The California Endowment
/OVERVIEW: The California Endowment is a large foundation that funds health care, health equity, schools, criminal justice reform, youth, and community wellness throughout California, with a focus on solutions rooted in social and racial justice and combating systematic oppression.
IP TAKE: The California Endowment (TCE) is a must-know for nonprofits operating in California. The endowment, a GUTC signatory, is one of the largest grantmakers in the state, with $3.5 billion in assets and active grant programs in its areas of interest. While once primarily a healthcare funder, TCE has broadened its focus to embrace a more holistic understanding of health, education, and community development; as of 2018, TCE committed to conduct its work primarily through a racial and social justice lens. At the conclusion of TCE’s 10-year Building Healthy Communities program, the endowment recognized that “health is not determined just by access to healthcare or even the quality of the healthcare, but by the historical, structural and systemic community conditions and the policies that shape them.”
Previous grantseekers and grantees reported that the endowment can be bureaucratic and difficult to work with, describing TCE as “unresponsive,” “micro-managing,” and having “a very closed concept of what community engagement and community change looks like.” TCE heard this criticism and re-developed its grantmaking process to be more inclusive and collaborative. Importantly, a significant proportion of TCE’s grants are now for general operating support rather than project-based. “We are now committed to a trust-based approach where we’re giving the power and removing the roadblocks for communities to really decide themselves how to allocate resources,” the endowment’s chief learning officer told IP in 2021. TCE does not give grants to individuals and does not accept unsolicited grant proposals. It does, however, accept grant inquiries, inviting organizations that “pursue social justice and health equity within California” to contact TCE via its online form. TCE makes grants to organizations both large and small, with typical dollar amounts ranging widely from $5,000 to several million.
PROFILE: The California Endowment was created in 2006 when the Blue Cross Blue Shield of California acquired WellPoint Health Networks; proceeds from the business deal went to establish TCE, which today is the largest private health foundation in California. A GUTC signatory, this funder seeks to “expand access to affordable, quality healthcare for underserved individuals and communities and to promote fundamental improvements in the health status of all Californians.”
Though based in Los Angeles, the endowment is a private, statewide foundation that works in four regions of California — North, Central, South, and Los Angeles — and makes grants that focus on encouraging good health and the provision of and access to quality healthcare for all Californians. Its focus areas — which are conducted through a racial equity lens and whose interests tend to overlap with one another — address Health Systems, Justice Reinvestment, Inclusive Community Development, Power Infrastructure and Schools.
This funder makes single-year grants, multi-year grants, direct charitable activity contracts, and program-related impact investments in the form of loans. It offers grants for programs and projects, as well as general operating support grants.
Through its Three Bold Ideas, which the endowment identifies as “People Power, Reimagined Public Institutions, and a 21st Century ‘Health for All’ System,” this funder seeks to “strengthening the fabric of our democracy by investing in the growth of the social and economic power of the very residents who have been the targets of exclusion, stigma, and discrimination.”
Grants for Health, Community Development and Racial Justice
The California Endowment makes grants broadly through its People Power Health strategy, a $225 million health and racial-justice campaign. This program replaces the foundation’s previous 10-year initiative, Building Healthy Communities. People Power Health’s grantmaking prioritizes racial justice because, according to the foundation, “there is no health justice without racial justice.” It particularly supports grassroots organizations and community initiatives working to create a state where a person’s health is not a product of where they live, and that believe that systematic racism is a root cause of poor health. According to Robert K. Ross, MD, president and CEO of the California Endowment, "Racial injustice and structural inequality are made by the human hand, which means they can be dismantled by the human hand; dismantled by leadership, action, voice, advocacy, activism."
People Power Health focuses on four broad geographic regions “which have the most acute health and racial inequities and encompass 78% of California’s population.”
Grants often exceed the million-dollar mark, but many others are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Grantees for the foundation’s previous initiative include the USC's Health Journalism and Fellowships Program, the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and the American Heart Association.
Grantees also include Fresno Building Health Communities, Tides Center, Prevention Institute, GSA Network, Insure the Uninsured Project, California School-based Health Alliance, Social & Environmental Entrepreneurs, and Health Access Foundation.
It has also given as much as $5 million to local organizations for COVID-19 relief and recovery.
It has pledged $100 million to nonprofits led by Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders over the next 10 years.
The California Endowment is working to create a better system by “connecting healthcare with public health and other culturally appropriate community wellness resources” so that “all Californians will reside in communities with an equity-focused health system that is accountable for achieving wellbeing and health for all.” The California Endowment supports programs that promote racial equity, preventive medicine, community conditions, resident governance and economic justice through “a culturally competent workforce.”
Grants for K-12 and Higher Education
One of the California Endowment’s focus areas is schools, which it also addresses through its main grantmaking strategy of People Power Health. The foundation sees the current public school system as leading to “persistently inequitable outcomes over generations” and creating “a debt owed to those communities most deeply harmed.” Its goal is to create “a racially equitable, inclusive, healing-centered learning environment” that leads to “lifelong health, wellbeing and civic leadership.”
Grantees include Leland Stanford Junior University, California Calls Education Fund, Foundation for California Community Colleges, and Learning Policy Institute.
Important Grant Details:
Grants generally range from $5,000 to $500,000, but some select grants may be over $1,000,000. Grant seekers may review the foundation’s past grantees or review its recent tax filings for more information on its grantmaking habits.
The California Endowment primarily supports nonprofit organizations based and operating in the state of California.
The grant application process is by invitation only. Grant seekers may submit a letter of inquiry at any time to request an invitation.
Grant seekers who have been invited to apply may apply through the foundation’s online grant portal.
In addition to application materials, applicants must submit an up-to-date GuideStar profile.
The review process after submitting an application typically takes six to eight weeks.
The California Endowment will not provide support to individuals, political or lobbying campaigns, or organizations that advance a particular religion.
Grant seekers may contact the foundation to submit a grant inquiry or direct any general inquiries to the staff at 800-449-4149.
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