|
- Assets: $8,239,386 (2005)
- Grants Received: $8,262,553 (2005)
- Grants Awarded: $3,707,184 (2005)
The California-based Liberty Hill Foundation facilitates the transfer of donor-advised funds from wealthy benefactors to a host of leftist groups and causes. It was established in 1976 by wealthy scions Larry Janss, Anne Mendel, Win McCormack, and Sarah Pillsbury, who were inspired by the writings of the socialist novelist Upton Sinclair to do whatever they could to radically transform American society, which they perceived as a bastion of class inequality and exploitation. This Foundation focuses its philanthropy primarily on grassroots community organizations it perceives to be working for "social and racial equality, environmental sustainability, economic justice, and shared social responsibility" in Los Angeles. It favors organizations that base their tactics on the confrontational strategies outlined by the famed organizer Saul Alinsky.
Torie Osborn, who has been a social activist since the 1960s, joined the Liberty Hill Foundation in 1997 and is currently its Executive Director. Before coming to Liberty Hill, she was the Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C. Under her direction, Liberty Hill boasts that it has achieved racial and gender parity (in its workforce) and has become the world's largest organization serving the gay and lesbian communities.
Condemning the income gap between America's rich and poor, the Liberty Hill Foundation laments that within Los Angeles reside some of America's wealthiest people as well as many of its most destitute. "[T]he top 50 wealthiest Angelenos' combined net worth is $60 billion, more than the bottom 2 million people combined," says the Foundation. "L.A. has one of the nation's smallest middle classes." However, this assertion ignores the fact that the film industry's presence in Los Angeles accounts for much of the top 50 individuals' wealth, and, conversely, that much of L.A.'s poverty is a result of the large number of illegal aliens who live there.
Notwithstanding its professed distaste for extreme wealth, the Liberty Hill Foundation depends upon the Hollywood elite for moral and financial support via events like its annual Upton Sinclair Dinner, billed as an affair where "Hollywood Meets the Streets." Among those who have recently attended this yearly function are Tom Hayden; Eve Ensler, Arianna Huffington; Anjelica Huston; Tim Robbins; Susan Sarandon; Mary Steenburgen; Ted Danson; Jane Fonda; and Oliver Stone.
The Liberty Hill Foundation's grant-making is divided into six program areas that describe themselves as follows:
- Seed Fund: "... provides grants to new and emerging community-based organizations. It helps groups establish themselves and become effective advocates and leaders in their communities."
- Fund for a New Los Angeles: "... provides grants to groups that are actively organizing for racial equality and economic justice."
- Environmental Justice Fund: "... makes grants to grassroots organizations that are working to decrease exposure to toxic substances in neighborhoods and workplaces, particularly in low-income areas and communities of color."
- Special Opportunity Fund: "… provides grants of up to $3,000 to help groups respond to special organizational development and training opportunities that are timely and require a modest amount of funding."
- LibertyVote!: "Liberty Hill began LibertyVote! to help excite, educate and engage low-propensity voters around the critical issues of social justice, healthcare and the economy … [and to bring] low-income communities and communities of color into the electoral process."
- Lesbian & Gay Community Fund: "This fund provides critical support to new or ongoing projects addressing the issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities."
Among the recent beneficiaries of Liberty Hill Foundation grants are: the Tides Foundation; the Tides Center; Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN); Physicians for Social Responsibility; the Center for Science in the Public Interest; California Environmental Rights Alliance; the Committee to Bridge the Gap; Families to Amend California's Three Strikes; Making Change; No More Sweatshops; Death Penalty Focus; the William J. Brennan Center for Justice, Inc.; the Drug Policy Alliance; the Ex-Offender Action Network; Friends of the Earth; Homeboy Industries; the Jewish Fund for Justice; Los Angeles Youth Justice Coalition; the National Lawyer's Guild Foundation; the Proteus Fund; the Rainforest Action Network; the Ruckus Society; Strategic Actions for a Just Economy; the Shefa Fund; the American Civil Liberties Union; the Progressive Jewish Alliance; Women and Youth Supporting Each Other; Youth United for Community Action; the Threshold Foundation; the Impact Fund; Women At Work; Homies Unidos; Los Angeles Indigenous Peoples' Alliance; Human Rights Watch; Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace; Rainbow Services; Oxfam America; Democracy Now!; Actions for Grassroots Empowerment & Neighborhood Development Alternatives; the Center for the Advancement of Nonviolence; Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services; Progressive Christians Uniting; Los Angeles Center to End Hunger and Homelessness; Californians for Justice Education Fund; the Coalition for Economic Survival; the Central American Resource Center; WISE UP; Innercity Struggle; Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice; Criminal Justice Consortium; African American Parent/Community Coalition for Educational Equity; the Gay-Straight Alliance Network; United Lesbians of African Heritage; the Twenty-First Century Foundation; Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles; FTM Alliance of Los Angeles; the Garment Worker Center; Labor Community Strategy Center; Khmer Girls In Action; East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice; the League of Conservation Voters Education Fund; California Communities Against Toxics; Healthy Homes Collaborative; Immigration Equality; and the Environmental Defense Fund.
|
