Established in 2000, the Omnia Foundation (OF) is a private family philanthropy whose mission is “to provide opportunity and means to enable politically, economically, and socially disadvantaged people to become more self-sufficient and productive in their lives and communities.” These target populations include African Americans and other nonwhite minorities as well as immigrants and women—reflecting OF’s view that the United States is a nation replete with racism, xenophobia, and sexism. The Foundation’s grantees tend to be nonprofit organizations that, as OF puts it, “facilitate progressive social change by addressing the root causes of social problems”—in particular the alleged prevalence of racism in the U.S. criminal-justice system. Other key issues include immigrant rights and women’s empowerment.

Most of OF’s grantees are based in California, where they engage in advocacy, grassroots organizing, coalition building, and leadership training. Those that are not headquartered in California nonetheless maintain some sort of presence there. Among the more noteworthy recipients of Omnia Foundation grants are: All of Us or None, the American Civil Liberties Union‘s Capital Punishment Project (which seeks to abolish the death penalty on grounds that it is applied in a racially discriminatory manner), Critical Resistance, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and the Liberty Hill Foundation.

Additional OF grantees include the following:

• A New Way of Life Reentry Project, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that seeks to “help women and girls break the cycle of entrapment in the criminal justice system”;
• the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, which provides free immigration legal services for Arab, North African, and South Asian residents of the Bay Area;
• Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, whose mission is to “empower low-income, limited-English-speaking” Asian immigrant women workers through “education, leadership development, and collective action”;
• the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, which works to build grassroots leadership and civic participation in Asian immigrant communities;
• the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, which “raises public consciousness about the cruel and inhumane conditions under which women in prison live”;
• the Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action, active in “the struggle for a just immigration reform”;
• Centerforce, which provides services for formerly and currently incarcerated individuals and their families;
• the Center for Restorative Justice Works, which “re-weaves the web of relationships that have been torn apart by crime and the policies of the criminal justice system”;
• Creating Economic Opportunities for Women, which helps low-income immigrant and refugee women become financially solvent;
• Crossroads, Inc., which works to provide housing, education, support and counseling for women who have been incarcerated;
• the Ex-Offender Action Network, which recruits and trains former prison inmates to become community organizers;
• Filipinos for Affirmative Action, which advocates for policies that promote a Filipino community “with the power to advance social and economic justice”;
• the Insight Prison Project, which seeks to make rehabilitation the “core operating principle” within the California penal system;
• Justice Now, which works with women prisoners and local communities “to build a safe, compassionate world without prisons”;
• Mujeres Unidas y Activas (United and Active Women), which teaches Latina immigrant women how to participate in “the struggles for social justice, immigrant rights, and … collective social change”;
• the Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action, which works to increase civic and political activism among newcomers to the United States;
• Project Avary, which aims to provide opportunities for children of incarcerated parents to participate in “character-building situations outside their home environments”;
• the Time for Change Foundation, which works to “empowe[r] disenfranchised women transitioning from homelessness and recidivism”;
• the TGI Justice Project, which seeks to end “the human rights abuses committed against transgender, gender variant/genderqueer and intersex (TGI) people in California prisons and beyond”;
• Upwardly Global, which “brings highly qualified immigrants living permanently in the United States together with highly progressive employers”; and
• the Youth Justice Coalition, which aims to build a youth-led movement “to challenge race, gender and class inequality” in the Los Angeles County juvenile “_in_justice system.”