofit sector that a funder had shared their budget with a grantee.

From the grantees’ perspective, this is refreshing, because it demonstrates changed behavior from funders, not just platitudes and words about partnership and “co-creation.” As Tony Samara explained, “there’s actually now a collective space that’s become somewhat institutionalized… it creates another cultural center of gravity.”

In addition to core operating support and funding for capacity-building and movement infrastructure, a portion of the fund is set aside for emerging opportunities that arise. This has been useful as work in regions has expanded, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. With increasing challenges of residents losing jobs or housing, or suddenly needing help with child care and healthcare for essential workers, the fund has provided rapid-response funding for a range of community efforts and organizations, many outside the community advisor group.

In response, the fund has also simplified processes in the face of the pandemic to lessen burdens for grantees (e.g., accepting proposals submitted to other funders, advancing grants directly for renewal and not requiring final reports). This flexibility has been appreciated by grantees, who have had to adjust to organizing in an environment where in-person meetings and actions are not viable, and the challenges faced by low-income renters have multiplied.

Learning for the Future

The Fund for an Inclusive California was set up with a three-year timeline, designed to sunset in 2021. Outcomes from the collaborative approach to funding, learning and decision-making have been impressive. Funders and grantees have created joint understanding and approaches, and funders have shared power in important ways that have supported organizing capacity and infrastructure and provided funding to grassroots community groups.

On the policy front, the network of community advisors was instrumental in raising awareness and getting landmark tenant protection policies passed at the state and local levels in 2019, and they are deeply involved in current efforts to provide relief for renters in the face of the pandemic and economic crisis.

Given the success, as well as the continuing—and, in the current economic crisis, undoubtedly growing—need, the fund will probably not completely disappear next year. According to fund organizers, they are currently in conversation about how it might “evolve” or “transition,” seeing this current period as perhaps the first phase of a longer effort. A collaborative learning and evaluation process is informing this work and sharing lessons more broadly with the field and philanthropy. The fund’s approach to core support and regional infrastructure has provided stability and built trust to let grantees do the work they are best positioned to do. As Alex Desautels summarized, “when you provide space and flexible support, good things happen.” A collaborative can be a safer place for foundation program staff to engage in these types of practices (e.g., core support and funding organizing), even if they cannot in their own organizations.

Community advisor Tony Samara’s advice to funders is to “study this model and replicate it; I would love to see funds like this all over the country.

The fund’s approach to flexible funding and shared decision-making has also broadened the tent, growing what organizers call the “bigger we” fighting for more just housing and community development policies. Groups from sectors such as education, criminal justice and immigrants’ rights are engaged, as they recognize the intersections between their issues and housing stability. For both funders and grantees, the collaborative approach and relationship-building have created what Alex Desautels called a “ripple effect into deep partnerships,” even beyond the work of the fund.

The Fund for an Inclusive California represents a promising example of how philanthropy can address the racial and economic inequities that plague our communities. By creating shared understanding, learning and decision-making, and providing flexible support for organizing and power-building, the fund is set up to build infrastructure for long-term structural and systemic change.

Bill Pitkin is a social justice advocate and leader who has worked in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors for more than 25 years. Currently, he advises nonprofit organizations and foundations on strategy and social change. Twitter: @billpitkin

15Aug

Report: Building people-power for local and statewide housing justice

August 15, 2019 F4ICA 0

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Housing justice

Behind a Collaborative Funding Push to Build Movements and Organizing Power