OVERVIEW: The Roy and Patricia Disney Family Foundation supports affordable housing preservation, criminal justice reform and environmental justice, primarily in Los Angeles and secondarily in New Orleans and Tacoma, Washington. Civic empowerment cuts across all three portfolios. The foundation also makes select crisis-response grants and works with local intermediaries on participatory grantmaking.
IP TAKE: The Roy and Patricia Disney Family Foundation is an increasingly influential social justice funder with a growing commitment to participatory grantmaking. In a recent Inside Philanthropy interview, chair Max Disney emphasized the foundation’s interest in shifting decision-making power toward people with lived experience.
RPDFF supports multiyear general operating grants, project funding, pilots and capacity building. Its priorities center on affordable housing, criminal justice reform and environmental justice, with an emphasis on grassroots leadership, systems change and organizations led by people from the communities they serve.
This is a high-fit, low-access prospect. The foundation does not accept unsolicited proposals, LOIs or general applications, and it offers no public grant-inquiry channel. The strongest candidates will already be active in the housing, justice or environmental networks of South and East Los Angeles, New Orleans or Tacoma.
A warm introduction from a current grantee, intermediary or aligned funder is far more promising than a cold pitch. Grantseekers should study the foundation’s partner network, join relevant coalitions and build visibility through strong community work. Organizations outside its target geographies, conventional service providers without a systems-change strategy and national groups lacking local roots are less likely to compete.
PROFILE: The Roy and Patricia Disney Family Foundation (RPDFF) traces its origins to the Roy Disney Family Foundation, established by Roy O. Disney in 1969. Roy’s wife, Edna Disney, his son Roy E. Disney and Roy E.’s wife, Patricia, were founding members. The foundation received a large bequest after Patricia Disney’s death in 2012 and was renamed in her honor. The organization is now a professionally staffed, multigenerational family foundation. Susan Disney Lord, the daughter of Roy E. and Patricia, chaired the board from the 1990s until 2025, when her son Max took the reigns.
The Disney Family Foundation’s mission is to “invest in innovative solutions and community leaders to build a more just, equitable, and sustainable world in which all people thrive.” The foundation describes itself as a “social justice grantmaker” and is committed to building “long-lasting relationships” with grantees and other like-minded philanthropic partners.
RPDFF’s primary geographic footprint is Los Angeles, with an intentional focus on South and East Los Angeles. New Orleans and Tacoma are secondary markets, where the foundation generally works through community foundations, regional collaborations and selected local organizations. It also maintains limited international and crisis-response work, but these activities should not be understood as broad, open global programs.
Grants for Affordable Housing and Community Development
RPDFF’s Affordable Housing Preservation portfolio supports efforts to prevent displacement and create long-term affordability. The foundation is interested in tenant protections, affordable-housing policy, new financing models and community ownership structures such as community land trusts. Its emphasis is not simply on building housing; it is on changing the policies, ownership models and financial systems that determine whether lower-income residents can remain in their communities.
- Recent grants reflect this community-control and anti-displacement lens. The foundation’s 2024 filing lists support for Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative and People’s Housing in New Orleans; a community-housing pilot at LA Más; the Home for Good project at Broad Community Connections; and Downtown Crenshaw Rising through the intermediary Seed Commons. Other partners have included Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, East LA Community Corporation, InnerCity Struggle and Trust South LA.
- The strongest candidates will be tenant-led or community-rooted groups working on housing policy, organizing, community ownership, preservation or anti-displacement strategies. Conventional housing developers or homelessness-service organizations may be a weaker fit unless their work includes community leadership, systems change or permanent affordability.
Grants for Criminal Justice Reform
The foundation’s Criminal Justice Reform program supports community-led reentry, decarceration and policy reform. Its stated goals include reducing jail and prison populations, reversing high recidivism rates, identifying new funding for community-based reentry and enabling people affected by the justice system to participate in civic and policy processes.
- Recent grantees include Youth Justice Coalition, which received $100,000 in general operating support in 2024; Operation Restoration and Vera Louisiana, which received $75,000 each; and the Young Women’s Freedom Center.
- The foundation also names the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, A New Way of Life and JustLeadershipUSA as representative partners.
- Organizations led by formerly incarcerated or otherwise justice-impacted people and groups combining direct support with organizing, leadership development, policy advocacy or civic engagement. Reentry services may qualify, but the foundation appears most interested when those services connect to broader systems change.
Grants for Environmental Conservation and Justice
RPDFF’s Environmental Justice portfolio supports frontline communities facing disproportionate exposure to polluted air, soil and water. Funding is hyperlocal and focuses on organizing, advocacy, regulation, policy change and organizational capacity. This is an environmental justice program rather than a conventional conservation portfolio.
- The foundation prioritizes organizations led by and accountable to communities affected by environmental harm. Recent grants include $75,000 awards to Front and Centered, Líderes Campesinas, Mujeres de la Tierra and Pacoima Beautiful. It also funded Rise St. James through Earth Island Institute and the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice through Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs.
- Other identified partners include East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, Liberty Hill Foundation and Physicians for Social Responsibility–Los Angeles.
- The Disney Foundation’s Hazel M. Johnson Environmental Justice Award exists in partnership with the Environmental Grantmakers Association. According to the website, the award “will provide seven community-based BIPOC-led environmental justice nonprofits working on vital environmental justice and social issues with three years of general operating support – no strings attached.”
- Strong candidates will be grassroots groups working at the intersection of pollution, public health, racial justice, land use and local economic development. Traditional conservation organizations without a clear frontline-community or equity focus appear less competitive.
Grants for Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Aid
The foundation’s Crisis Response Fund makes one-time grants in response to natural disasters, humanitarian emergencies and urgent policy threats.
- Past areas of support have included the Flint water crisis, the Syrian refugee crisis, Hurricane Maria, California wildfires, immigrant-family separation and threats to reproductive rights. The official webpage’s examples stop at 2019, but the fund remains active.
- The latest filing shows grants related to humanitarian relief in Gaza and Sudan, flood response, the Line Fire and recovery from Hurricane Helene and other disasters. These awards are made at the foundation’s discretion. There is no public rapid-response application or published maximum award.
- Although some crisis grants are relatively small, recent awards have exceeded $10,000, so grantseekers should not assume a fixed ceiling.
Civic Empowerment and Participatory Grantmaking
Civic empowerment is not a separate grant program. Instead, RPDFF describes it as a strategy embedded across affordable housing, criminal justice and environmental justice. The foundation links systems change to political representation, public policy, grassroots power and equitable access to resources and decision-making.
- RPDFF launched a participatory grantmaking initiative in Los Angeles in 2021, enlisting compensated community reviewers to help select grantees. Three early rounds supported 16 organizations and explored topics including community land trusts and criminal justice prevention. Grants generally ranged from $10,000 to $30,000.
- More recently, the foundation has shifted some participatory grantmaking to experienced local intermediaries. It partnered with Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angeles and Foundation for Louisiana in New Orleans, and supported a project led by Return to the Heart Foundation concerning missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and Two-Spirit people.
- In 2025, RPDFF reported renewing the Louisiana partnership and piloting participatory grantmaking with the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation.
- The 2024 tax filing lists $300,000 for Liberty Hill’s Fund for Change and $500,000 to Movement Strategy Center for a Return to the Heart Foundation project. Liberty Hill’s Fund for Change provides general operating grants of up to $50,000 for community organizing in Los Angeles County, but its most recent alignment survey closed in January 2026.
- Grantseekers should monitor RPDFF’s intermediary partners for future rounds, while recognizing that these are periodic opportunities rather than a standing RPDFF application process.
Other Opportunities:
RPDFF occasionally makes international grants and supports collaborations beyond its three domestic geographies. Its website refers to a time-limited initiative in Nairobi, while foundation leaders have also discussed work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo concerning gender-based violence, climate resilience and labor conditions in cobalt-mining communities. No general international application program is available.
The foundation also uses impact investments and program-related investments to advance its mission. CEO Shawn Escoffery initially developed an impact investing portfolio representing 10% of the endowment, and the foundation reported in 2025 that it was working toward aligning all of its assets with its racial, gender and economic justice goals. These activities are separate from charitable grants, and no open investment inquiry process has been identified.
RPDFF does not operate a public fiscal-sponsorship program or donor-advised fund. However, recent grants show that qualified fiscal sponsors and intermediaries can receive funding for sponsored projects, including Rise St. James, People’s Collective for Environmental Justice, Downtown Crenshaw Rising and Return to the Heart Foundation. This demonstrates openness to fiscally sponsored work, but it does not constitute a published application pathway.
Important Grant Details:
The foundation reported approximately $151.4 million in assets and $4.9 million in grants paid in 2024. Public grant databases count about 164 grants that year, producing an average of roughly $30,000. That average is not especially representative: the portfolio includes numerous small wellness, discretionary and crisis grants, recurring strategic awards around $75,000 and several large intermediary grants reaching $300,000 to $500,000.
- The foundation supports U.S.-based 501(c)(3) organizations working in its target cities. Grant applications are considered by invitation only. RPDFF does not publish an open application, standing LOI, general grant-inquiry form or public submission deadline.
- The foundation provides general operating and project support, including multiyear funding, pilots and capacity building. Its grantmaking favors organizations led by people who reflect the communities served and groups pursuing policy change, narrative change, organizing and grassroots power.
- For additional information about these partnerships, see the foundation’s partners and partner spotlights pages.
- Grant applications are accepted on an invitation-only basis. General inquiries may be directed to foundation staff by telephone at (818) 973-4240.
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